Scrivener Reviews

The organisational capabilities of both writing and research are invaluable. And the compile feature, once you get it set up, is astonishingly powerful and, with a bit of work, as good as Vellum.

It can take a while to learn Scrivener's unique features, but if you take the time, you'll find there's a lot more going on than you see at first. If there's one thing that bugs me is that the compile functions in Scrivener 3 are difficult compared to version 2.

Excellent user manual. Broad adoption in many countries and active support community. Good for keeping research, notes, images with the manuscript. Good backup features, saving as draft to DropBox for use on Android and auto-syncing back to PC. I've tried many other authoring programs and LibreOffice and Word, and find Scrivener suits my requirements best. I've used it for two books of 80,000 words.

Seems to be designed primarily for Mac users. Windows version works OK, but there's no Android version. Compiling process is complex and, as yet, I've not mastered it. Indexing and contents pages with page numbers is a process that gives me nightmares. Settings configuration and interface are very unintuitive. Again, I haven't mastered these.

Scrivener is a fantastic tool for anyone who needs to write longer publications. Whether you're working on a book or a thesis, Scrivener offers a range of features that can greatly enhance your writing process. The most notable feature of Scrivener is its outline system. Instead of working with a single, linear document, Scrivener allows you to break your writing into smaller, manageable chunks. These chunks, known as "scrivenings," can be easily rearranged, edited, and viewed in a way that suits your needs. This makes it incredibly easy to maintain an overview of the document even when it is becoming substantial.

The integration between Scrivener and the reference manager I use (Bookends) is not so well developed yet, forcing me to export to MS Word to run Bookends to generate the reference list when the document is done. It works, but is a hassle when wanting to change anything in the document and having to redo the entire process.

I love the many features Scrivener includes. My main goal was a program with scene-based writing features. That means I can write each scene in my book or story in a separate document inside the project, then rearrange and group them at will.

The sheer number of features makes it intimidating and frustrating trying to find the one you need. My most frustrating experience is doing some task the hard way and finding out when I finish there was an easy way I missed.

-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

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

Scrivener is created for writers by writers. And when I say writers, I don't mean only the ones that write stories, scripts and books. I mean anyone that writes, from shopping lists and todo tasks to contracts, research papers and beyond. It allows for an outline organization of the document(s) like a binder, plus tagging and grouping of pages in various ways. Supports many other things like cork-boards, many levels of hierarchies and advanced output to many industry standard formats. It also support multimedia files to be saved within the project file and to be references from within you documents, perfect for research and citations. You can even download the mobile app and save your project files in Dropbox and have all your content everywhere synced and ready. I use it for everything written.

The developers haven't synchronized their production pipelines yet, so there are differences between the versions for Windows and MacOS. The Windows version follows closely but with delays. I don't mind that, I use the Windows version and the iOS app and they work perfectly ok. At the time of writing I also switched to the beta version 3 on Windows and it seems to work steady enough even for real work. In general there are no major concerns for me when it comes to working with Scrivener. I consider it a great product and a top notch tool.

Scrivener makes it easy to structure your project, it saves automatically whenever you type anything, and the word count per project and section make it easy to track your progress.

It seemed daunting at first, before I figured out which features would work for me. There's a lot in Scivener that you you can get lost into, but about 20% of the features are what make it great to work, the rest is just clutter to me.

I do like many things in Scrivener. Even though it is meant mainly for writers, it has so many features and I am not using all of them. For me, it is usually the tool that I am often coming back to when I want to start some new research, collect information, store excerpts from secondary literature and write drafts. And it does it very well!

I love especially the split view for documents and how easy it is to create new subdocuments and folders and move everything around. I love it. Also, it is great that one can add various icons to folders and documents.

I also like a very generous trial version which allows you to use it for 30 non-consecutive days of use!

Firstly, it would be great if there would be just one personal license that I could use both on Mac and Windows. I bought the version 2 for Mac but I am still hesitating to put money into the Windows version. The reason is that it would not be just one-time purchase but I would have to do a similar thing with every major update (they are, however, rare).

