Scrivener

Nothing Beats Scrivener for Writers

Avantages :

Scrivener is endlessly flexible, fitting any way you can think of to help you write the best prose you possibly can and print it in just about any way you may need, including producing files suitable for publication in online bookstores such as Amazon. The complexity does, however, make the program intimidating to beginning users. It helps if a user makes a conscious decision to learn and use only the bare bones at first, but it can be difficult to figure out what bare bones to use and where they are. It helps a lot, though, that Googling Scrivener along with a function of the program will produce dozens of how-to articles. After all, Scrivener is designed for writers, and a good number of them write about Scrivener!

Inconvénients :

I reluctantly admit that I haven't yet talked myself into tackling the learning curve on printing out anything but the simplest of documents from Scrivener. I'm sure it was worth it to many writers in the past who needed to produce publication-ready manuscripts, but these days Vellum is available for the Mac and Atticus can be bought for either Apple or Windows computers. Both are much easier to use.

The Gold Standard

Commentaires : What I love most is "everything all in one place". And easy to use basic functions immediately... and then adding using features as I discover them or need them.

Avantages :

Unbelievable value for the price. Amazing amount of features.

Inconvénients :

Granted... the learning curve for all the features is steep at times.

Easy-to-use book maker

Commentaires : Scrivener is a great tool for writers who want to output novels, short stories, screenplays, or a number of other various forms without having to do all the legwork from scratch inside Microsoft Word, Pages, Notepad, or Unix (okay, it's highly unlikely that any non-masochistic writer would use those last two to write -- but hey, you never know). Simple right clicks add folders (which become chapters when you compile) or texts inside those folders. Then you click on your text item, change your text style if you don't want the default, and start pounding those keys. Don't bother numbering the chapters -- you may want to rearrange them, and doing so involves simply dragging them around the hierarchy. Each text item you create comes with a synopsis section and a notes section, both of which are completely optional. If you don't fill out the synopsis, the first sentence of the passage shows up in the corkboard view. There's also a research folder where you can keep even more notes, which don't get counted towards your total word count. Spell checking is easy, exporting segments to various popular formats is easy, and compiling the whole project is easy...once you figure out how to select the whole project by clicking on the root folder. Unfortunately, my version has a quirk where any new text item forces everything I type onto one line until I close and reopen my entire project -- after which all my carriage returns show up and everything looks great. Scrivener streamlines the writing process a great deal, and is a must-have for any budding novelist. Don't leave home without it (if you're going to the coffee shop to write).

Avantages :

-Very easy to create chapters and reorder them -Very easy to see summaries and notes from the corkboard -Can apply custom templates (for example, Game Design Document templates) -Simple, if slightly confusing, to compile into an orderly Microsoft Word manuscript

Inconvénients :

-Slightly buggy -Chapter styles don't stick as easily as I'd like -Compiling process isn't entirely intuitive

Don't Believe the Hype: Scrivener is Awful and You Will Hate it - Avoid It and You Will Thank Me!

Commentaires : There are no functions for increasing or decreasing indent unless you want to go back to using the tab key constantly and if you do this in a list? Fugitaboutit. Scrivener 3 will remove the line from your list altogether as it assumes you didn't there anyway. It is awful software. Try to set the margins on Scrivener like you would on ANY free or paid word processing software. Go ahead, I'll wait...can't figure it out? That's because you can't do it. Scrivener 3 will set your margins as it sees fit and you will like it. Yes, the YouTube ladies will tell you that you can but good luck getting Scrivener to consistently set them and leave them. You'll be fighting page setup constantly with this software. How about leading on the text or "line spacing" as many word processors call it? Can't do that either. The whole document defaults to this weird 1.5 line spacing which is nearly impossible to change and keep changed. You'll be fighting line spacing for your entire document. This is an absolute travesty of an experience, Scrivener is trying to be smart about all the ridiculous carnival features it thinks you would actually use and in reality, none of its developers have ever tried to write a long form project using their own software...that is obvious. I could go on and on about the failure to process inserts like tables and pics and how these are a nightmare to format in your work or how you can't just add page breaks in a given paperback format or how you have to "complie"

Avantages :

Project management allows you to break down the document into various sections which act as separate files. This is great for project management or storyboarding but an absolute nightmare for writing a long form document like a book or thesis paper.

Inconvénients :

I have used this software for a couple months now and I absolutely hate it and for good reason. You cannot format text like you can in a free word processor like Open Office or in paid software like Word. They like to say you can but I'm here to tell you that you can't. Forget formatting lists in this garbageware. Scrivener 3 will format it as it sees fit and you will like it and just for fun, Scrivener will format it completely different under the exact same settings the next time you want a list. The format font is courier or Times and good luck trying to change that. Oh, you can change it alright, but it won't matter as every new line you type will be in the Scriver 3 font - not the one that that rest of the document OR in the defaults settings which you changed originally. No, Scrivener 3 will type in the font it chooses - either Courier or Times and you will like it. Fake reviews and YouTube videos tell you to set up your styles in the "styles" pallet but good luck getting Scrivener to actually set the style consistently in the style you saved in the palette. Ultimately, you will be fighting formatting constantly.

Scrivener is the gold standard of writing software

Commentaires : I've been using Scrivener for years. I like that it's flexible in that I can use the features that I find helpful and not worry about ones I don't need.

Avantages :

Scrivener is as easy or complicated to use as you want it to be. You can get started quickly, then learn more about it's more advanced features as you need them.

Inconvénients :

About the only thing I don't like about it is that it's rather dull visually. For some people, however, this might be a plus, as it isn't distracting when you're writing.