9 ms·

Interview with Keith Blount, Creator of Scrivener

106 points by cocacola1 4y ago

AlbertCory 4y ago
I used Scrivener for a while. I switched to Vellum, which I like much better. What was the decider? I wanted to have "drop caps", that cool feature where the first letter of a chapter is 3 or 4 lines big. The forums for Scrivener suggested some very complicated ways to do it involving CSS. In Vellum it's just one of the styles. Silly, but it's my book and I wanted it. Vellum also seems to know publishing conventions better (the half-title page, the copyright page, About the Author, etc.) They make your book not look so self-published. I'm not trashing Scrivener, though. It's a good product.
- dinkleberg 4y ago
  Vellum looks excellent, thanks for mentioning it.
- cocacola1 4y ago
  I only tried the trial of Vellum but, from what I remember, it was easy to use and beautiful to boot. Definitely a lot less complicated than Scrivener (which, if your goal is to write a book, is probably the way to go). It seems like a joy to work in for the long haul. The thing for me is price. Vellum is $200-250, Scrivener is $60 (I got it for ~$40 with NaNoWriMo discounts a few years ago, if I recall correctly). Plus you can write screenplays in it, which was another bonus. I have spent more time than I should customizing it, but that ended up being part of the joy. I've more than a million words in it so it's unlikely I'll switch, but it's a joy to use.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I actually think the higher price is an asset, not a liability (unless you can't afford it, of course). It means they have a business model that doesn't require a huge mass market to survive, so they won't go broke or get acquired and watered down by some big company.
    - cocacola1 4y ago
      I'd agree with that. I certainly hope they're able to stay in business – it seems as though Vellum takes care of everything. About the only thing it can't do (I might be wrong) is that it can't output to Word format? I'm the process of publishing a book right now and they've requested everything in Word. Edit: Turns out that as of ~10 days ago, you can, in fact, export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/ https://blog.vellum.pub/) in Vellum.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        I just looked: you can export to RTF. So couldn't Word import that?
        cocacola1 4y ago
        I was wrong. Just took a look at their blog and apparently as of 3.4 (Nov. 16, 2022) you can export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/ https://blog.vellum.pub/). That's excellent.
      - _tom_ 4y ago
        Strong recommendation (echoed by many I've talked to). Write in word, format in Vellum. Don't use Vellum as an editor, that's not its strength. If you make any changes to the word doc, you just use "reimport word document" in Vellum, and you are ready to print/upload again.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    If you’re interested in screenplays you might be interested in the fountain file format. It’s like markdown but for screenplays. It allows you to write screenplays in any text editor and I really like the simplicity of it; keeps me focussed on the task at hand. There’s a very cool app created by screenwriter John August (Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) called Highlander2 on the Mac App Store that is purpose built for it (technically it uses a custom file format called highland but it’s basically just a folder with a fountain file inside it and a few other files for editor settings, metadata and handling images if you have any). There’s also fountain extensions for VS Code, Sublime Text, Obsidian and probably other editors out there I don’t know of. Links: https://fountain.io/ https://fountain.io/ https://highland2.app/index.php https://highland2.app/index.php
    - cocacola1 4y ago
      I've listened to John August's Scriptnotes podcast (fantastic and ad-free) but I haven't tried out Highland 2 yet. Will check it out – thanks!
      - eye_street 4y ago
        Give Beat a look, too. https://kapitan.fi/beat/ https://kapitan.fi/beat/
        rcarr 4y ago
        This is awesome, never heard of it until now. Seriously cool bit of software. Love that it uses Courier Prime as well, it's my default font everywhere!
      - everybodyknows 4y ago
        Podcast interviews with screenwriters of major productions -- Die Hard, Terminator 2, Back To The Future -- Script Apart by Al Hoerner.
    - kcartlidge 4y ago
      Highland 2 is fantastic. For sheer speed and beauty when writing it's great. The UI is like a much simplified but also much nicer (because of that) version of Scrivener (I own both). And the file format is easy to parse if you need to.
  - kcartlidge 4y ago
    Vellum is expensive in comparison to Scrivener, but the output is very nice and you soon see the increased value of using it. Scrivener and Vellum do different jobs. At a simplistic level the former is for creating the content and the latter for producing the final outputs (Scrivener can do both but really only excels at the first).
- vore 4y ago
  I think Scrivener also has different goals: Vellum looks like it's intended for publishing, but Scrivener I think of more as an organizational tool. That said, I've been using Dabble if only because it's all cloud-based and I don't have to worry about syncing files around myself.
- jacques-noris 4y ago
  Strange comparison. Scrivener is for writing books, Vellum for publishing, even if scrivener has a publish option. But they rather complement each other. Scrivener is incredible value for money.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    "writing books" vs. "publishing" ? Is that a sharp distinction?
