#scrivener tutorial

Via K.M. Weiland’s site www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com:

7 hours left!

I bought Scrivener a while ago, and it took me months before I really tried experimenting with it. It was overwhelming. It has so many features and so many cool things about it. But, I wanted to give a quickstart guide today in order to push people to try it.

Keep in mind the following guide is super short and meant to just get you started (which is extremely important during camp nanowrimo!). I will make more in-depth guides if people like this one. Okay, here goes:

Step 01: So you’ve bought Scrivener?

I’ll assume that the software is installed and ready to go. You launch it, and….you get this:

If you’re anything like me, that’s already overwhelming. But, it’s actually not too bad. The Interactive tutorial gives some good ideas, so I’d check that out too. But, for the sake of simplicity, let’s ignore everything here, and go with “Blank”.

Now, give a name to your project under “save as” and save it in a safe place.

The blank template is much more accessible than the other templates (which are still useful, and I’ll come back to them). You have some buttons here and there, and one huge blank page in front of you.

Imagine this like any other writing software you’ve used. You have the same text format tools as you’d expect. You can literally type your entire novel here. But, that’s not why you’re using Scrivener, right?

Step 02: Organization

This is where it gets real cool. Let’s take a look at the left bar:

See the arrow pointing down next to “Draft”? There’s a reason to it! Think of this as a file cabinet. You have folders and papers in there. But, unlike real life, you can keep adding as many folders as you want in a hierarchy tree.

In order to add a folder, click little folder-shaped icon with the “+” on the bottom left.

With that you’ve got a folder and a text file (which you create by clicking the page with a + next to the left of the folder). And you can add as many of these as you want and organize them however you want!

Yup you can even put a “page” inside a “page” as if it were a folder. But, let’s go ahead and wrap this up!

Step 03: Wrapping it up

As I said, every single one of the files on the left can be typed on. That means you can use the folders as a way to organize scenes, chapters, or even entire story arcs! Here’s what my last project looked like!

Step 04: So what’s next?

It’s time to go over the most important feature in Scrivener.  See how I’ve put everything under “Draft”? Think about that as your core manuscript. Everything under this “file” is included in the final product when you’re ready to print or send to your publisher. In order to do this, click “compile.”

There’s a lot of options here, but let’s keep it simple. Click on the list menu under format, and choose the one you would like to use. I recommend using the “standard manuscript format” for now. Scrivener is pretty smart. When you use this format, folders become chapters, and the pages inside become scenes. Test the feature out. It has a lot of options.

NOTE: do not title the folders “chapter 1” and so forth. Scrivener already adds chapter numbers to each section. Title your folders after the chapters as I have done. Scene names generally do not get titles on the “compiled” form (if you use novel).

There’s a lot more to scrivener. If you look at my example, I changed the colors of the folders to indicate revision status. I also have a couple more folders outside of the “draft” section (first draft, second draft, and so on). You can do so much more. Scrivener has spellcheck, name generators, word count goals, and soooooo  much  more. However, I hope that with this brief guide you’ll at least start writing. That’s what matters anyway! :D

Scrivener metadata is one of my favorite not-so-secret tricks when it comes to drafting and revising.

I’ve seen some posts about the metadata options Scrivener offers, but none of them use it the way I do, so I thought I’d add to the noise.

For a person who likes to be crazy-levels of organized, this is a lifesaver on both ends of the writing process. But even if you don’t consider yourself borderline fiendishly obsessed with lists and colors, there are ways to adapt my insanity to the flexibility your methods (or lack thereof) require.

Metadata and Drafting: All About The Outline

First, let’s talk about drafting.

Context: My most recent WIP is on a quick turnaround, so I’ve had to do a lot of front work to make the writing faster. The basic gist is that my MC has to trade his way to $700. With so much to keep track of (characters, locations, dates, traded goods), I had to sit down and map the story or else risk getting hopelessly mixed up.

Here’s what my outline looks like under the Outliner view option:

I’ll explain how I made this, but first let’s look at what’s here.

On the far left, the blurred out bits of text are my detailed chapter outlines. Each is about 200 words long (my entire outline clocks in at 5k). Beside that we have the status of each chapter marked (except where I’ve forgotten to update it, whoops). The colored bits of text are my metadata notes. 

You can change what you want to display by clicking the little down arrow in the top-right corner. This allows you to look at whatever elements you want side-by-side.

Today in continuing with our Revision theme for January, I’m going to discuss how I use Scrivener when it’s time to revise, and why Scrivener is my go-to writing software for revision.