Hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and tape measures. These are some of the tools of a carpenter. Wrenches, sockets, pliers and air wrenches are some of the tools of the trade for a mechanic. But what about a writer? Do we have tools that we use? Or are our tools just in our head?

I have a hard time thinking of things in my head as being tools. What I do see as being tools are my computer, and more importantly the software on my computer. Primarily the software that I’m actually writing my manuscript in. This isn’t something that a lot of new writers give a lot of thought to. I know I didn’t. Who cares what software you use to write? After all, I have Word or Pages on my computer and they do just fine. A lot of writers don’t know there are alternatives to Word or Pages, but there are. Actually there is a whole sub-market of author software out there, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

This is software specifically designed for writers. Word for example is a general writing application, meaning it’s designed to handle a lot of different writing projects as is it’s Mac only companion Pages. I’m not trying to say that software like Word and Pages are bad, far from it actually. I know a lot of people complain about Word, but when you look at everything it does, Word is pretty dang impressive. Word and Pages are designed to take care of a huge range of users and as such have a large set of tools, and their interface is built around ease and catering to the masses. But writers aren’t the masses, we have a very specific set of things we do to complete and publish a manuscript.

That’s where author software comes into play. It’s software that is completely designed around what we as writers need and do. For example, software like Word tends to get slow and clunky with large files, like say a one hundred thousand word manuscript. I would know, I wrote my first two books (Legon Awakening, and 8810) in Word, and on Legon (127,000 words) the file got really slow. Why does it get slow? I don’t know the makeup of Word but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s because Word is such vast software that it’s hard for it to keep up on larger files, and that’s ok, it isn’t meant to work on those. Authoring software is designed to take care of the whole writing process from outlining to publishing. This means that you can have your manuscript(s), outline(s), character profiles, settings, research, and all of that jazz in one well-organized file. There’s no need to have a bunch of Word docs floating around on your computer, everything for a book or series is in one file. This makes organizing your projects and finding things for them easy. Need to look at a character profile for a supporting character? No problem, just look in the characters folder inside your project. There’s no need to go poking around your computers hard drive.

What about on the pub end of things? Once again, authoring software is here for you. Some of the general writing software out there like Pages are starting to handle ePub exports, but let’s be honest, those files aren’t always the best. Why? Simple, Pages wasn’t originally designed for publishing, it was built to be a catch all with an emphasis on layout. Authoring software was built with publishing in mind, which means exporting your ebook is not only easy but the files are much better. Most authoring software will export ePubs and Mobi files with linked in tables of content and imbedded meta data, which means all you have to do is upload your file.

So are you sold on authoring software yet? How about if I tell you that software like Scrivener is cheap too? As in $45 cheap.

As I said, I wrote my first two titles in Word and I didn’t really lose my mind. I had file folders with all of the information I needed to work on the books and was doing great until I got to Legon Ascension (book two in the series). There was just too much information to handle. I had a huge set of characters to deal with and along with that I had to take into account what happened in Legon Awakening. Plus, in Ascension I had five story-lines going. I was overwhelmed. Thankfully I had a listener (I was only doing audio at that time) who told me about some authoring software they’d found. The software was called Storyist. I found that I could customize everything in Storyist, and while there was a learning curve on it I soon found my writing to be much easier. The problems came towards the end of Ascension, Storyist wasn’t all that great at managing large files, by which I mean a single file with two full manuscripts in it. Also I found the software to be glitchy and save times were slow. At one point I lost the original ending for Legon Ascension and had to rewrite it. I was pissed and no longer trusted the software. This meant that every time I saved my manuscript I also printed a PDF of the whole book to keep from losing anything. I was not a happy camper.

