Member-only story
Like many writers of my age, I began writing before computers were common household items. As a child I scribbled long-hand on sheets of narrow-lined paper or in especially bought notebooks which still give me a thrill when I go into Paperchase. My teenage years saw me tapping away on an old typewriter my parents had and then my aunt invested in a computer and said I could use it for writing up my stories. She did have to tell me not to hit the keys like a typewriter though.
These days it isn’t a choice between using a computer, paper pad or typewriter — it’s which program or app to use.
Most of us use Word, just because it is common to most computers and has no compatability problems when you send of submissions, but is it the best tool for writers? In a word — no.
Serious writers use Scrivener. Developed and frequently updated by writer Keith Blount it can help you write, organise and present your novel.
At first look, many are scared. Scrivener is big and has more features than you can ever hope to learn. The tutorials are helpful, but the best help is in the form of other users who have made YouTube videos (Scrivener Bootcamp is good, albeit based on an older version). However, you can still use it as a pretty basic word processing program — with one key difference: scenes.
In Word, you either write on different documents or you write everything on one. As someone who has written a few novels on Word before discovering Scrivener, I can…
