I would prefer not to... write with anything else!
March 31, 2025 5:27 PM Subscribe
10 reasons to write your next novel in Scrivener
Advice from the National Centre for Writing, MeFi's own Charles Stross, self-publishing poobah Joanna Penn, Lauren Kay, and Lewis Jorstad.
Advice from the National Centre for Writing, MeFi's own Charles Stross, self-publishing poobah Joanna Penn, Lauren Kay, and Lewis Jorstad.
Ten of those reasons are also good reasons to use LaTeX to write your novel. It's even more cost-effective ($0). (Ok you might argue it wasn't "designed to write novels" but it was in fact designed to be able to write books more generally, so)
But if there were no LaTeX, I'd use Scrivner over the competition for sure!
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:53 PM on March 31 [6 favorites]
But if there were no LaTeX, I'd use Scrivner over the competition for sure!
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:53 PM on March 31 [6 favorites]
Oh lord I was gonna get something done today but you reminded me I bought and paid for a copy of scrivener
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:03 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:03 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]
Seriously, though, Scrivener is a great tool. Different folks are going to like different things, and the best tool for writing is ultimately the one that you feel comfortable with, but for my 2¢, Scrivener is fantastic.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:08 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Navelgazer at 6:08 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
It's good for organizing and outlining, and I have used it, but somehow I prefer a word processing program because when I use Scrivener everything just seems to proliferate, like when I try to use mind-mapping or word webs. Or anything that purports to simplify my thinking processes, like the Getting Things Done system. With Scrivener, I end up with the equivalent of one of those detective show bulletin boards but over all the walls and the ceiling, with strings connecting everything.
Which of course the first author says, but anyway.
posted by Peach at 6:28 PM on March 31 [4 favorites]
Which of course the first author says, but anyway.
posted by Peach at 6:28 PM on March 31 [4 favorites]
"Easy novel organization," she says. Clearly someone has not amassed 1.2 million words worth of drafts of one book spread out over 604 different documents, all shoved into folders that at one point were color-coordinated in a way that made sense but now are such a tangled mess that it might be easier to compile the whole thing to a .docx file to print out at Staples and then maybe dump the paper into a fire and start over--
It's a weird thing, Scrivener. I've used it for about a decade now, and I still don't know how to use more than like a tenth of the features. Corkboard? Baffling. Compile function? Get it wrong every time. And I wasted so much time trying to learn its formatting, I ended up buying Vellum to run on a MacOS VM just to make that part of life easier.
And yet Scriv's most basic function--a hierarchal list of folders with documents inside--makes so much sense I have trouble writing in any other software. When someone wants me to write in Docs or something, I quail--how does anyone stay organized without those folders? (How anyone stays organized with those folders is a question I choose not to pursue.)
posted by mittens at 6:39 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]
It's a weird thing, Scrivener. I've used it for about a decade now, and I still don't know how to use more than like a tenth of the features. Corkboard? Baffling. Compile function? Get it wrong every time. And I wasted so much time trying to learn its formatting, I ended up buying Vellum to run on a MacOS VM just to make that part of life easier.
And yet Scriv's most basic function--a hierarchal list of folders with documents inside--makes so much sense I have trouble writing in any other software. When someone wants me to write in Docs or something, I quail--how does anyone stay organized without those folders? (How anyone stays organized with those folders is a question I choose not to pursue.)
posted by mittens at 6:39 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]
I loved Ulysses when it was a buy-once program; I bought it. Now it's subscription only. Unfortunate.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:49 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:49 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I have and use it, but the fact that they don't have an android version really grinds my gears.
posted by signal at 6:50 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 6:50 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
I used Scrivener to write my dissertation.
For some reason, even though I've seen other people say it's confusing, it's always been pretty intuitive to me. And I like the interface? It's so customizable!
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:58 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
For some reason, even though I've seen other people say it's confusing, it's always been pretty intuitive to me. And I like the interface? It's so customizable!
