For my last big writing projects I’ve been using a software called Scrivener (which you can get here) and it’s proven to be extremely useful to me. Now, I know this will sound like an ad, but I swear I’m not getting paid for it (although I wouldn’t be opposed to it). I doubt I have the out reach to warrant ad payment for this. But I digress.
Turns out this little software is crazy useful when writing projects that are long and have multiple scenes. In fact, I don’t think I could ever go back to just a word document and hoping to come up with something. It’s just awesome as it has everything from organization features and other little writing tools that make it much easier to write, outline, draft, and even revise.
More importantly though, I feel it has been a game changer for my writing. I used to be somewhat of a pantser. Writing just seemed easier when you went with a hunch. It was also kind of fun to write and learn about the story as it unfolded. Well, it turns out that’s a terrible way to write a novel (in my opinion anyway). It’s a fun way, yeah. You get to be blown away by what’s happening. But, when it comes to revision…oh god it’s an absolute mess.
I learned that with my project, Jack Meredith (the thesis I wrote for my MFA program). I wrote it all in a few months. 100k worth of craziness. There were VR game tournaments, heists, and even a massive battle against an AI creature at the end. It was one hell of a ride. Fun to write too! But, when if came to looking it as a book, it was all over the place.
Think of it like a badly done roller coaster. The good ones go up and down and twist and turn. They shock you with every second and keep the intensity high enough. My story wasn’t like that. At one moment the roller coaster… well… coasted. And sometimes there’d be a massive drop without much buildup. It was a crappy roller coaster, and it was because I had never really thought about how the scenes and chapters stringed within chapters or how the chapters linked to each other. I just went with the flow. A very good way to create content, but a terrible way to tell a story.
That’s where scrivener saved my life. When I put all those 100k words into the program, I separated all of the scenes into manageable chunks. Yeah, it took a long time, but it helped me see the bigger picture. I was able to see where the story was supposed to go, and I was able to start a revision plan.
And that’s exactly what I did during April of this year. I rewrote my entire novel working with a plan. It was amazing. And now, months later, even as I revise the novel for further polish, it’s obvious that I actually have a novel to work with. The first draft I wrote last year was more of a “collection of material” than an actual novel. It was me throwing everything at the wall and hoping something would work. A lot didn’t. I cut out so much. But, it made the story better. It turned it into a novel.
Long story short, I do have sort of an ad to post here though. A while back I wrote a short tutorial for Scrivener. Sort of a quick start guide to get people to use it during July Camp NaNoWriMo. Today I posted a new one, so I felt it would be a good idea to link both of them officially on this website:
I hope these tutorials are good for anyone who comes across them! Please let me know if you’d like me to go over anything in detail. I would be more than happy to provide more information!