    - least 4y ago
      Scriveners tools are designed to help a person write like keeping track of timelines, character sheets, and the like. It sounds like the other product has tools for typesetting and layout, which are tools for publishing your finished work.
    - Rygian 4y ago
      It's usually done by different people with different job descriptions. A writer's output are manuscripts, works of art. A publisher's output is a commercial offering of books, a business. [1] https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-publisher-with-table/ https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-p...
      - MrVandemar 4y ago
        I agree, but the latter can also be a work of art. Typesetting is definitely something that can be done right or wrong, and sometimes to a breathtakingly high standard.
        Rygian 4y ago
        The publisher engages or hires typesetters, as part of the publishing process.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    I recently wasted three days trying to get Scrivener to do something very basic - autonumber sections in a book without including part numbers. It should have been easy, but the autonumbering features didn't work as advertised and I ended up with something that is probably a hack that relies on some bugs. It's good VFM, but considering its audience it's also one of the most user-hostile pieces of software I've ever used. [1] There's far too much "Yes it does that but it's not designed for it so keep your expectations low" for comfort. Either include features and make them professional, or don't include them at all. I'd happily pay two or three times as much for something that does all the things it sorta kinda implies it does but you know actually not really. Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books. But perhaps that may be of some interest to writers? [1] TBF it's far better than Calibre. But that has the excuse of being free.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- caconym_ 4y ago
  I think Vellum's whole value proposition is typesetting ebooks and other "rich" formats. I've never tried to sell my writing, so Pandoc with a bit of custom CSS has worked great for me, but if I ever feel the need to build a fancy ebook I'll be looking at Vellum first. When I first got serious about writing fiction I used Vim (with Markdown), then switched to Scrivener, but I can not deal with the rich text crap anymore so I went to Obsidian for the best of both worlds, sort of. If Scrivener had a plaintext mode I'd probably still be using it. WYSIWYG editing is a curse on mankind. Write first, then typeset.
CrypticShift 4y ago
I used Scrivener more like a generic [Outliner + DB] combo than a tool for long form writing. IMO combining outlining and databases could be powerful if fully exploited (research...). I truly consider Keith Blount to be a "hero" in the sense that he offered this power for all writers out there (at a reasonable price.) --- FYI, Other outliner+DB beasts include the "overlooked for way too long" Infoqube [0] and the "probably soon to be a rising star" Tana [1]. [0] https://www.infoqube.biz/ https://www.infoqube.biz/ [1] https://tana.inc/ https://tana.inc/
- Multicomp 4y ago
  I would throw in yWriter as a competitor as well, Windows only but I use the 5th version via wine on linux
rcarr 4y ago
I switched from Scrivener to a two app approach: Obsidian for all of my own writing, DevonThink for all research materials. I love having this distinction and find both my mind and workspaces feel less cluttered as a result. I also like that all my writing is completely portable. I can link between the two apps using either app URLs or using Hookmark but I haven’t used this much yet. If I needed timelines for a particular project I’d buy a copy of Aeon. I used to have a version on an old machine but it’s since been updated and I haven’t worked on anything that needed it yet although I imagine I will do at some point. Should also add that I do have a soft spot and gratitude for Scrivener as, coming from Word, it was the first software that I used that allowed you to organise all your notes together in folders and contained other cool tools for writers such as the built in name generator (which I still use), the corkbord organiser etc. Scapple (made by the same company) is also great if you want to do some quick mind mapping and integrates really well with Scrivener as you can import all the bubbles and get to work fleshing them out.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I should take a look at DevonThink (and maybe Obsidian though I'm mostly fine with Google Docs). I own Scrivener and have used it. But I don't find it ideal for research materials and, for the non-fiction writing I do, I don't find functional flow all that complicated. And then I'm going to have to transfer it to a different tool at some point anyway. Scrivener seems like it's good at solving problems I mostly don't feel I have.