Why to Use Scrivener to Write your Book

Elsewhere, I have mentioned some of the different stages of the writing process, but I kinda glossed over a step that you need to take that doesn’t necessarily involve actually working on the book at all: choosing a writing medium. Now, back in the day you had to slog through writing by hand or, later, bang away at a typewriter, which you are still welcome to do, but at some point in time you’re going to have to get that masterpiece into a digital format. I’ve seen a number of people asking about which program they should use for writing, so I decided to detail the reasons I use Scrivener.

I have used Scrivener for years, ever since it was first released, and I am a huge fan of its functionality for everything from outlining and character conception to editing and, eventually, exporting your work for publishing. For the sake of this post, I’ll talk about the use of Scrivener I have availed myself of most frequently: writing a book. Now, I also used Scrivener to write both my thesis and my dissertation, and it is equally useful for large scale, or small scale, academic writing as well, but I’m gonna talk about using it to write books.

Ok, let’s walk through why I prefer Scrivener, starting right from the opening screen.

Right as you open a project, you are prompted to choose a template. I know it might be tempting to just select a Blank template and build the pieces you want, but there are a number of different benefits to selecting a Fiction template, which we will get to in a bit, so for now we will just select Fiction, namely, a Novel with Parts, because I like to write my books in sections.

When you have named your project (not a big deal, you can change the title when you make up your mind later), you will see a screen preloaded with Part folders, Chapter folders, and Scene documents, nested in a list to the left of the window. Each of these can be renamed. We’ll get to these in a bit.

Below the list of Parts, Chapters, and Scenes is a dropdown option for Characters and Places. At first, both of these will be empty. Click on the Characters dropdown option, then hit the plus icon in the very bottom left of the window. This will generate a Character Sketch sheet, where you can detail the character’s name, age, location, goals, role in the story, physical description, personality, and a number of other details to flesh out a well-rounded character.

Now, maybe you have a problem coming up with names for your characters. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. Scrivener has you covered. If you click on the Edit option at the top of the screen and scroll down to the Writing Tools option at the bottom of the menu, you will find a Name Generator. This name generator lets you choose male or female names, choose the level of obscurity, and choose from among a dozen different nationalities for your generation of a list from one to five hundred names.

Similar to the Character Sketch generation, click on the Location dropdown and select the plus icon in the lower left corner again. This will produce a Setting Sketch, where you can detail the location, the role in the story, the related characters, sights, unique features, description, and more.

These two preset documents are part of why choosing the Fiction template is more useful than just making do with a Blank template. They are terrifically useful when starting to build a roster of characters and locations to flesh out your story.

Alright, back to the Part, Chapter, and Scene sections listed above the Character and Location dropdowns. Here, you can create a new Chapter folder by selecting a chapter and hitting the folder icon with a plus in the middle of it in the bottom left, next to the plus icon we used to generate new Character and Location sheets. You can generate a new Part folder by selecting a Part and doing the same. Here, the plus icon by itself will produce an untitled document you can make into a Scene document.

Where things start to get really useful is in the ability to make notes for each layer.

Look at the picture below. Notice how in the little square off to the upper right, I have taken a little note about what will be included in the chapter after I selected one of the chapter folders. Let’s say I was at the outlining stage of the writing process. I would first set up a series of chapter folders, then start detailing what each chapter will include in this little section.

Then I click on the Part heading in the list of sections on the left and select the little four-by-four grid next to the ‘Part’ heading at the top of the window. This opens the cork board view, where I can see all the notes I have made for each chapter in this part. I can edit the details for any given chapter, or drag the little notecards around to reorder the chapters. This is excellent for early outlining and brainstorming.

Once you’ve finished your (completely optional) outlining and your character and locations sketching, you’re ready to start writing. Scrivener has an option to enter Composition Mode, a full screen option that blacks out everything else to create an immersive writing environment. You can find this by selecting the View menu at the top of the screen and scrolling down to Enter Composition Mode.

Let’s go ahead and gloss over the weeks of work pouring your heart into your writing, dumping out your words into a full book. You’ve now finished your first draft. Congrats! Now you want to read through your draft all in one piece. You have a choice, here. First you can click on the Compile option that looks like an export or share icon between the grid icon we used to show the cork board view and the little red bookmark icon.

At the top of the Compile window, you’ll want to switch from for Print to some other readable format. I choose a Word document. Hit compile and choose where to save your draft. I then email the draft to my Kindle for my first read through.

You might have noticed when Compliling, something called the Title Page was included along with your manuscript. You will find the Title Page in the Front Matter, another dropdown option believe the Character and Location dropdowns. In Manuscript Format, the Front Matter includes a Title Page, which includes all the information you would want to include for a manuscript submission, from your name, to the project name and word count, to your agent’s name and address.

If you wanted to read your draft in Scrivener, however, instead of exporting and sending it to your Kindle, you can see the full thing in one scroll by selecting the Manuscript option at the top of the list of Parts, Chapters, and Scenes, then selecting the little two document icon between the grid icon for the cork board view and where it says 'Manuscript' at the top of the window. This will stitch all your scenes into a single document, which, critically, you can use command/control-F to search the entirety of.

One of the benefits of Scrivener I haven’t mentioned, yet, is that it auto saves to Dropbox every couple minutes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally deleted an entire section and been able to just go to the back up. This is especially useful if you are on an older machine prone to crashing.

Ok, you’ve finished your revisions, you’ve gotten feedback from your alpha and beta readers, you’ve forked out for an editor, and you’ve got a nifty cover you’re excited about. It’s time to publish. Fortunately, Scrivener makes this incredibly easy, as .epub and .mobi are both format options Scrivener supports in the Compiling process. None of that having to mess around with formatting or anything, just good, clean output with the push of a button.

There is much more Scrivener offers, and these functionalities are pretty easy to find, but I hope I’ve done a decent job at outlining how it is useful for writing your novel. Best of luck, writers!