Yesterday on a Facebook page for writers, we had a discussion about a piece of software that has not been available to Windows users until now. As a long-time MAC fan, I have always recommended Scrivener as the answer to a writer's prayer, and I did so again in The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese. Here's a section of that article that lured one reader to give it a try: "Now that Scrivener is available for
both MAC and Windows, I can’t imagine anyone needing anything else. It’s an
endlessly versatile program that manages to keep almost every item of the
book-writing process in one spot. "There’s a section for research,
which can hold notes, pictures, maps, and “messages-to-self.” I keep lots of
pictures there, so that when I am writing about a particular location or
character, I can open a picture and keep it on my screen while I write. That
adds detail to my descriptions and saves me from making silly mistakes about
things like what you can see from a front porch or whether a character sports a
mustache. "In fact, it has a whole section for
character sketches. You can fill out their questions about each of your
characters, defining their back story, their foibles, their nervous quirks,
their speech impediments, their hair and eye color, their family relationships—whatever
is important to define the character. Then while you are writing, it is easy to
click on a character name in the left-hand column and jump to a description. "Scrivener provides a separate
template for locations, too, where you can record thing like vegetation,
wildlife, smells, sounds. Is your location overgrown with vegetation? You’ll
need to list what kinds of things grow there. Are bugs important to your story,
as they may be for mine? Then you can add their descriptions here. My location
files have picture, of course, but also descriptions of the smell of pluff mud
and the clicking sound palmetto bugs make as they stomp across a wood floor. Do you write in chapters or in
scenes? Scrivener offers you both options, and once you have all the parts in
place, it can put the entire manuscript together for you—in the right order,
with chapter numbers. Are you used to working with index cards? Scrivener can
display your material in that format, with little cards tacked to a virtual
corkboard. You can color code the cards, and you can move them about as you
would if you were tacking them to a wall. I used this feature to outline all
the chapters of The Road to Frogmore.
Need more or less writing space? Stretch it out or shrink it. Want a blank
screen with nothing but your words filling the screen in front of you? You can
do that, too." Disclaimer: I have no connection to this company and have not
received anything in exchange for my positive review. I just really
like their product. |
