Croft (n): 1. a small farm, especially one worked by a tenant.
Friday's featured blog is: Melissa Sugar's blog. I encourage you to visit it. She walks through the options for keeping your blog friends if and when Google friends connect disappears and she explains it much better than I could.
I've added a Linky tool just under Google Friends connect, so click away and follow.
Scrivener
Haven't heard of it? It's writing software and you can find more information on it here. If you're not sure about it you can give it a try for 30 days (that's what I did). They walk you through a tutorial (very clear, precise and informative) on how to use it. It takes a couple of hours to get through, but well worth it.
But, I'm not writing about it to sell it, I'm writing to let you know the three reasons why I love it and I haven't even used all of its features.
* I'm a writer who may jump all over the place, seeing scenes in my mind further in the story. Scrivener makes it easy to jump chapters, re-arrange them, put them on a "cork-board" where you make notes on what the chapters contain.
* I can have all of my research in one file. Right under the chapters I have a heading called:
- Characters (where I keep all important items on each character. From clothing to appearance, quirks, manners, favorite sayings etc.)
- Spares (anything I don't use or cut out from the chapters goes there. You never know when you'll need to use it.)
- Outline (self-explanatory, but it stays empty for a while for me as I'm a panster. I begin to write down ideas I want to see in the story as I write, so I guess it's sort of an outline)
- Places (the different cities or areas my story takes place in)
- Research (includes reference photos, websites)
* It allows you to convert your document to format for ebooks and print. I haven't done that yet, but will brave to do so very soon. I'm looking forward to learning about this feature.
* ok, cheating here, fourth reason is I no longer have a need for tons of post-its, papers, notes etc, because it's all in one place.
Have you used Scrivener? Do you like it? Do you use different software or do you prefer the pen and paper style instead of the computer? (I know many authors do)
And, most importantly, have you joined the A to Z April Challenge yet?
8 comments:
I haven't used Scrivener. I don't move things around in the novel once I've written it, but I do spend a long time rearranging the outline.
And I have Linky Followers up at my blog as well.
Melissa will appreciate the shout-out, especially after the week she's endured.
I have critiqued some work that someone used Scrivenger and it was difficult to read. I guess it had something to do with exporting it to Word, but I'm not familiar enough with it to know what happened. It is a great idea for someone who likes to rearrange things in a story, but I outline ahead of time so I kind of avoid that. It's post rewrite that made me decide to give up my crazy free ways. :)
I mainly just use paper, pen and MS Word. But maybe I will give this a try. Thanks for sharing.
It all sounds far too organised for me - I love the chaos of huge piles of paper, hand-written notes, black pens, blue pens, red pens, losing those random envelopes that I've scrawled something REALLY IMPORTANT and Hubby's thrown away. Out of my chaos comes... more chaos!
I'm off to find out about this Linky thing. I've seen it in a couple of places.
I got my tech guy to remove the "empty" GFC widget and add the Linky Followers Widget on my side bar... not too sure how it works though...
I'm a paper & pen gal but I've heard a lot about Scrivener - will check it out one of these days.
... and YES I'm on board for the A-Z!
I am a paper and pen chick also, but eventually what I have in my notebook must make its way to my computer . That is when I use Scrivner and I am a huge fan. It is one of the prizes I am offering in my "Get Fired Up" blogfest. I have tried just about every writing software product available, including Dramatic Pro (Very good-extremely detailed, but much too high of a learning curve & mega expensive , in my opinion) and Scrivner is by far the most productive and easiest to use. I like that I don't have to work in any particular order and I love the cork board . Scrivner also has an easy learning curve and it is not too expensive.
Thank you so much for the shout out. I really appreciate you mentioning my blog and encouraging your readers to visit. I got so excited when I clicked on your blog today and saw my name and the super kind words you wrote.
I've heard of it but have never used it. I think it just depends what program people are use to using...
I'm planning to get it. I have a couple novels it would be perfect for, since there is the main storyline as well as time jumps, and it'd be great to write the main story and add in the other parts using Scrivener. Plus, I love plotting, and it'd be great for that too.
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