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:58 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I like Scrivener a lot. I'm fairly confident that it allowed me to write (so far) 1.4 novels, where previously I never was able to get past the 30k word mark.
I don't make use of probably even a good fraction of its features -- I never did with Word, either -- but its organizational structure worked very well for how I write (more architecture than gardening, but allowing the story to go way off plan when it feels right).
posted by tclark at 7:14 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I don't make use of probably even a good fraction of its features -- I never did with Word, either -- but its organizational structure worked very well for how I write (more architecture than gardening, but allowing the story to go way off plan when it feels right).
posted by tclark at 7:14 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I love Scrivener, but not enough to use it. Obsidian or a plain text editor for me. I’m with Saltysalticid, LaTeX is great.
posted by lhauser at 7:24 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
posted by lhauser at 7:24 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I used to use it, but now I use Butterdocs and much prefer it.
posted by dobbs at 7:34 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by dobbs at 7:34 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
i just finished writing a novel with google docs, and it's pretty great being able to access it anywhere, and headings mean it's easy to jump around
posted by Sebmojo at 7:45 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Sebmojo at 7:45 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
Scrivener is what I use for my fan fic writing, I find it really useful . Do I use all or even half the features, absolutely not.
I found that it really helped me to understand how I like to structure things. I really didn't know that my sweet spot for a chapter was 3 scenes at 1,000 to 1,500 words apiece. But now I can see exactly how I create rhythm and hit specific points in very regular intervals. It helps me to visualize all the noise in my head into specific points.
I also like that it is so easy to write nonlinearly. I can write important scenes and keep them in timeline order and use them when I'm good and ready to actually write all the stuff in between. Its not getting lost in s separate word document cryptically titled 'not yet' that I have to search through to find what I'm looking for.
Only thing I wish was that there was a simple intuitive way for me to use my phone when I'm on the go. Right now I just use a Google doc then copy and paste it over when I get the chance.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:51 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]
I found that it really helped me to understand how I like to structure things. I really didn't know that my sweet spot for a chapter was 3 scenes at 1,000 to 1,500 words apiece. But now I can see exactly how I create rhythm and hit specific points in very regular intervals. It helps me to visualize all the noise in my head into specific points.
I also like that it is so easy to write nonlinearly. I can write important scenes and keep them in timeline order and use them when I'm good and ready to actually write all the stuff in between. Its not getting lost in s separate word document cryptically titled 'not yet' that I have to search through to find what I'm looking for.
Only thing I wish was that there was a simple intuitive way for me to use my phone when I'm on the go. Right now I just use a Google doc then copy and paste it over when I get the chance.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:51 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]
Scrivener
It's a pretty nice fountain pen, though I doubt I'll ever write a novel with it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
It's a pretty nice fountain pen, though I doubt I'll ever write a novel with it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
I've used Scrivener for years and years and years! I love it for all of the reasons listed and I can't imagine writing a novel or radioplay without it. I'll echo that it's great for non-linear writing, almost too good as I have one novel that ended up becoming a bit too fractured due to that freedom.
Unfortunately, I find syncing Scrivener projects between devices to be a major pain, to the point where I've simply given up on Scrivener for iOS. I've opted to use Obsidian for bursts of notes and logging, which is fine and gets the job done.
I do fret a bit about Scrivener's longevity. Obviously, it's been around for a while, but it seems like updates are few and far between nowadays. Additionally, there are still some long-standing macOS bugs, such as a really annoying one with disappearing lines that... I really thought would have been addressed some time ago.
posted by gturner at 8:33 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
Unfortunately, I find syncing Scrivener projects between devices to be a major pain, to the point where I've simply given up on Scrivener for iOS. I've opted to use Obsidian for bursts of notes and logging, which is fine and gets the job done.