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    Once you get it set up how you want it, DevonThink absolutely rocks and it’s perfect for non-fiction research. It’s got a 100 hour free trial so worth testing it out. I’d recommend downloading the manual and/or the Take Control Of DevonThink book from the devontechnologies website (both free) and giving both a speed read so you get an idea of some of the stuff it can do. Obviously depends on your own individual workflow but here are some of my recommendations: Make sure you get the iOS companion app DevonThink To Go. This allows you to capture everything on your mobile devices. Also make sure you install all add ons via DevonThink3 -> Install Add Ons. These add ons will: - Allow you to view and import emails in DevonThink (you will also have to enable the plugin in the Apple Mail app for this functionality to work) - Put an ‘Inbox’ folder in your finder which allows you to just drag any file or folder into it and have it appear in your DevonThink Inbox - Give you OCR for all your pdfs - Give you extensions for browsers to clip things easily. When you clip something that you want to read or refer back to you’re generally best off using the ‘paginated PDF’ setting as not all the available options support annotation and the AI search. It’s not a big deal if you don’t because you can just right click something and click ‘Convert To’ to turn it into a pdf later. Two settings I’d recommend trying out: DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Retain View (On) Stops the view from changing every time you switch databases which can be annoying. DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Unify Inboxes (Off) Moves each databases inbox into the database itself which makes it a lot easier for when you’re filing things. Four Shortcuts I Find Useful: Cmd-Ctrl-M - brings up a panel for moving a file quickly Cmd-7 for wide screen view (makes more sense than the standard view) Cmd-option-i - toggle right inspector Cmd-option-1 - toggle left sidebar
thenerdhead 4y ago
Scrivener is amazing on macOS. I tried doing the cross-platform writing story with the new versions on Windows and mobile apps, but it just has too many issues of syncing and random formatting bugs across the OS. I absolutely love the mac experience though and it has helped me author two books in less than two years. I've tried markdown generators and traditional word, but Scrivener just feels right.
jacques-noris 4y ago
I wrote my novel with scrivener, and while it sometimes tries to do too much, I love it. Coming from word it was a game changer for me, being able to write in any order you want and organize your scenes in the binder. Snapshots are also really good and helpful. And the corkboard has become essential for me. Scrivener could cut some options it doesn’t do very good like publishing, that would streamline it. And syncing could be much better. But overall it’s one of the rare tools, that changed the way I work for the better.
- cocacola1 4y ago
  My entry to Scrivener was similar, except I came in from Pages. It was between Ulysses & Scrivener and, while I like Ulysses's look, I went with Scrivener and am glad I did. It does have a few too many options, which makes it a bit daunting, but one could simply stick with the basics and it'd be great. The syncing is probably the worst aspect, but as I don't write on my iPhone/iPad, it wasn't ever really an issue.
swayvil 4y ago
"Scriviner" is onomatopoeiatic. It's the sound of quill pens scratching away.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  This is the first time I’ve ever seen that suggested, but it does make a bit of sense. That said, a scrivener was an occupation: a professional copyist or clerk, like Bartleby the Scrivener. It’s from Old French escrivain (same meaning) which is in turn from Latin scribere (“to write”), which might be from proto-Indo-European “skribh-“ which is a stem for cutting or separating. From https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener
  - swayvil 4y ago
    skribh is a cutty-sounding syllable for sure. Swing your vorpal sword, skribby skrab.
trhr 4y ago
I dropped Scrivener for LaTeX and have never been happier. Obviously, Word is a bad choice - it's not really built for publishing - but I do like the long form single-file approach. I use LaTeX's ability to write comments as a way to archive old chunks of text, leave margin notes, separate scenes for easy cut/paste, etc. My main problem with Scrivener is that my scenes tend to be short - many under 400 words - and it just gets unwieldy to have a couple hundred of these.
- contravariant 4y ago
  I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that? I definitely like how your approach keeps everything in a human readable file, I never liked the way Scrivener uses an opaque format which doesn't play nice with any other tool you might use (I would much prefer a tool that annotated scenes in org-files or (pandoc) markdown).
  - everybodyknows 4y ago
    I put together a set of Org-mode key bindings, config variables (file-local) and tag color codes for a screenplay project. Org-mode's HTML output was way off from what I wanted, so I hacked up a CLI filter, in a language I know better than Elisp. From HTML it's easy to get to PDF, an industry-standard format.
  - trhr 4y ago
    > I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that? It doesn't really do that though. It's not a relational database. You can't say, create a MainCharacterProfile document that then gets "attached" to certain scenes. The closest you can get is manually typing out "characters in this scene" and then manually hyperlinking to that document. Which won't update automatically if you were to remove that character from the scene. It's kind of a mess to use it like the marketing says you should. If it was relational, that'd be fuckin' dope. It's best to think about it as a combination of a filing cabinet, a typewriter, and a cork board. You can manually sort your filing cabinet, rearranging your scenes by page or by folder. You can type up new scenes and edit old ones. You can drag and drop things on your cork board. You can add labels and colored flags for filtering and sorting. But that's functionally it. The only things it writes to disk are rtf docs. No library or structured metadata or anything; just more rtf docs. It's honestly closer to "wordpad with tabs and folders" than anything else. I've been doing NaNoWriMo on most years since ~2011, and I think it's total garbage. Plus my editor always wants a word doc, so revisions after the draft just happen in Word anyway. I think there's a good chance I could convince them to read a LaTeX document though, maybe even teach them how to add comments. As a bonus, the word document that scrivener generates doesn't have all of my background and notes, but the LaTeX doc has them right in-line as comments, so I think the feedback would be more constructive in a lot of places.
