Some personal feedback

I realize that I have posted in the bug and support sections but have never really given any feedback. Now having used Scrivener for a while I thought I would.

First, as to how I use it. All my research and outlining and first draft are all done in Scrivener. After that a word doc is exported which goes to editors for correction. After editing the word doc goes to desktop publishing software.

I create folders in Scrivener with all my research and notes. from there I write a synopsis of around 15 pages or so. With that I create an outline with all chapters in the outliner. I love the outliner and its ability to export a csv. I have set it up to look exactly like the outlines I used to make in Excel and if I need to I can import my csv to Excel. (Although I really never need to anymore.)

That gives me the structure I need to write my first draft. After that as I said I export a manuscript to Word.

One thing I never understood is why word never implemented the ability to have multiple docs within one document project the way scrivener does. When I first opened scrivener it seemed revolutionary. I have used word for a very long time and despite them wanting to charge me a hundred bucks a year, The last time I used a new feature is around the time Clippy the animated paperclip lived on the toolbar. Yes I am that old.

I love Scrivener for what I use it for and wanted to heap a little praise on the team for creating such a useful app at such a reasonable price.

Cheers,
Dave

Thanks for sharing how you use Scrivener, and the kind words!

They have in fact, it’s called the Master Document feature, which is an advanced type of “node” in the Outline tool. It looks fairly complicated to set up and use; nothing like selecting 15 items in the binder and pressing Ctrl+1. And of course it’s not really the same kind of thing. Tacking together 15 .docx files into a super complicated mechanism that has to keep page numbers and other fields running sequentially and so forth is an approach designed more to extend Word into the book-writing arena through brute force, rather than really doing anything to address what it means to write something that large.

I.e. it’s more of a file management tool than a writing tool. I definitely wouldn’t want to press the Master Document feature to the levels I take writing-centric outlines in Scrivener—what with my thousands of items in the draft folder! That’s a lot of .docx files to corral.

The Master Document tool also is --or at least was – notoriously buggy and slow.

Katherine