Tuesday 11 October 2011

Scribbling on Scrivener

A few months ago I was told about an application you can download for writing books with, called Scrivener, available from an American website. 

I've just been trying it out on the 30-day free trial to see how intuitive it is. I admit that I'm nervous of losing my data. Somehow, writing in Word seems safer, more akin to carbon copying on a typewriter than saving your life's work on a wizardly and remote book-binding application, but I have to admit it is making life easier.

For example, I'm just compiling characters in the binder (the panel which collects and collates all your material) which is involving copying and pasting some of the work on characters that I'd already begun in Word and pasting it in a new format. The Scrivener application suggests a character sketch format (as well as others) to fill in, which you can update to suit your project. It then houses them all together and is at-a-glance when you're within your project so you don't have to go searching in your hard drive for separate character sheets.

Although some of the menu options are a bit puzzling, and I'm finding it tricky to navigate, I'm going to continue writing and planning the book in this application for now, and give it a chance. I guess there is always the option to cut and paste back to old-fashioned Word, isn't there? 

No comments:

Post a Comment