I do fret a bit about Scrivener's longevity. Obviously, it's been around for a while, but it seems like updates are few and far between nowadays. Additionally, there are still some long-standing macOS bugs, such as a really annoying one with disappearing lines that... I really thought would have been addressed some time ago.
posted by gturner at 8:33 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
Granted I'm not writing a novel but I write a lot for work and I use the bog standard Mac Notes app all day long. Agreed with Mittens that a hierarchical folder system just makes sense in a way that makes me wonder how I did without for so long.
posted by Leeway at 9:17 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Leeway at 9:17 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
Butterdocs looks nice! But defintiely don't want to subscribe to yet another thing. I use scrivener for scientific papers, it's great as a project management tool.
and I still don't know how to use more than like a tenth of the features.
There is a new scrivener-lite app in the works, which may take care of that issue
posted by dhruva at 10:00 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
and I still don't know how to use more than like a tenth of the features.
There is a new scrivener-lite app in the works, which may take care of that issue
posted by dhruva at 10:00 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
I am a lover of Scrivener though, like others, I don’t take advantage of all of its capabilities. When I was digging through ancient files in my computer, Scrivener was amazingly good at opening file formats that were otherwise impossible, from 30 or more years ago. That alone made it worth the price for me.
posted by Well I never at 11:11 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Well I never at 11:11 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]
The linked blog piece by me dates to 2012: I'm still using Scrivener to this day, and I think I've written roughly 20+ published novels using it.
I do not like being dependent on a commercial application, but it's ridiculously cheap for what it is and while there are open source book writing tools now such as NovelWriter they're generally inferior on either functions or flexibility. (I like the idea of NovelWriter—"like Scrivener, only the file format is Markdown and it's open source"—but the thing itself is a bit lacking.)
But what really sold me on Scrivener back in 2008 was a very specific problem: I was writing a series of books (the Merchant Princes) and was up to my elbows in book 4, about 360,000 words into the project, and I realized I had lost control of the plot.
The original plan for the series was four fat thriller-ish parallel universe travel novels, each running to about 200-250,000 words. That's a lot, about 600-800 pages in paperback. The series sold to David Hartwell at Tor, who for reasons of controlling production costs (and profitability) liked to take long books like that and chop them in two: he did that to Scott Westerfeld's space opera The Risen Empire, Peter Watts' Behemoth, and he did that to my The Family Trade, turning one giant fat book (later reassembled as The Bloodline Feud) into a skinny duology which he then marketed as high fantasy/portal fantasy, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family. (If you wonder why the first one stops so suddenly, it's because he gave me a week to do the hatchet job. Or else. David was a friendly, affable tyrant.)
Anyway, I didn't get the message about the new, skinny 100,000 word length format until I was partway into writing Big Book 2 (which eventually ended up as four novels). And it threw my whole third-person omniscient shifting viewpoint narrative into chaos. I'm an over-ambitious pantser (never let a pantser set out to write a million word series, it will end in tears), I was still learning on my feet, and I didn't keep tight enough rein on character proliferation.
So by the time I was halfway into The Merchants War I was juggling seventeen viewpoint characters, and flailing.
[ to be continued]
posted by cstross at 2:16 AM on April 1 [7 favorites]
I do not like being dependent on a commercial application, but it's ridiculously cheap for what it is and while there are open source book writing tools now such as NovelWriter they're generally inferior on either functions or flexibility. (I like the idea of NovelWriter—"like Scrivener, only the file format is Markdown and it's open source"—but the thing itself is a bit lacking.)
But what really sold me on Scrivener back in 2008 was a very specific problem: I was writing a series of books (the Merchant Princes) and was up to my elbows in book 4, about 360,000 words into the project, and I realized I had lost control of the plot.
The original plan for the series was four fat thriller-ish parallel universe travel novels, each running to about 200-250,000 words. That's a lot, about 600-800 pages in paperback. The series sold to David Hartwell at Tor, who for reasons of controlling production costs (and profitability) liked to take long books like that and chop them in two: he did that to Scott Westerfeld's space opera The Risen Empire, Peter Watts' Behemoth, and he did that to my The Family Trade, turning one giant fat book (later reassembled as The Bloodline Feud) into a skinny duology which he then marketed as high fantasy/portal fantasy, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family. (If you wonder why the first one stops so suddenly, it's because he gave me a week to do the hatchet job. Or else. David was a friendly, affable tyrant.)
