Scrivener’s for Me

The right tool for the job -- but be careful!

Edvard Munch, The Scream, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When I first started working on this book in 2006, I took character and setting notes in longhand and wrote chapter files in Microsoft Word. Then I put the book in the proverbial drawer for more than a decade. When I restarted in earnest in the fall of 2022, there were two things that helped: The first was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)*, which gave me structure, community and a deadline, and the second was using a software program better suited than Word or Google Docs to the job of writing a novel.

I have my husband to thank for the latter. He’s great at researching software programs and he came up with a choice between industry-standard Scrivener or a newcomer (from 2018) called Living Writer. Living Writer’s reviews at the time noted its ease of use, while Scrivener reviews lauded its features but acknowledged a significant learning curve. With NanoWriMo starting in a week, I took what I thought would be the easy way out and signed up for Living Writer. Though I believe Living Writer now has a much more comprehensive offering, the 2022 version ended up being too light for me, so after November was over, I switched to Scrivener from Literature & Latte (great name, btw) and decided I would just learn how to use it.

That’s what I did and I’ve never looked back. Here’s 10 reasons why:

1. You can pick which kind of novel structure you want to use and it will set up your files to fit that. I chose the three-act structure. But it’s also easy to customize as you go. Since I ended up largely following Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! story structure (but through the lens of Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a YA Novel), it made sense to me to break Act 2 into Acts 2A and 2B.

2. One of the simplest but best features for me is being able to move my scene or chapter files around just by dragging the name up or down from the column on the left (what Scrivener calls the “Binder”). It also made it easy when I cut out my first (original) timeline, to compress the folder with ALL those chapter files, and then move it to the bottom of the Binder. (Can you sense my regret, still?🥺) I wanted it around for easy reference, but didn’t want it cluttering up the works.

3. Using the Scrivener tutorials, I found it straightforward to create scene, setting and character files, all of which are organized in the Binder. This saves time on a continual basis because while you’re working on a scene you can scroll down the left column to the character list and find the name of antagonist #2’s henchman, or the name of your planet’s other city that only gets mentioned a few times. These sorts of questions happen all the time.

4. Both the Character and Setting templates come pre-loaded with headings for most things you’d want – not only physical details but also story prompts for things you should know. What’s the character’s goal, role and internal and external conflicts? I deleted headings I didn’t need and added others, such as important historic events (for instance, my book’s Great War, 100 years earlier, or when humans were brought to the planet, many years before that).

5. Your text files can be viewed in three different ways, and for those who work better with a visual model, the Corkboard view lets you move your files around like index cards, which is immediately reflected in the Binder.

6. There are also options in the right-hand column of each scene file. The two I use regularly are the Synopsis and Notes boxes. Once you enter a brief synopsis of what the scene is about, it populates the Corkboard view. I also used this text in my Reverse Outline (since I’m a pantser and didn’t outline before I wrote the book). In the Notes box I list outstanding questions, things I need to fix or short outtakes I’m not ready to delete.

7. In addition to tutorials and a comprehensive manual from Literature & Latte, there are also lots of YouTube videos from independent sources (which often better answer specific questions), as well as a sub-Reddit (r/scrivener), with 9.6K weekly visitors and 171 weekly contributions (as of 3/29/26), so the options for getting your questions answered are plentiful if you’re willing to look. And if you know any other writers, chances are at least one of them is using Scrivener and can help you with your questions.

8. In addition to the standard Find and Replace in the file you’re working on, you can also do things like “Project Replace,” if you need to, say, change a character’s name throughout the entire manuscript. This is a huge timesaver – er, except when user error swoops in.**

9. I don’t know how to use all of its features and there’s no reason I should. When I need to know something – like how to compile and format my entire manuscript to send to the RevPit editing contest – then I look that up and find the answers. My suggestion is to look stuff up before you start trying things out, as I think I made it more difficult by accidentally changing some defaults standard for novels, and then had to figure out how to get those features turned back on. But going through that process, I learned how much customization you can do. I chose to prevent highlighted text from appearing, to have my last name and book title appear on the top right of each page, and have each chapter start on a new page.

10. And finally, at least as of March 2026, Scrivener is still a one-time purchase for $60*, not a subscription model. Having grown up with that model for purchasing software and being thrifty to begin with, this was a big incentive. It also suggests Literature & Latte is more about making their tool accessible to all, and that’s the kind of company I like to support.

In summary, having a tool like Scrivener has made the difficult and slow process of writing a novel immensely easier and faster. And I’m not getting any younger.

What experience have you had with choosing or tweaking the tools you use for your creative work to speed or improve the process? (Comment below)

Notes:

*NaNoWriMo was a writing challenge to finish a 50,000-word draft of a novel in the month of November. I participated in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and will write about my experiences (all good) in a future post. The nonprofit running it stopped operating in 2025, amid controversy and financial troubles. In November 2025, the basic structure and intent of the challenge was picked up and sponsored by ProWriting Aid, rebranded as Novel November.

** Scrivener’s Project Replace feature, which lets you find and replace a word in every element of your project, is awesome, but you DO need to be paying attention.

A few weeks ago I gave a heavy sigh and decided to finally change the first name of my main character from Xiao to Min, because Xiao was too hard to read and pronounce for non-Asian readers. I also wanted to change the name of the planet he lived on from Kapu to Lazvard (both having similar meanings having to do with the color blue), because I realized I didn’t like the way Kapu sounded. And “Kaputians,” referring to the people who live on the planet Kapu, sounded silly – like Lilliputians.***

I googled how to do a global find and replace in Scrivener, called Project Replace, which is exactly what I needed. So here’s what I did. I successfully changed every mention of my main character Xiao to his new name of Min. For my entire manuscript of 100,000+ words, it took only a few seconds. Breathtaking, really. I was quite proud of myself, especially since I did it without a consult or even hand-holding from my long-suffering tech advisor (aka, my husband).

So then I moved to change #2. Find every mention of Kapu (the planet) and replace it with the new name. I typed in Kapu, but in my self-satisfied glee, I forgot to type in what to replace Kapu with, and it took the word that was there from my last action.

I should note that a message comes up with each Project Replace transaction: Are you SURE you want to do this? Undo is not available for this action. I hit YES, and boom! In seconds I had renamed every mention of my planet to the new name of my main character – Min.

It may take you a few moments, as it did for me, to realize what that meant. I couldn’t change it back because I now had the planet and my main character called the same thing. So what did I have to do? I had to comb through my manuscript to find every mention of my planet and manually change it to Lazvard. Luckily, it was only multiple mentions in 31 files. (If only it had told me which files.)

Always remember this: Software can help you do smart things faster just as easily as it can help you do stupid things faster.

*** Lilliputians are the fictional little people (less than 6 inches tall) in Jonathan Swift’s political satire Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, and they are surely laughing at silly me now!