Scrivener Review

So I’ve been playing around with my new fancy writing program Scrivener. It’s $40 to buy and simply put it is the best writing program ever.

I thought everything was going great using Word to write my novels. How naive I was. Scrivener is an amazing program for writers and I would recommend it to anyone who asked.

I want talk about how to use it or anything. You can easily google that, but I will talk about why I love it so much.

• It keeps everything about your novel in one place.

Usually I would have 5 or more documents on Word for plot, characters, places, the manuscript itself, but on Scrivener it’s all in one thing. You just go to the binder on the side and click on what you need to look out and it brings it up. No opening a million word documents and constantly flicking between them

• It was a Project Target, Project Statistics and Text Statistics

Target Statistics is a little box that opens and you can set a word limit you’re aiming for as well as a word limit for the day. I love this for NaNo. I can set my 50,000 word goal and set the amount I want to write each day and see the progress

Project Statistics is another box that complies your work and tells you how many words it is and how many pages it would be is it was a paperback book. I love that because people always ask me “How long’s your novel”, “80,000 words”, “How many pages is that?” and now I can tell them.

Text Statistics tells you how many words are in an individual chapter and how frequently you use words it! That is so cool. I can see what words I favour, maybe I use some words too much. With this, I shall know.

• It breaks up the Chapters

My first novel is 80,000 words and when editing it and I want to change something it is the biggest headache to go through the manuscript trying to find that parts I need to change, but with Scrivener the chapters are set out individually so you can click on them, no endless scrolling.

I hated having to use the finder all the time in word to get to like chapter 23. So annoying.

• It has its own Name Generator

Nuff said as my friend Dark Jade would say. It has its own freaking Name Generator!

• You can store your Research

Got photos, notes audio or video that is connected to your story? You can store in the project to for easy access when you need to check something.

• You can Split the screen

You can click a button and split the screen in two and read two parts of you manuscript at the same time! You can easily compare two things. Can’t remember if you said something earlier in the story. Split, check and keep going.

• You can go Full Screen

Press F11 and the screen fades out leaving you with nothing but the page and you. You can even put a picture in the background while you write if you want. I love this as a way to unclutter your work. Sometimes you can have so many things on the screen and all you want is to type. click a button and it’s you and the page. One on one.

Everything a writer needs in a writing program is right here in Scrivener. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this before. This program should be ground zero for writers. The first step to becoming a writer is getting this program. You will not regret it ever!

There are so many other things that I still have to discover and I love finding new things I can do every day.

Available on PC and Mac. Mac is a better version as it was made for Mac only until recently when some genius decided to make it for PC as well. Great decision!

It has a 30 day free trail. I do recommend people to at least give a trail run and I guarantee you will end up buying. And it is worth the money. It’s much cheaper than other programs out there. So I’d get in before it becomes too expensive.

Tags: compare, full screen, Mac, name generator, NaNo, novel, PC, review, script, scrivener, split screen, statistics, Word, Writing