Book Review: Scrivener Superpowers: How to Use Cutting-Edge Software to Energize Your Creative Writing Practice

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Book Review: Scrivener Superpowers: How to Use Cutting-Edge Software to Energize Your Creative Writing Practice
(Last Updated On: February 10, 2020)

Over the past six months, I have been working on writing a book. The process was initially slow going but it has increased in pace due to a program called Scrivener. Scrivener is a wonderful program designed with the writing process in mind. However, Scrivener is not necessarily the most intuitive program. There are a lot of internal settings that must be adjusted. This is where Matt Herron’s book, Scrivener Superpowers: How to Use Cutting-Edge Software to Energize Your Creative Writing Practice, comes into play. In one reading, Herron helped me make sense of Scrivener leading to a published book.

Scrivener Superpowers is a Kindle book written and published with Scrivener. As I noted above, I was able to complete the book in one sitting. The book is arranged in four parts:

  • Introduction
  • Interviews with authors
  • How to write a story in Scrivener
  • Additional resources

Introduction

In the introduction, Herron discussed why he started to use Scrivener and its benefits. As Herron noted, Scrivener can be used to write a book, script, or article from conception to finished product. As a published author, he talked about struggles he had with writing and how Scrivener helped him work through the obstacles.

Interviewing Authors

While interviewing different authors who use Scrivener, it was interesting to see how each of them used Scrivener differently. Scrivner is versatile in terms of how you can write and the different products you can create. Scrivener will help you create ebooks, scripts, contracts, journal articles, printed books, etc. Many of the authors interviewed also have blogs and podcasts where they discuss writing and using Scrivener. The authors also commented on how to manage the writing process. Each of the authors provided me with ideas on how to manage my personal writing projects. Some of these ideas, I have already implemented.

How to Write a Story in Scrivner

The most useful part of Scrivener Superpowers was the section on how to write a story in Scrivener. Herron first provided a familiarization of Scrivener‘s interface as well as discussed templates. Templates are a framework for writing your story, script, article, etc. Herron has modified the fiction template and provided a link to his template, which you can install in Scrivener with readers. Herron provided a number of great ideas for setting up the Scrivener work environment. These changes are to the binder, menus and toolbars, and other Scrivener properties. Additionally, I now have a better understanding of how to effectively use the group and view modes.

Herron then went into detail on how to specifically use Scrivener to write a story through a demonstration. He explained how to set up the binder and the folders to include in the binder. He also explained how to use scenes as part of each folder. Additionally, he included ideas for developing complex story ideas. I certainly could have benefitted from this advice before I started writing.

Herron’s focus is on writing fiction but also included ideas for writing non-fiction. As he explained how to write a fiction story, he dove into how to develop character and setting sketches. Throughout the book, he provided images of examples including how he structured Scrivener Superpowers. Another process that I appreciated was how he storyboarded his novel. He explained how he used the corkboard feature to outline his story along with using the meta-data features. Herron provided a number of great ideas for writing a draft. The first important piece of advice is “Once you begin a draft, don’t stop.” As you are drafting your story, he explained how to use notes, comments, and annotations to help identify areas that need to be addressed in editing.

I am a metrics guy. I was pleased to see ideas for tracking progress and improving productivity. He also pointed to different resources for more information on increasing writing productivity.

In the next stage of the writing process—revision, Herron again included useful strategies. Perhaps the most important part of this section was the use of snapshots as a way of saving revisions of sections. When I get to this stage, I will be referring to this chapter for tips. He discussed the resolution of comments and annotations. Additionally, he provided ideas for getting a draft copy to editors and negotiating the recommended changes with Scrivener.

One of the most enlightening sections was compiling the final product. One thing I have been fussing over has been the actual look of my text while I have been writing. Actually, I do not need to worry about this. The compiling process works separately from the writing process and has its own set of rules for formatting. I can now focus on the act of writing. Herron walked through the various menu options. This is something I will have to experiment with in the future. Adjustments will have to be made for the different products you want to produce, e.g., print versus ebook.

Additional Resources

The last section of the book focused on additional resources. In this section, Herron included recommendations for books to read on how to boost writing productivity, templates for writing projects, and other recommended books on the writing process.

I am extremely pleased with this book. I can’t wait to sit down with Scrivener and make the tweaks I learned. If you are a writer or are interested in writing, I would strongly recommend Scrivener as a writing platform, and second. I would recommend reading Scrivener Superpowers before you started to write. Matt Herron, nice job!

Additional Reading


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