I have used many applications to write with but they all had one thing in common they were word processors.
Writing could become a nightmare of switching between the text being written, source material, reference material, research notes and so on. Trying to keep all the relevant inputs available and accessible could quickly become a nightmare.
I started looking around for applications or systems that could streamline the job and I happened upon Scrivener, developed by LiteratureandLatte.
Srivener Screen Shots
This software does not fall easily into a common category, it a word processor but not quite, a database, organiser, filing sytem etc.
What really attracted me to Scrivener is the way that so many individual aspects have been combined into one package, word processors expect you to start at page 1 and write in sequence, with Scrivener you have greater flexibility.
At the heart of Scrivener is the Project. There are a number of default project templates supplied such as Novel, Short Story, Non fiction and various scriptwriting options.
The project defines how the various features of Scrivener are preset, you can modify these project templates or create your own. Once done you can quickly start new projects from your new template.
To the right of the picture above you can see the Corkboard View. This view allows you to see summaries and notes for each part of your writing and you can re-order them at will.
All your reference material can be stored in the project, documents, pictures links etc can all be added.
Once completed you can compile your document, basically convert your individual sections of chapters into one document. The interesting thing here is that not only can you produce standard documents but you can also publish to e-book and kindle formats.
For me the ability to write in multiple mark down and then compile to HTML makes preparing docs for the web very straight forward.
This is only a quick glimpse at a very powerful application and it really does need a hands-on exploration to fully understand the useful features that are provided.
You can download a free trial of Scrivener for MAC or Windows.