Anyway, I didn't get the message about the new, skinny 100,000 word length format until I was partway into writing Big Book 2 (which eventually ended up as four novels). And it threw my whole third-person omniscient shifting viewpoint narrative into chaos. I'm an over-ambitious pantser (never let a pantser set out to write a million word series, it will end in tears), I was still learning on my feet, and I didn't keep tight enough rein on character proliferation.
So by the time I was halfway into The Merchants War I was juggling seventeen viewpoint characters, and flailing.
[ to be continued]
posted by cstross at 2:16 AM on April 1 [7 favorites]
[Continuing from previous]
That's when I discovered Scrivener.
I'd poked at it a little and not really gotten the point before then: I preferred writing in vim and a predecessor to markdown (with a homebrew toolchain), but the exigencies of writing for a living and dealing with publishers had pushed me to use a Word-compatable word processor, OpenOffice at that time. So in mid-2008 I had The Merchants War in OpenOffice, neatly broken down using styles to tag chapter/scene headings. I knew the book was structurally a mess, but OpenOffice's outliner was a pale shadow of Microsoft Word's outline view mode (you could see a map of the document but not rearrange everything on the fly, collapse/expand subheadings, and so on back then).
So as a learning exercise I imported The Merchants War into Scrivener, splitting the main document on chapter and scene boundaries, giving each scene a useful title in the binder, and tagging the scenes with the viewpoint character.
Then I realized something else that had eluded me: in addition to dealing with 17 viewpoints I was alternating between three different parallel universes! And each viewpoint protagonist could only act in one universe at a time (although many of them could move between them).
It literally took me half a day to re-tag each scene by parallel universe, not character, and suddenly get a high level overview of the structure of the novel that made sense. The book looked broken because the alternating viewpoints were okay but the alternating universes were not—sometimes I'd ignored one of the settings for two or three chapters, or spent an entire chapter in just one time line. Now I could see where the action was taking place I was able to re-sequence everything so that the high level story kept moving, tracking smoothly between parallel universes. I could also see the gaps I'd left that needed filling in to keep the pacing even.
From that point on I worked in Scrivener exclusively to complete the Merchant Princes. By the end I was juggling about six parallel universes and even more characters, and the project ran to nearly a million words—three big fat books (the reissued omnibuses) and three somewhat thinner novels in the sequel trilogy, with an ensemble cast of probably twenty or more protagonists. I could not have done this without a tool that gave me high level coverage of a large project: which is what Scrivener did. To use an analogy, Scriv is like a programmer's Integrated Development Environment for books, while normal word processors are simple text editors: sure you can write a "hello, world" toy in a simple editor, but once you start working on a large software project you'll rapidly lose focus and orientation and get lost in a maze of twisty little header files, all alike, until you adopt a proper tool for the job.
And that's why I love Scrivener.
posted by cstross at 2:30 AM on April 1 [21 favorites]
That's when I discovered Scrivener.
I'd poked at it a little and not really gotten the point before then: I preferred writing in vim and a predecessor to markdown (with a homebrew toolchain), but the exigencies of writing for a living and dealing with publishers had pushed me to use a Word-compatable word processor, OpenOffice at that time. So in mid-2008 I had The Merchants War in OpenOffice, neatly broken down using styles to tag chapter/scene headings. I knew the book was structurally a mess, but OpenOffice's outliner was a pale shadow of Microsoft Word's outline view mode (you could see a map of the document but not rearrange everything on the fly, collapse/expand subheadings, and so on back then).
So as a learning exercise I imported The Merchants War into Scrivener, splitting the main document on chapter and scene boundaries, giving each scene a useful title in the binder, and tagging the scenes with the viewpoint character.
Then I realized something else that had eluded me: in addition to dealing with 17 viewpoints I was alternating between three different parallel universes! And each viewpoint protagonist could only act in one universe at a time (although many of them could move between them).
