Scrivener is quite simply an excellent tool for writers.
Packed with features but not overwhelming you with them, it is particularly well suited for writing long-form works: books, screenplays, academic papers, and any other text work that can be broken into chapter-sized chunks.
Scrivener was developed by a writer, so it works the way a writer’s brain works. It knows that long written works are likely to be written in these scattered chunks, not always in the order they will appear in the finished book, and not always published in the order they were written. Scrivener lets you write, then re-arrange your writing using smart outliner modes.
The chunks of writing are known as “Scrivenings”, and if you use the “Edit Scrivenings” command you can edit each chunk in context alongside its siblings. It’s a terrifically useful way of writing.
Scrivener is flexible. There are loads of features on offer, but you can switch off anything you don’t need. It handles big projects with many hundreds of text pages and associated research files, it saves everything automatically (you never need to hit Command+S), and it offers excellent value for money.
For basic writing, you have TextEdit which comes pre-installed on your Mac and is excellent for many tasks (I use it for writing articles every day). But for anything beyond basic writing, Scrivener is well worth considering – and is a great deal cheaper – than the likes of Microsoft Word. For long-form writing, it’s hard to beat.
(You’re reading the 3rd post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications. Read more.)
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
23 responses to “50 Mac Essentials #3: Scrivener”
Nice review, I agree Scrivener is a great tool for writers, and with a free 30 day trial (30 days of actual use, not 30 consecutive days) you have no reason to not try it out! Personally I use Scrivener to edit my work, and to keep it organised and group all my research. I do my actual writing on a program called iA Writer, it’s a super minimalist full screen writing app similar to WriteRoom that really helps me to get into the zone! Once done writing on that app, I simply paste it into Scrivener. A deadly combination!
Why don’t you use the full screen option in Scrivener to go minimalist? I thought I would need another one like WriteMonkey, but found it all in Scrivener for Windows.
I’ve tried the full screen mode in scrivener and it’s no where near as effective ad iAwriter. Scriveners a powerful program but it’s top distracting, if I just want to write I open iAwriter and it allows me a perfect platform for distraction free writing. The font is huge and nicely spaced so it looks like you’re typing on a type writer, there is no spell check to make you second guess your work and there’s a focus mode, which highlights only the sentence you’re currently writing and blurs the rest. I do all my writing on ia writer and do all my organizing and editing on scrivener. I’d be lost without the two apps, but I also need both.