A few random things:
- I am, hopefully, at work right now preparing my students for their math test tomorrow. I can imagine a couple of reasons why I might not be; there is another polar vortex heading our way and if it’s colder than we’re expecting or if the massive storm that’s supposed to hit a county over shifts to the east, it’s not inconceivable that school is going to be cancelled again. Plus, the boy’s been a bit poorly all day today (Monday) and while I suspect he’ll be okay by tomorrow morning, you never know.
- I know there are a bunch of writers of varying levels of professional status who read this blog; how many of you guys use Scrivener? I know Taylor Grace has mentioned it; anybody else? I’m doing most of my writing in Pages these days because iCloud lets me pick up whatever device is handy and work on the newest version without thinking about it, but Scrivener seems like it would be useful as a way to put together a sort of series bible for the Benevolence Archives– I’m already jumping between five documents whenever I write anything trying to keep stuff consistent, and I’d like some way to formalize that process. Long story short, I have questions if you’re willing to provide answers.
- I am offended that I have to have an opinion about sports; I’ve usually done my best to make sure to have no idea who is in the Super Bowl by now, but nonetheless: lay the hell off Richard Sherman, Internet. Newsflash: athletes are sometimes loud and sometimes they are not entirely polite, especially when they are requested to be interviewed six seconds after a career-changing play. Get the hell off your damn high horses.
- Probably starting another vegetarian week tomorrow at dinnertime. Why dinnertime? There’s still chili left and I plan to finish it for lunch. It’s time to go back into weight-losing mode for a bit, I think.
- Spent a few minutes staring intently at the last wall I have to put cement board on a bit ago. It does not make me happy. I’m going to have to add some blocking to put the cement board up at the very least and I think I may very well have to redo some of the existing structure– which I didn’t have to do for either of the walls today, as big of a pain as they were.
Wheeeee!
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If you have any questions about Scrivener, ask. I may not know the answer but I’ll try and find it (or make it up–Kidding!) 🙂
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My main thing is that I can’t figure out how to edit the templates for fiction work. For example, if I create a “Character” template, it gives me “description”; I’d like that broken down– height, weight, eye color, and species, since this is a sci-fi series. I can add things, but the formatting gets all screwed up, and I can’t really find a good way to fix that either. As I said, the program looks to me to be most useful as a “series bible” type of thing– and it looks INSANELY useful for that purpose, but I can’t quite get it to do what I want yet.
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Okay. I totally get what you are asking for and I have no way for Scrivener to change that template. It provides a ‘helpful’ self-teach book that I have yet to read completely (it’s huge!) and there are tutorials on line that I have watched but only for purposes of compiling the work into mobi and epub files.
To answer your question (finally!) I would add the subcategories I needed in bold font by typing them in. It’s a pain, I know, but the only solution I can think of. Still. Scrivener at least provides character templates, where Pages doesn’t and it allows you to move scenes back and forth and switch from one to another very easily. It also gives you data on each scene individually and on each chapter separately. I love dragging scenes from one place to another. I hated having to scroll down and not knowing where I was in the book.
Sorry you don’t get what you’re looking for in Scrivener. I find it useful but writing is different for everyone. Hope this helped!
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Well, don’t get what I’m looking for *yet*. 🙂
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Scrivener has been a huge benefit for me since I got it in September, can’t even begin to tell you. It makes it so much easier to keep track of my writing–for one thing, it’s super-easy to drop down to a “Misc. Notes” sheet and drop off thoughts or ideas there while writing, instead of having a separate Word doc or even physical notebook. It is totally worth the $40 (?) I paid for it. You have to invest in your future, man! No one ever got anywhere by being parsimonious.
Also, totally agree about Sherman, and it seems like he’s now getting some great support.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about Scrivener, although since most of the writing I do is for my mathematics or humor blogs I’m not sure it’s actually relevant to my needs. Granted, I’ve got some ideas for stories that I have sketched out, but it’s a really big time-saver to never get around to actually writing them, for which I don’t need any special software at all, just a pencil that I haven’t sharpened.
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I used Scrivener for the first six chapters of my current WIP. Like Photoshop CC, Scrivener is a bottomless software with a mesmerizing amount of information. I loved it, but I found myself screwing around learning a new software instead of writing. So, back to Word, which is a pain in the ass, but has a much smaller learning curve. Sort of. I actually purchased Scrinvener for Dummies, and it was a great help. The key is, just learn what you need for now, write your book, revise and then, in your spare time:), delve into Scrivener’s wonderful depths.
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