It literally took me half a day to re-tag each scene by parallel universe, not character, and suddenly get a high level overview of the structure of the novel that made sense. The book looked broken because the alternating viewpoints were okay but the alternating universes were not—sometimes I'd ignored one of the settings for two or three chapters, or spent an entire chapter in just one time line. Now I could see where the action was taking place I was able to re-sequence everything so that the high level story kept moving, tracking smoothly between parallel universes. I could also see the gaps I'd left that needed filling in to keep the pacing even.
From that point on I worked in Scrivener exclusively to complete the Merchant Princes. By the end I was juggling about six parallel universes and even more characters, and the project ran to nearly a million words—three big fat books (the reissued omnibuses) and three somewhat thinner novels in the sequel trilogy, with an ensemble cast of probably twenty or more protagonists. I could not have done this without a tool that gave me high level coverage of a large project: which is what Scrivener did. To use an analogy, Scriv is like a programmer's Integrated Development Environment for books, while normal word processors are simple text editors: sure you can write a "hello, world" toy in a simple editor, but once you start working on a large software project you'll rapidly lose focus and orientation and get lost in a maze of twisty little header files, all alike, until you adopt a proper tool for the job.
And that's why I love Scrivener.
posted by cstross at 2:30 AM on April 1 [21 favorites]
Well, cstross, a Scrivener thread is as good a spot as any to say thank you for those novels. Well done; they were a lot of fun. Those and the Laundry Files entertained me quite a bit last year while I was bed-ridden with a broken pelvis and legs.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 5:06 AM on April 1 [3 favorites]
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 5:06 AM on April 1 [3 favorites]
(after reading cstross's post, split in two)
I see what you did there.
posted by in_lieu_of_fiction at 6:29 AM on April 1 [9 favorites]
I see what you did there.
posted by in_lieu_of_fiction at 6:29 AM on April 1 [9 favorites]
Not a big Melville crowd here, huh? He's not an easy read.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:32 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:32 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
Back in the day, the guy who created Scrivener and I used to occasionally trade emails, since we both coded Mac word processors. He was always unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and helpful. Just a super nice guy. I can say this is also true of the programmers for Nisus Writer and Growly Write. Way back when maybe a total of 200 people working on coding OS X and there was like one guy (whose name I forget) doing the text system, he would often show up on forums and be super helpful with coding problems. (You…um…don't see that now.) The reason I mention this is, it's a good feeling to know that the people behind a product are good people who have an interest in helping others. I think this contributes to quality apps.
posted by jabah at 7:11 AM on April 1 [3 favorites]
posted by jabah at 7:11 AM on April 1 [3 favorites]
I had a correspondence with the Scrivener guy -- well, one of them, Ian -- back in the day as well; I'd urged them to go fully semantic in style coding, which he considered, but I think ultimately did not do because it would have been very hard to preserve backward compatibility. Very nice guy, thoughtful. I stopped using Scrivener because I couldn't maintain style consistency, and Ulysses had semantic styling and switching export style sheets between epub, html and printed matter output was dead easy.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:25 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:25 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I'd love to use it (I used it previously when I had a mac), but there's no up to date (or officially supported) Linux build of the app.
posted by FightsGameraAction at 8:48 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
posted by FightsGameraAction at 8:48 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I use Scrivener for my graphic novel projects. It's fantastic, especially since it allows me to see page turns and layouts as they will appear in print. The automation features for dialogue boxes, page numbering, and panels is also excellent.
I also appreciate the ability to attach notes to a page, as well as have documents (character descriptions, outlines, etc) open alongside pages in a split screen. And the folders! So helpful for keeping all supporting materials structured and organized.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:49 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I also appreciate the ability to attach notes to a page, as well as have documents (character descriptions, outlines, etc) open alongside pages in a split screen. And the folders! So helpful for keeping all supporting materials structured and organized.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:49 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I've written several feature-length screenplays using Scrivener, and it works great. I like it a lot better than Final Draft.
posted by vibrotronica at 8:57 AM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by vibrotronica at 8:57 AM on April 1 [2 favorites]
I keep trying to use Scrivener, but keep bouncing off. It isn't solving the problems I need help with and learning it is a significant lift.