medion 4y ago
I wrote a book in Scrivener - loved it, but when it came to prepping it for print and various ebook formats - what a total nightmare, I couldn’t get anything to distill how I needed - really needs basic functioning templates for print and Amazon KDP etc. I want to write books not get tangled up in the tech.
- ramg 4y ago
  I published my book via Scrivener - both print and ebook. I'll admit it wasn't straightforward but once I "learned" it, I saved that away as a template for my next book. There's a fair bit of customization and not very obvious how it works. I relied on the forums for hints/tips and even then it took some trial/error attempts. I'd say in total, I spent a full weekend figuring it out. I wonder how much of that memory is now lost and will need to be relearned when I publish my second book (template and all).
  - medion 4y ago
    This has triggered a memory, whereby I had spent probably a similar amount of time getting a custom template done - then, by the time my book was finished, there was an upgrade and the template vanished/became unusable - and then the whole templating system seemed to have changed dramatically, and I didn’t have the energy to burn another 2-3 days re-learning it all… Anyway.
serf 4y ago
It occurs to me , reading these comments, that Windows/Linux are not really considered to be first class citizens by those who make publishing/authorship software. Scrivener Windows release trails far behind the Mac release, DevonThink is unavailable elsewhere outside Mac, Vellum is Mac only. Kind of a shame , no? I understand the whole 'Artists-skew-Apple' thing, but this type of software doesn't have a lot of valid reasons to lack portability to such an extent other than catering to specific markets. So, if you're an authorship/publishing software person, 'We're out there, and we'd love to use your software on PC.' .
- kjksf 4y ago
  - knock, knock - who is it? - Opportunity If you know how to program validated business ideas just fell into your lap. Make a Windows clone of DevonThink or Vellum. Better yet, make a Scrivener, DevonThink or Vellum clone as a web app. The technology is more than capable. But you won't do it. Your parents didn't have emerald mine so you couldn't possibly be successful. Also, Survivorship Bias!
  - criddell 4y ago
    > make a […] web app I’d make a different recommendation. If you want it on Windows, make the best Windows app you can. Take advantage of all the APIs and features the platform has to offer. If you do a good job, you will make something faster and smaller that follows the platform conventions and is comfortable to use by other people like you. Right now I think the Mac has the healthiest ecosystem of interesting software from small developers. I’m excluding games - Windows and the three big consoles rule the games space. For personal software (like the titles you mentioned) Windows feels like it’s fading and Linux is doing what Linux has always done.
  - evangow 4y ago
    I build marketing software for authors (called StoryOrigin if you want to look it up for credibility purposes), so I'm quite familiar with the space. Exactly what you've described is already out there: https://www.atticus.io/ https://www.atticus.io/ (released last year - I have no affiliation.)
themadturk 4y ago
Scrivener is great...I've used it on Mac, iOS and PC. But the proprietary file format and requirement to use Dropbox for syncing killed it for me. I could live with the proprietary format since it works on every platform I use, but I use Dropbox for literally nothing else anymore.
- messe 4y ago
  To be fair, the proprietary format is very transparent. It's a folder with a bunch of (IMO very readable and self-explanatory) XML with your writing stored as a RTF files further down the folder hierarchy. If I ever wanted to abandon scrivener, I think I could whip up a python script to convert it to a folder of markdown or LaTeX files per section pretty quickly. I have no concerns about losing my data to bit rot or the software no longer functioning on future computers. As for DropBox, yeah... that sucks; it's the only thing I use DropBox for nowadays too.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    Ah, I'd actually forgotten the RTF files at the bottom of the folder hierarchy.
dbcooper 4y ago
Any recommendations for writing manuscripts for scientific journals?
klelatti 4y ago
> I guess I’m just lucky in that I enjoy what I do: getting to sit at home all day, making my own hours, coding an app I love and which is used by others to create novels and screenplays and other stuff - what more motivation do I need? I have to say that this gave me a very broad smile. It's fantastic that it's still possible to write an App like Scrivener solo or with a very small team.
syliconadder 4y ago
Scrivener is one of those app purchases that I highly value. I have written two screenplays on the Windows version of the app and though using First Draft is the industry standard, I like the ease of use of Scrivener. A lot of the features (even the corkboard) seem harder to grasp and I don't use them, but for playing around with chapters/sections and maintaining focus, it's one of the best writing apps I have used. (Other favorite is Zettlr, but that's another story)