Part way into Legon Restoration I took the recommendation of a friend and several other writers to try Scrivener. I wasn’t optimistic about the venture, I was worried Scrivener would have the same issues as Storyist. But all of the reviews I found on it said that Scrivener was great and that nothing in the market compared to it. When I downloaded Scrivener and started using it I fell in love. I have never had any issues with the software and swear by it. I even use it to manage my blog content (like writing this post) and used it’s ebook features to work on all of my clients ebooks (I used to be an owner of an ebook production company). Looking back I would have been willing to spend far more on this wonderful software.

I thought I’d go over some of the features of Scrivener that I like the most. I will also write another blog post soon going over how I have Scrivener setup and some of my work flows. Scrivener is pretty easy to customize and the way I do things is not the only way to work, but it works best for me. I use a Mac so the layout of my Scrivener might be slightly different for you Windows folks out there.

The Binder

On the left side of the screen you have the binder, this is your main navigation for your project. In the binder there are file folders for your manuscript(s), character and setting profiles as well as research sections and front matter. You can add whatever you want to this section, and I find that I add a lot of subfolders to keep my project organized. Chapters, characters, and things like that are listed as separate documents inside of your project. Moving around the binder is a lot like looking at files on your computer in Windows Explorer, or if you’re on a Mac like using the Finder.

View Modes

This section is at the top of the window and is three buttons. It has a basic document view, a cork-board and an outline view that’s like Explorer or Finder. I tend to use the basic view when I’m working on a document, but when I’m looking at folders I keep things in outline. I don’t really use the cork-board at all. What I like about the outliner is that you have a bunch of columns with information in them, like synopsis, word count, etc. The outliner makes it easy for basic navigation and to see if your manuscript is on target.

Compile

So how do you get a manuscript out of Scrivener to send to your editor or to publish? Simple, just click the compile button and a menu will come up where you can say what file type you want (ePub, Mobi, PDF, Word…etc.) you can even tell Scrivener how you want the file formatted and what documents you want to include. Getting files out of Scrivener couldn’t be simpler.

Compose

This is a button on the top of the window that makes the text you are editing the whole screen. This eliminates all other distractions on your screen, and it’s awesome. You can customize the compose screen to make it however you like. This is a feature I use a lot when working on new content.

Synopsis

You can write a synopsis for each document inside of Scrivener, like say a chapter. I didn’t start using this feature until mid-way through Pactum but really like it. This allows me to look around a manuscript and find the document I’m looking for. I don’t name chapters until I’m done with a book and sometimes I combine chapters, delete them or add new ones. Asking me what happens in chapter four will only get you a blank stare, but with the Synopsis feature, I don’t have to worry about that.

Notes

Scrivener has several different note sections, and they are all handy. Each document you make in Scrivener has it’s own notes. I use this for putting in chapter outlines so I have them at a glance. The notes section is right next to whatever you’re working on. You also have high level notes as well. I keep note files for each book where I put in little reminders about things I need to go back to and address. The notes section can save you loads of time and make your life simpler.

Word Count Target

This is a little feature that I won’t spend much time on. At the bottom of your screen you will see a little target looking thing. If you click it you can set a word count goal for a document. This is handy to ensure that a chapter is as long as you want it to be, but not getting too long. Nuff said.

Name Generator

This is one of my favorite features in Scrivener. It has a built in name generator. It’s under the edit menu and will create male and female names. It gives them to you in a list form and has loads of settings to get just the names you are looking for. I cannot tell you how handy this tool is. If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to hit your head on the wall trying to come up with the name of some support, this tool will save the day. Trust me, it’s awesome!

Templates

This is the last thing that I’ll talk about in this post. Templates allows you to create a template for documents for things like character profiles. In a profile you can add in images if you like and set it up to make sure you are coming up with everything you need for a setting or character.

As you can see Scrivener is great software that will save you time and sanity. If you want to know more about Scrivener or to download it you can find it here. I think they have a trial period on it, so by all means give it a try. I will try to write another post soon showing my workflow in Scrivener and how I have everything setup. As for you guys, I would love to hear what you think about this or other authoring software and what your favorite features are. Thank you and I hope you have a great week.