Also this: "I find syncing Scrivener projects between devices to be a major pain." I write on at least three devices across two platforms and this is a problem.
Right now Google Docs is where I write my books, articles, and scripts. It's easy, accessible from multiple devices. When I need to I export to Word and work there.
posted by doctornemo at 10:37 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
Also this: "I find syncing Scrivener projects between devices to be a major pain." I write on at least three devices across two platforms and this is a problem.
Right now Google Docs is where I write my books, articles, and scripts. It's easy, accessible from multiple devices. When I need to I export to Word and work there.
posted by doctornemo at 10:37 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I write on at least three devices across two platforms and this is a problem.
I'm tellin' ya: Butterdocs.
posted by dobbs at 5:09 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
I'm tellin' ya: Butterdocs.
posted by dobbs at 5:09 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
Thank you, dobbs. Let me turn in this ms to the publisher and I'll give it a slice.
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 PM on April 1
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 PM on April 1
I am a huge fan (I also use Obsidian, and I draft in 4theWords these days), but Scrivener has saved my brain so many times when outlining or editing.
My advice to anyone wanting to try it (they do a generous trial): is "run through the intro tour. Don't stress about remembering how to do all those things, focus on whether any of them are things you might want to do now or maybe later." Then figure out how to do the stuff you actually care about and maybe remember what the tool can do that you don't care about.
I have learned over writing books (alternating POV, usually 2, but I've done a book with 4 and one with 6) that:
a) Being able to move chapters or pieces around on the fly helps so much.
b) Seeing things at a macro level (I colour code for POV character)
c) Sometime during the book's process, I am going to need to add 2 chapters. Scrivener makes that much easier than other tools.
d) Probably twice during the book (for me it's about 25% and 70% routinely), I will need to rearrange my outline a bit. Ditto on the easier.
My actual tip is that I have it set up so there's the binder (left sidebar with files and folders), the right sidebar (info and file specific notes). I then have two main panes in the middle. The left one is the current chapter I'm working on. The right one is locked to a 'all this book' notes file, where I can drop stuff I need to keep visible.
When I'm writing that's 'what did I name her aunt again' or whatever. When I'm editing, I do a list of what I need to fix (both 'somewhere in this book' and chapter by chapter) and then I can have it right there when I'm working on it, and not lose pieces.
posted by jenettsilver at 6:55 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
My advice to anyone wanting to try it (they do a generous trial): is "run through the intro tour. Don't stress about remembering how to do all those things, focus on whether any of them are things you might want to do now or maybe later." Then figure out how to do the stuff you actually care about and maybe remember what the tool can do that you don't care about.
I have learned over writing books (alternating POV, usually 2, but I've done a book with 4 and one with 6) that:
a) Being able to move chapters or pieces around on the fly helps so much.
b) Seeing things at a macro level (I colour code for POV character)
c) Sometime during the book's process, I am going to need to add 2 chapters. Scrivener makes that much easier than other tools.
d) Probably twice during the book (for me it's about 25% and 70% routinely), I will need to rearrange my outline a bit. Ditto on the easier.
My actual tip is that I have it set up so there's the binder (left sidebar with files and folders), the right sidebar (info and file specific notes). I then have two main panes in the middle. The left one is the current chapter I'm working on. The right one is locked to a 'all this book' notes file, where I can drop stuff I need to keep visible.
When I'm writing that's 'what did I name her aunt again' or whatever. When I'm editing, I do a list of what I need to fix (both 'somewhere in this book' and chapter by chapter) and then I can have it right there when I'm working on it, and not lose pieces.
posted by jenettsilver at 6:55 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
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posted by Lemkin at 5:28 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]