106 points by cocacola1 4y ago

I used Scrivener for a while. I switched to Vellum, which I like much better. What was the decider? I wanted to have "drop caps", that cool feature where the first letter of a chapter is 3 or 4 lines big. The forums for Scrivener suggested some very complicated ways to do it involving CSS. In Vellum it's just one of the styles. Silly, but it's my book and I wanted it. Vellum also seems to know publishing conventions better (the half-title page, the copyright page, About the Author, etc.) They make your book not look so self-published. I'm not trashing Scrivener, though. It's a good product.

dinkleberg 4y ago
Vellum looks excellent, thanks for mentioning it.
cocacola1 4y ago
I only tried the trial of Vellum but, from what I remember, it was easy to use and beautiful to boot. Definitely a lot less complicated than Scrivener (which, if your goal is to write a book, is probably the way to go). It seems like a joy to work in for the long haul. The thing for me is price. Vellum is $200-250, Scrivener is $60 (I got it for ~$40 with NaNoWriMo discounts a few years ago, if I recall correctly). Plus you can write screenplays in it, which was another bonus. I have spent more time than I should customizing it, but that ended up being part of the joy. I've more than a million words in it so it's unlikely I'll switch, but it's a joy to use.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  I actually think the higher price is an asset, not a liability (unless you can't afford it, of course). It means they have a business model that doesn't require a huge mass market to survive, so they won't go broke or get acquired and watered down by some big company.
  - cocacola1 4y ago
    I'd agree with that. I certainly hope they're able to stay in business – it seems as though Vellum takes care of everything. About the only thing it can't do (I might be wrong) is that it can't output to Word format? I'm the process of publishing a book right now and they've requested everything in Word. Edit: Turns out that as of ~10 days ago, you can, in fact, export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/ https://blog.vellum.pub/) in Vellum.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      I just looked: you can export to RTF. So couldn't Word import that?
      - cocacola1 4y ago
        I was wrong. Just took a look at their blog and apparently as of 3.4 (Nov. 16, 2022) you can export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/ https://blog.vellum.pub/). That's excellent.
    - _tom_ 4y ago
      Strong recommendation (echoed by many I've talked to). Write in word, format in Vellum. Don't use Vellum as an editor, that's not its strength. If you make any changes to the word doc, you just use "reimport word document" in Vellum, and you are ready to print/upload again.
- rcarr 4y ago
  If you’re interested in screenplays you might be interested in the fountain file format. It’s like markdown but for screenplays. It allows you to write screenplays in any text editor and I really like the simplicity of it; keeps me focussed on the task at hand. There’s a very cool app created by screenwriter John August (Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) called Highlander2 on the Mac App Store that is purpose built for it (technically it uses a custom file format called highland but it’s basically just a folder with a fountain file inside it and a few other files for editor settings, metadata and handling images if you have any). There’s also fountain extensions for VS Code, Sublime Text, Obsidian and probably other editors out there I don’t know of. Links: https://fountain.io/ https://fountain.io/ https://highland2.app/index.php https://highland2.app/index.php
  - cocacola1 4y ago
    I've listened to John August's Scriptnotes podcast (fantastic and ad-free) but I haven't tried out Highland 2 yet. Will check it out – thanks!
    - eye_street 4y ago
      Give Beat a look, too. https://kapitan.fi/beat/ https://kapitan.fi/beat/
      - rcarr 4y ago
        This is awesome, never heard of it until now. Seriously cool bit of software. Love that it uses Courier Prime as well, it's my default font everywhere!
    - everybodyknows 4y ago
      Podcast interviews with screenwriters of major productions -- Die Hard, Terminator 2, Back To The Future -- Script Apart by Al Hoerner.
  - kcartlidge 4y ago
    Highland 2 is fantastic. For sheer speed and beauty when writing it's great. The UI is like a much simplified but also much nicer (because of that) version of Scrivener (I own both). And the file format is easy to parse if you need to.
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  Vellum is expensive in comparison to Scrivener, but the output is very nice and you soon see the increased value of using it. Scrivener and Vellum do different jobs. At a simplistic level the former is for creating the content and the latter for producing the final outputs (Scrivener can do both but really only excels at the first).
vore 4y ago
I think Scrivener also has different goals: Vellum looks like it's intended for publishing, but Scrivener I think of more as an organizational tool. That said, I've been using Dabble if only because it's all cloud-based and I don't have to worry about syncing files around myself.
jacques-noris 4y ago
Strange comparison. Scrivener is for writing books, Vellum for publishing, even if scrivener has a publish option. But they rather complement each other. Scrivener is incredible value for money.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  "writing books" vs. "publishing" ? Is that a sharp distinction?
  - least 4y ago
    Scriveners tools are designed to help a person write like keeping track of timelines, character sheets, and the like. It sounds like the other product has tools for typesetting and layout, which are tools for publishing your finished work.
  - Rygian 4y ago
    It's usually done by different people with different job descriptions. A writer's output are manuscripts, works of art. A publisher's output is a commercial offering of books, a business. [1] https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-publisher-with-table/ https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-p...
    - MrVandemar 4y ago
      I agree, but the latter can also be a work of art. Typesetting is definitely something that can be done right or wrong, and sometimes to a breathtakingly high standard.
      - Rygian 4y ago
        The publisher engages or hires typesetters, as part of the publishing process.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  I recently wasted three days trying to get Scrivener to do something very basic - autonumber sections in a book without including part numbers. It should have been easy, but the autonumbering features didn't work as advertised and I ended up with something that is probably a hack that relies on some bugs. It's good VFM, but considering its audience it's also one of the most user-hostile pieces of software I've ever used. [1] There's far too much "Yes it does that but it's not designed for it so keep your expectations low" for comfort. Either include features and make them professional, or don't include them at all. I'd happily pay two or three times as much for something that does all the things it sorta kinda implies it does but you know actually not really. Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books. But perhaps that may be of some interest to writers? [1] TBF it's far better than Calibre. But that has the excuse of being free.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
caconym_ 4y ago
I think Vellum's whole value proposition is typesetting ebooks and other "rich" formats. I've never tried to sell my writing, so Pandoc with a bit of custom CSS has worked great for me, but if I ever feel the need to build a fancy ebook I'll be looking at Vellum first. When I first got serious about writing fiction I used Vim (with Markdown), then switched to Scrivener, but I can not deal with the rich text crap anymore so I went to Obsidian for the best of both worlds, sort of. If Scrivener had a plaintext mode I'd probably still be using it. WYSIWYG editing is a curse on mankind. Write first, then typeset.

