SimplyGold

Writing a book - or even a single short story or research paper - is about more than hammering away at the keys until done. Research, scrawling fragmentary ideas that don't seem to fit anywhere yet, collecting faded photos from old newspapers, shuffling index cards to find that elusive structure - most writing software is only fired up after much of the hard work is already done. Enter Scrivener: writing software that stays with you from that first, unformed idea all the way through to the first - or even final - draft. Outline and structure your ideas. Take notes. Storyboard your masterpiece using a powerful virtual corkboard. View research while you write. Track themes using keywords. Dynamically combine multiple scenes into a single text just to see how it fits. Scrivener has already been enthusiastically adopted by best-selling novelists and novices alike - whatever you write, grow your ideas in style.

Full Screen Mode

I don’t know how I, being the procrastinator extraordinaire that I am, lived before the advent of full screen text editors. I’ve become quiet adept at making the most reasonable-looking excuses to avoid real work. What do you mean I’m wasting time on Internet? I’m researching for my next American novel. Anyway: full screen mode is a gift from god. While it doesn’t hack into your Internet connection, it does hide everything else on your screen so all those little icons aren’t sitting there, beckoning you to come to them.

I recently stumbled upon its keyboard shortcut: ALT + CMD + F

Corkboard

The cork notice-board is one of the writer's most familiar tools. Before Scrivener, though, the index cards were not connected to anything other than ideas; any changes to the order on the corkboard would have to be replicated manually in the draft. In Scrivener, every document is attached to a virtual index card onto which you can jot a synopsis. Use the corkboard to shuffle these index cards around - which is instantly reflected in the structure of your draft.

I’ve only recently begun using the corkboard. Summarizing the article providers a great way to keep myself from rambling for hours on end (a great skill, to be sure, but I try to keep it in check because other people don’t seem to appreciate it). Changing the title on the index card changes the document’s actual title. You can move index cards (documents) around, order them in every permutation you can think of. And if you want to go to the document from the corkboard, double-click on the paper icon next to the title.

Snapshots

You can almost think of them as revisions and/or backups. For example, consider the article I’m writing. Instead of creating twenty different files to backup what I wrote (I have this nasty habit of starting over every five minutes), I can instead create snapshots. That way, when half an hour later I wish I hadn’t deleted those twenty pages, I can go back to take a look, and even rollback to the draft if I so feel like it.

Miscellaneous

1. Link files – web pages or internal Scrivener documents – by going to Text > Web Link or Text > Scrivener Link.
2. Jot down random thoughts in the scratchpad (Window > Show Scratch Pad).
3. Import and export
4. Label (File > Label & Status Setup) your documents as "Chapter," "Concept," "****"
5. Write notes (in the Inspector panel)
6. Keep all your research in one place (in the research section)
7. Give a word count goal for your project (View > Statistics > View Project Targets)
8. See statistics about word usage (View > Statistics > Project Statistics or Document Statistics)
9. Add keywords to each document to keep track of various things like concepts, characters, places, whatever
10. Write your screenplay in – wait for it – screenplay mode (Text > Mode > Screenplay)
11. Highlight your documents so important information stands out.
12. And much more!

Scrivener Gold

Scrivener Gold is a free edition of Scrivener (I know, usually it’s the other way around). You can get it from here. It doesn’t have all the features that Scrivener does (yeah, I know, you’re stunned about that this is the case) and its interface is very different.

Writeroom

Nothing more and nothing less than a text editor.

I love Writeroom (created by Hog Bay Software) and often write my main drafts in Writeroom before transffering the text to Scrivener. Everyone raves about the "Edit in Writeroom" plugin and I’ve been procrastinating on installing the plugin. I have this weird feeling that I personally won’t find any use in the plugin, so I’m avoiding trying it out.

To that end : do yourself a big favor and do NOT empty the Trash of your Scrivener project.