To date, I’ve written six full-length novels, a dozen novellas, and more than thirty short stories. I wrote most of my stories using Scrivener, using three different computers (I’ll tell you more in an upcoming post on my cloud storage solutions).
Scrivener is a fantastic writing tool. While I’ve used it since 2010, I still only use the basic features, and those are enough for me to completely recommend it. Here are my three favorite things about Scrivener:
- SNAPSHOT An autosave feature is a must-have, and these days, many writing and other creative tools now offer this. But the Snapshot feature in Scrivener is a cut above. Just one click, and I have all my current versions of a scene captured and available to reference at any time. Now, I’m free to edit and even rewrite an entire chapter without worry that I might’ve cut too much or the wrong thing.
- COMPILE STORY Once you’ve finished writing and editing your story, it’s time to publish your manuscript or submit it. The compile feature on Scrivener makes this process a breeze compared to all the steps and the process I needed to do many years ago. With just a few clicks, I formatted The Right Woman, book one in my U R Fever series, and had a clean, polished manuscript ready for my audience on Amazon.
- CONVERT FILES I mentioned that I wrote many of my stories in Scrivener. But for the ones I had started previously in Word, Scrivener made the process of converting everything I’d written into a new Scrivener project. All I needed to do was import the file, and Scrivener did the rest. I had a copy of the story, ready to be organized into a novel format. The three books in my U R Fever series began as backstory to another set of stories in Alan and Brianna’s universe. It took no time to import those Word files into upcoming projects.
These are just a few of the great features available in Scrivener. I’ve used them to write, edit and publish The Right Woman and Break Every Rule.
Serena James Chase 