CrypticShift 4y ago

I used Scrivener more like a generic [Outliner + DB] combo than a tool for long form writing. IMO combining outlining and databases could be powerful if fully exploited (research...). I truly consider Keith Blount to be a "hero" in the sense that he offered this power for all writers out there (at a reasonable price.) --- FYI, Other outliner+DB beasts include the "overlooked for way too long" Infoqube [0] and the "probably soon to be a rising star" Tana [1]. [0] https://www.infoqube.biz/ https://www.infoqube.biz/ [1] https://tana.inc/ https://tana.inc/

Multicomp 4y ago
I would throw in yWriter as a competitor as well, Windows only but I use the 5th version via wine on linux

rcarr 4y ago

I switched from Scrivener to a two app approach: Obsidian for all of my own writing, DevonThink for all research materials. I love having this distinction and find both my mind and workspaces feel less cluttered as a result. I also like that all my writing is completely portable. I can link between the two apps using either app URLs or using Hookmark but I haven’t used this much yet. If I needed timelines for a particular project I’d buy a copy of Aeon. I used to have a version on an old machine but it’s since been updated and I haven’t worked on anything that needed it yet although I imagine I will do at some point. Should also add that I do have a soft spot and gratitude for Scrivener as, coming from Word, it was the first software that I used that allowed you to organise all your notes together in folders and contained other cool tools for writers such as the built in name generator (which I still use), the corkbord organiser etc. Scapple (made by the same company) is also great if you want to do some quick mind mapping and integrates really well with Scrivener as you can import all the bubbles and get to work fleshing them out.

ghaff 4y ago
I should take a look at DevonThink (and maybe Obsidian though I'm mostly fine with Google Docs). I own Scrivener and have used it. But I don't find it ideal for research materials and, for the non-fiction writing I do, I don't find functional flow all that complicated. And then I'm going to have to transfer it to a different tool at some point anyway. Scrivener seems like it's good at solving problems I mostly don't feel I have.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Once you get it set up how you want it, DevonThink absolutely rocks and it’s perfect for non-fiction research. It’s got a 100 hour free trial so worth testing it out. I’d recommend downloading the manual and/or the Take Control Of DevonThink book from the devontechnologies website (both free) and giving both a speed read so you get an idea of some of the stuff it can do. Obviously depends on your own individual workflow but here are some of my recommendations: Make sure you get the iOS companion app DevonThink To Go. This allows you to capture everything on your mobile devices. Also make sure you install all add ons via DevonThink3 -> Install Add Ons. These add ons will: - Allow you to view and import emails in DevonThink (you will also have to enable the plugin in the Apple Mail app for this functionality to work) - Put an ‘Inbox’ folder in your finder which allows you to just drag any file or folder into it and have it appear in your DevonThink Inbox - Give you OCR for all your pdfs - Give you extensions for browsers to clip things easily. When you clip something that you want to read or refer back to you’re generally best off using the ‘paginated PDF’ setting as not all the available options support annotation and the AI search. It’s not a big deal if you don’t because you can just right click something and click ‘Convert To’ to turn it into a pdf later. Two settings I’d recommend trying out: DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Retain View (On) Stops the view from changing every time you switch databases which can be annoying. DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Unify Inboxes (Off) Moves each databases inbox into the database itself which makes it a lot easier for when you’re filing things. Four Shortcuts I Find Useful: Cmd-Ctrl-M - brings up a panel for moving a file quickly Cmd-7 for wide screen view (makes more sense than the standard view) Cmd-option-i - toggle right inspector Cmd-option-1 - toggle left sidebar

