Initial Thoughts on Scrivener

I’ve edited and written in Microsoft Word since the beginning of time, so I felt like a bit of a traitor when I decided to take a look at Scrivener for Windows. The jury is still out, but I thought I’d share some thoughts and initial impressions.

I became interested in the program because of the ease of rearranging large (or small) amounts of text without cutting, pasting, or scrolling. I’m looking forward to being able to move scenes with more ease because this usually ends up being a large part of my editing process.

So far, I’ve imported Death Benefits into Scrivener from Word, and I have divided the text by chapter. I will likely divide further as needed. Tomorrow, I’ll begin the heavy editing, but I’ve already moved chapter two right out of the way. So easy!

I’ve also spent time learning where all the bells and whistles are located, playing with color coding, and trying to figure out how helpful the corkboard and outlining features will be. I’m thinking I can divide my parts by date and use the outline as a defacto timeline. This also has promise for me because I tend to have timeline issues in all my drafts.

One aspect of Scrivener that I dislike is that I cannot permanently turn on the hidden text. This will not bother normal people, but I find it important to see everything, including spaces and paragraph marks. I have to turn it on every time I visit a section. If there’s a way to turn this on once and for all, please tell me how. Also, I am trying to find a way to create my own keystrokes for certain characters that I use often, like en and em dashes.

I’m not sure if I’ll convert to Scrivener, but so far, signs are hopeful.