Scrivener for Fun and Profit
Using the world’s best word processor to manage ideas and ongoing projects
Let me confess up front that I’m a stereotypical creative: there are little scribbled-on scraps of paper everywhere. My bedroom walls are covered in index cards so I don’t lose track of the ideas I’m most excited to execute. Binders upon binders of notes and photocopies and marked-up printouts are nowhere near as organized as they appear on the shelf. All this mess means that any program or system that enables me to keep my digital and paper chaos even somewhat under control is a tool for which I will evangelize. Scrivener is an investment ($45 for Mac, $40 for PC) and there’s a bit of a learning curve, but this program allows me to write and plan as efficiently as a chronically untidy person can do — so there’s a built-in morale-booster as well.
In this article I’ll show you screenshots of four real Scrivener files (since I find tutorials using blank or demo projects considerably less helpful and inspiring):
- a completed middle-grade novel
- my “back burner” historical fantasy
- a virtual binder of Medium drafts and Youtube scripts and notes (which I group together because there’s a lot of overlap)
- the catch-all file I call my “Repository”
