I’m 100% sold on Scrivener. I hesitated for the longest time, still holding onto YWriter because I didn’t want to spend $40. Once I bought Scrivener, I began to (superfluous phrase!) write in it. As I did, I spent an hour learning the power tweaks.
Sixty minutes.
That’s all it took to really learn the tweaks to it. Half of that was writing anyway so I didn’t feel very (superfluous word) guilty.
I’ve tried three other writing programs since then – WriteWay, Liquid Story Binder, and now SmartEdit Writer.
Recently, I saw someone tweet they were done with Scrivener, they’d found SmartEdit Writer. I visited the website, found it was Bad Wolf Software. Okay! I’ve used one or two programs he’s written, so I tried it.
Keep in mind when I review something, these are my conclusions. I need a certain kind of environment. Sometimes the change in interface frees me up when I’m needing inspiration to write. I guess I get too used to looking at the Scrivener interface, and the change lets me focus on the words, not zone out looking at familiar territory.
You might come to much different conclusions – like the people who use LSB, and think it’s the greatest writing program ever. I felt WriteWay was much better, and Scrivener better than that – but these are my conclusions. You really need to try it yourself to see what you think of it.
The interface is very basic. To really get the wow factor, use the night mode, which puts the book into blacks and grays – more LSB in appearance.
Scrivener 3.0 has that feature as well, so not really something to give up Scrivener over. The interface gives you a chapter, a scene, and a scene note file to give you an idea how to use the program. I like that it encourages the planning aspects of writing – which is a shame that I decided to pants a writing project when trying the software!
The first thing I tried was importing a scene from YWriter, and trying some edits. Here’s where I’m unfortunately biased. The editing features – on first glance – is designed for someone who knows what the superfluous words are. In this case, I’d say it’s far better to use ProWritingAid.
If, on the other hand, Bad Wolf is trying to teach writers what to look for – with some tweaking this could be a really great tool. I’d suggest preloading a list of superfluous words and phrases into SEW under an editing menu, and just use a one click search feature. This would elevate the software into a whole new realm. “Just? Why can’t I write ‘just’?” You click on it, and behold, you see you’ve used it a hundred times.
Oh.
The word target feature is a neat report. It shows the dates you actually wrote, and what your word count was.
That’s nifty. I liked that. And you can click refresh over and over again. Nothing will change unless you write. So write.
Click refresh, and feel good validated feelings about yourself. “Yes. I wrote a hundred more words!”
That’s great. It puts it right where you can see it, and encourages you to write more.
I’ve only had the program for three days, and that’s not sufficient for an in depth look. I’m writing a prequel to my Star Trek novel, and trying to pants it instead of planning. I’m doing it to prove to myself I still can pants (although I think it’s far better to plan than to pants, for reasons that you couldn’t just see – I literally zoned out for about a minute staring at my computer screen. Enough of that, and a pants’d novel gets nowhere).
So at the end of the try out, I’ll give you more an in depth look.