Another issue for users of multiple platforms is that Mac version 3 is currently not compatible with the stable Windows version 1, only with the beta version 3 for Windows (there is no version 2 for Windows). And the beta version 3 is still not perfect and I experienced multiple (although smaller) issues with it.

I perfectly understand that the team of Scrivener programmers is extremely small and that they are doing an unbelievable amount of work, however, this is still an issue for me and the waiting for the Windows version 3 is just long.

There is iOS version but now Android version. (And yeas, Linux version would be also nice but it is probably essential.)

Finally, there are a couple of minor complaints:
- Handling of images could be much improved, especially their resizing is cumbersome.
- Better integration of Scapple would be great.
- Better compatibility between Windows and Mac version (hopefully it will be done with the final version of the Windows app)

The main reason why I am not using Scrivener all the time is, in the end, its license and the lack of better mind mapping functions (like Scapple).

As a writer of fiction I have used MS Word for all of this century so far, until I came across Scrivener. After using Word for so many years it was a bit of a challenge to change to a new writing program. My writing habits were fully formed in Word, but there were features lacking in Word that I would have hoped would be there.
For example instead of using the tried and true method of using index cards to set up scenes, Scrivener has a storyboard feature permitting a writer to examine and compare individual files on its ‘corkboard’. A far superior method than laying printed sheets on the table or floor to move them around and change the sequence of events, This works well for me because I can stop and write a scene that may come to mind is out of the story sequence without losing it forever. And, most importantly for me personally, I can save my knees from crawling around on the floor moving those awful index cards.
I love the ability to write character profiles and back story, save them and access them whenever I need to enter info about their personality, wardrobe and other details. There is also the ability to keep scene/location profiles to access as needed. This keeps my story consistent in the fine points that the reader will remember and I might forget while writing. These features insure my credibility as a writer, and I like that.
Scrivener is so much more than a word processor; it is my digital assistant who does not require a salary or benefits.

There is quite a learning curve. Patience is the virtue needed here. But it is well worth the effort.

I started using Scrivener two years ago, when I was working on a novel that had major issues with structure. Scrivener made it very easy to see the big picture and move scenes around to achieve a better arc and pace. I really like the ability to zoom out and view the "cork board" which mimics index cards on a wall, one for each scene or chapter. This let me look at the big picture and shift things around without getting bogged down in the pages. That kind of focus was essential to fixes the issues in my draft and getting it in decent shape! I also like the ability to split a screen, so I can view the scene I'm working on and another page, like an outline, on simultaneously.

There is a little bit of a learning curve and it took me about 5 or 6 hours to go through the tutorial and really get a hang of the software. Looking back, this was a very small investment of time considering how much time Scrivener has saved me over the years. In the moment, however, it felt like a bit of a drag and a time I could have spent actually writing. My advice: power through it!

Scrivener allows the writers (technical writers, academic writers or novelists) to focus on the activity itself with or without previous planning and worry about the publishing result later. This greatly improves the writing process.

Configuring the document compilation to provide the desired end result is somewhat difficult and obscure, sometimes demanding a set of trials and errors to get that detail right.

Simplicity is key with Scrivener. There's a million tools out there that can make keeping track of your writing complicated, but scrivener focuses on keeping it simple and streamlined. I write books with it, but I also use it as a place to store my ideas, to do's and other things related to my business. It's easy to drag and drop separate files to different places as needed.

Compiling books can be a minor nightmare. Some of the settings are confusing when it comes time to compile all of your files into one document. The only reason this isn't a huge deal is because you'll only do it once or twice with a book or document, not every day. My only other 'complaint' would be that its local only, no cloud saves or accessing it from another computer. That's not the end of the world, just something to be aware of.

I love having the ability to organize projects within projects. I have one document for fitness, one for flash fiction writing, and one for novels in progress. I can further breath those down into categories and chapters without having to create separate documents and I can keep it all very organized.

If you come from simply using word or pages, there is a steep learning curve to understanding what scrivener can do for you. Especially since it can do so many things. Tutorials are an amazing lifeline to understanding this product