thenerdhead 4y ago

Scrivener is amazing on macOS. I tried doing the cross-platform writing story with the new versions on Windows and mobile apps, but it just has too many issues of syncing and random formatting bugs across the OS. I absolutely love the mac experience though and it has helped me author two books in less than two years. I've tried markdown generators and traditional word, but Scrivener just feels right.

jacques-noris 4y ago

I wrote my novel with scrivener, and while it sometimes tries to do too much, I love it. Coming from word it was a game changer for me, being able to write in any order you want and organize your scenes in the binder. Snapshots are also really good and helpful. And the corkboard has become essential for me. Scrivener could cut some options it doesn’t do very good like publishing, that would streamline it. And syncing could be much better. But overall it’s one of the rare tools, that changed the way I work for the better.

cocacola1 4y ago
My entry to Scrivener was similar, except I came in from Pages. It was between Ulysses & Scrivener and, while I like Ulysses's look, I went with Scrivener and am glad I did. It does have a few too many options, which makes it a bit daunting, but one could simply stick with the basics and it'd be great. The syncing is probably the worst aspect, but as I don't write on my iPhone/iPad, it wasn't ever really an issue.

swayvil 4y ago

"Scriviner" is onomatopoeiatic. It's the sound of quill pens scratching away.

mattkrause 4y ago
This is the first time I’ve ever seen that suggested, but it does make a bit of sense. That said, a scrivener was an occupation: a professional copyist or clerk, like Bartleby the Scrivener. It’s from Old French escrivain (same meaning) which is in turn from Latin scribere (“to write”), which might be from proto-Indo-European “skribh-“ which is a stem for cutting or separating. From https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener
- swayvil 4y ago
  skribh is a cutty-sounding syllable for sure. Swing your vorpal sword, skribby skrab.

trhr 4y ago

I dropped Scrivener for LaTeX and have never been happier. Obviously, Word is a bad choice - it's not really built for publishing - but I do like the long form single-file approach. I use LaTeX's ability to write comments as a way to archive old chunks of text, leave margin notes, separate scenes for easy cut/paste, etc. My main problem with Scrivener is that my scenes tend to be short - many under 400 words - and it just gets unwieldy to have a couple hundred of these.

contravariant 4y ago
I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that? I definitely like how your approach keeps everything in a human readable file, I never liked the way Scrivener uses an opaque format which doesn't play nice with any other tool you might use (I would much prefer a tool that annotated scenes in org-files or (pandoc) markdown).
- everybodyknows 4y ago
  I put together a set of Org-mode key bindings, config variables (file-local) and tag color codes for a screenplay project. Org-mode's HTML output was way off from what I wanted, so I hacked up a CLI filter, in a language I know better than Elisp. From HTML it's easy to get to PDF, an industry-standard format.
- trhr 4y ago
  > I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that? It doesn't really do that though. It's not a relational database. You can't say, create a MainCharacterProfile document that then gets "attached" to certain scenes. The closest you can get is manually typing out "characters in this scene" and then manually hyperlinking to that document. Which won't update automatically if you were to remove that character from the scene. It's kind of a mess to use it like the marketing says you should. If it was relational, that'd be fuckin' dope. It's best to think about it as a combination of a filing cabinet, a typewriter, and a cork board. You can manually sort your filing cabinet, rearranging your scenes by page or by folder. You can type up new scenes and edit old ones. You can drag and drop things on your cork board. You can add labels and colored flags for filtering and sorting. But that's functionally it. The only things it writes to disk are rtf docs. No library or structured metadata or anything; just more rtf docs. It's honestly closer to "wordpad with tabs and folders" than anything else. I've been doing NaNoWriMo on most years since ~2011, and I think it's total garbage. Plus my editor always wants a word doc, so revisions after the draft just happen in Word anyway. I think there's a good chance I could convince them to read a LaTeX document though, maybe even teach them how to add comments. As a bonus, the word document that scrivener generates doesn't have all of my background and notes, but the LaTeX doc has them right in-line as comments, so I think the feedback would be more constructive in a lot of places.

