You can customize the names of individual Snapshots, too. Click the plus sign and you’ve grabbed a new Snapshot, automatically labeled with the date and time of capture. To do this, you pull up the section you’re working on, select Show Snapshots under the Documents menu, and get familiar with the Snapshots toolbar that appears. This is how I discovered Snapshots.įor each section of text, Scrivener allows you to take multiple Snapshots, which capture your text as it stands at any given moment. This is exciting but scary, as there have been times I’ve gone deep into a new rabbit hole only to discover I liked the original one better. My current revision has included serious rewriting, mostly of sections I first crafted years ago. If I hit a roadblock on a section I’m revising, for example, I’ll often glance at the Binder and become inspired with new ways to tweak a different section instead. As I’ve worked on my novel, I’ve found that one view informs the other in unexpected ways. I also love how the Scrivener app allows you to have both birds-eye and granular views of your writing right next to each other. I couldn’t imagine shifting chunks of a massive, multi-part project this effectively via a more traditional word processing program. The best part of Scrivener’s organizational functionality is that you can drag and drop sections and folders to easily and completely reorganize your work. It’s great to be able to label folders and sections as I see fit - for example, a blue book icon to indicate a section is fully revised and ready for the next step, a lightbulb graphic to show that I had an exciting idea and need to flesh it out, or a green flag to bookmark sections that have been semi-revised but require further attention. Within each folder is a collection of sections, each of which can be named and paired with a customizable icon. Breaking my work into groupings like this has helped as I continue to conceptualize, shape, and refine my narrative. They don’t correspond to chapters of my novel per se, but to loosely-defined sections. On the left of my Scrivener screen, I have ten folders within my organizational Binder (as Scrivener calls it). This is my favorite aspect of the program and one I recommend all long-form writers explore. One of Scrivener’s core benefits is that it allows writers to wrangle massive, multi-sectioned projects so they’re easy to organize, visualize, and work with. I look forward to experimenting with Composition Mode soon and seeing how it impacts my revision process. One note: in working on this article, I rediscovered Composition Mode, which turns your computer into a virtual typewriter, bringing whatever section you’re working on to a welcoming full-screen layout and excluding all distractions. Whether the above works for you or you prefer something completely different, the app gives solid formatting flexibility so Scrivener users can create atmospheres and interfaces that set them up for success with each writing session. I also like the default three-pane layout, with my organizational window on the left, the section I’m revising in the middle, and Snapshots on the right (more on all of that below). As far as overall aesthetic, I’m happy with Dark Mode, which gives most of the app a mellow grey background that I find more conducive to novel-writing than glaring white. In full disclosure, I haven’t explored many of these options and don’t really plan to. Scrivener lets you tweak and customize its interface in a variety of ways. Read on for a look at how the software has continued to elevate my writing practice and how that functionality can help you, too. Scrivener is a powerful creative writing program with loads of features, and I’ve been surprised at which capabilities have helped me the most. The Scrivener app has played a key role in all of these efforts. My manuscript’s word count is over 130,000 words and I am deep into a late-stage revision: cleaning up inconsistencies, smoothing out transitions, and updating sections to fully reflect how I think and write today - rather than how I did months or years ago. I’ve been using Scrivener to work on my novel every day for three years.
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