medion 4y ago

I wrote a book in Scrivener - loved it, but when it came to prepping it for print and various ebook formats - what a total nightmare, I couldn’t get anything to distill how I needed - really needs basic functioning templates for print and Amazon KDP etc. I want to write books not get tangled up in the tech.

ramg 4y ago
I published my book via Scrivener - both print and ebook. I'll admit it wasn't straightforward but once I "learned" it, I saved that away as a template for my next book. There's a fair bit of customization and not very obvious how it works. I relied on the forums for hints/tips and even then it took some trial/error attempts. I'd say in total, I spent a full weekend figuring it out. I wonder how much of that memory is now lost and will need to be relearned when I publish my second book (template and all).
- medion 4y ago
  This has triggered a memory, whereby I had spent probably a similar amount of time getting a custom template done - then, by the time my book was finished, there was an upgrade and the template vanished/became unusable - and then the whole templating system seemed to have changed dramatically, and I didn’t have the energy to burn another 2-3 days re-learning it all… Anyway.

serf 4y ago

It occurs to me , reading these comments, that Windows/Linux are not really considered to be first class citizens by those who make publishing/authorship software. Scrivener Windows release trails far behind the Mac release, DevonThink is unavailable elsewhere outside Mac, Vellum is Mac only. Kind of a shame , no? I understand the whole 'Artists-skew-Apple' thing, but this type of software doesn't have a lot of valid reasons to lack portability to such an extent other than catering to specific markets. So, if you're an authorship/publishing software person, 'We're out there, and we'd love to use your software on PC.' .

kjksf 4y ago
- knock, knock - who is it? - Opportunity If you know how to program validated business ideas just fell into your lap. Make a Windows clone of DevonThink or Vellum. Better yet, make a Scrivener, DevonThink or Vellum clone as a web app. The technology is more than capable. But you won't do it. Your parents didn't have emerald mine so you couldn't possibly be successful. Also, Survivorship Bias!
- criddell 4y ago
  > make a […] web app I’d make a different recommendation. If you want it on Windows, make the best Windows app you can. Take advantage of all the APIs and features the platform has to offer. If you do a good job, you will make something faster and smaller that follows the platform conventions and is comfortable to use by other people like you. Right now I think the Mac has the healthiest ecosystem of interesting software from small developers. I’m excluding games - Windows and the three big consoles rule the games space. For personal software (like the titles you mentioned) Windows feels like it’s fading and Linux is doing what Linux has always done.
- evangow 4y ago
  I build marketing software for authors (called StoryOrigin if you want to look it up for credibility purposes), so I'm quite familiar with the space. Exactly what you've described is already out there: https://www.atticus.io/ https://www.atticus.io/ (released last year - I have no affiliation.)

themadturk 4y ago

Scrivener is great...I've used it on Mac, iOS and PC. But the proprietary file format and requirement to use Dropbox for syncing killed it for me. I could live with the proprietary format since it works on every platform I use, but I use Dropbox for literally nothing else anymore.

messe 4y ago
To be fair, the proprietary format is very transparent. It's a folder with a bunch of (IMO very readable and self-explanatory) XML with your writing stored as a RTF files further down the folder hierarchy. If I ever wanted to abandon scrivener, I think I could whip up a python script to convert it to a folder of markdown or LaTeX files per section pretty quickly. I have no concerns about losing my data to bit rot or the software no longer functioning on future computers. As for DropBox, yeah... that sucks; it's the only thing I use DropBox for nowadays too.
- themadturk 4y ago
  Ah, I'd actually forgotten the RTF files at the bottom of the folder hierarchy.

dbcooper 4y ago

Any recommendations for writing manuscripts for scientific journals?

klelatti 4y ago

> I guess I’m just lucky in that I enjoy what I do: getting to sit at home all day, making my own hours, coding an app I love and which is used by others to create novels and screenplays and other stuff - what more motivation do I need? I have to say that this gave me a very broad smile. It's fantastic that it's still possible to write an App like Scrivener solo or with a very small team.

syliconadder 4y ago

Scrivener is one of those app purchases that I highly value. I have written two screenplays on the Windows version of the app and though using First Draft is the industry standard, I like the ease of use of Scrivener. A lot of the features (even the corkboard) seem harder to grasp and I don't use them, but for playing around with chapters/sections and maintaining focus, it's one of the best writing apps I have used. (Other favorite is Zettlr, but that's another story)