A one-tool toolbox?

Scrivener
1

In a thread in a different forum, a discussion has been going on about how to reimport from Word back into Scrivener in order to do final corrections there. I raised a note of puzzlement about why one would use Scrivener for this purpose, rather than just doing it in Word, where it’s going to end up anyway. I found that the original poster is not the only one who uses Scrivener in this way. So I thought I’d try to satisfy my curiosity by posting a question on this topic here.

It seems to me that between me on the one end and some of the folks in that other thread there may be a difference of approach concerning tool usage. I like using several specialized tools, passing information from one to the other as needed. I don’t expect one tool to meet all my needs. Thus I gather some information and also jot down ideas wherever I am in Evernote. This gets transferred into Scrivener, where also some information is placed without recourse to Evernote. In Scrivener I organize topics, information, and ideas, and create partial drafts that also get organized there. I use the Research folder extensively, the Draft folder much less so; and I’ve yet to compile anything. For the actual work of writing and polishing I transfer from Scrivener into Nota Bene, which is specifically designed for the kind of academic work that I do. In this way, each software package does what it does best, and I can work to the top of my capacity without overburdening the capacity of any of my tools. The disadvantage, of course, is a more complicated workflow, as well as having bits and pieces in various programs. Of course, there’s a monetary cost factor as well.

Others seem to prefer to work from a one-tool toolbox, for instance getting Scrivener to serve not only for organizing information but for producing a final document as well. I’m also active on the Evernote user forums, and I see a lot of this one-tool-for-everything approach there. People actually write books using Evernote alone, which strikes me as a horrifying way of making one’s work harder than it needs to be. (They also complain bitterly that Evernote, which was never designed for this, doesn’t work the way they want it to.) Yet I’m sure that the people who do this find it a simpler approach compared with transferring data from program to program.

So, what do others think, especially those who use Scriv for everything? I hope I’ve presented that position fairly, though I know it’s far from completely. Is this really a difference in the way people approach their tools, or am I making it up?

2

I prefer the one toolbox approach, with Scrivener at the centre of my workflow, but when there are things that Scrivener can’t do I get other programs on board.

I started to use Scrivener to write screenplays. I have learned to use the various tools to do almost everything I want now, from initial research to brainstorming story to writing a finished script. The only thing Scrivener can’t do for me is tell me my page count - I have to export to Final Draft for that.

I just finished writing the book and exhibition panels for an art exhibition in Scrivener. Research - structuring content - writing text - and then compiled to an .rtf for sending off to a designer along with some page mock-ups done in Powerpoint, and a budget in Excel.

I run a separate Scrivener project as a Masterlist of projects / brainstorming ideas / early notes, and another as a place to analyse other stories and scripts.

I’d like Scriv to do more (eg number my screenplay pages) but there are detailed explanations from the designers on the forum about why that isn’t a good idea for Scriv, which I accept. I’d really like better tables and a more flexible corkboard - which I live in hope are coming with the upgrade.

I suppose the interesting transition for me has been that before I started using Scrivener I regarded the Windows folder containing a load of .doc. xls and .ppt files as the ‘core’ location for a project. Now my Scrivener file is the core location, and if there is still a Windows folder as well, it is a supporting depository for related stuff.

3

I think there are too many different use cases out there to generalize.

I once wrote a technical paper with contributions from six different people at four different companies, all of whom independently sent me Word files with their proposed changes to the draft. Some of which contradicted each other. I reconciled the different versions by accepting all the changes in Word, and importing all six revised drafts back into Scrivener.

On another project, I was combining text with very extensive tables based on a spreadsheet model in Excel. For that one, I exported all of the text from Scrivener to Word, incorporated the tables there, and did all further discussions with the editor via Word.

My most common workflow involves collecting extensive written research materials in DevonThink Pro, putting interview notes and research notes in Scrivener, and doing essentially all of the organization, drafting, and editing work in Scrivener. (With occasional detours to Scapple.) But that’s a new approach, as only with the combination of iOS Scrivener and an iPad Mini did Scrivener become an appropriate tool for in-person interviews. Before that, I did a lot of notetaking on paper, and a lot of organizing on (paper) index cards.

Katherine

4

vi vs. emacs.

5

Interesting replies, simeva and Katherine. (devinganger, I’m sorry, perhaps I live in a cave, but yours is completely opaque to me.) I probably need to learn more about some of the capabilities of Scrivener that I haven’t used extensively. Another fact is that people use Scriv for all kinds of projects, from screenplays to novels to nonfiction essays to scholarship, and each of these kinds of undertakings has its own reasons for using or not using other tools.

6

I wouldn’t wish vi on my evil aunt!

DavidR, vi is a text editor from 1976 and… well, long story short it’s the best text editor ever created and it’s an actual nightmare. To truly grasp what vi is, imagine a… actually, here’s a picture. Click for picture.

The main body of that text is a small program that spits out a text line “hello world” when it’s run, but that’s irrelevant here. Where it says “:w” on the very bottom line is the way you interact with vi. That bottom line isn’t part of the text, it’s the command line.

Example, to make the program say something instead of Hello World. Type “i” into the command line and press enter to begin Insert mode. You can now use the cursers to go up and down, left and right like in notepad. When you type, it’s as if the Insert key is pressed. Once you’ve replaced the words “Hello World” with “Greetings!” you would hit Escape to exit insert mode, to reactivate the command line. The command “:w” would then write over the file with the current contents, saving your changes. You could also type ":wq: to save and then exit the vi editor, returning to dos.

It’s… um… Well it’s actually quite elegant given how truly ancient it is, it’s just old and fussy and a nightmare and still relevant today.

7

And then there is emacs, the ultimately kitchen sink. Emacs proponents proudly proclaim that emacs is their operating system, with Linux as its single device driver.

I love vi. I used barely 10% of its command interface, and at that, could edit rings around my co-workers of the time.

8

vi was WORLDS better than ed or edlin from MS-DOS. More importantly, most major Unix variants had a statically-linked version of vi in /sbin so you could use it in single-user mode when /usr and all your dynamic linked libraries were offline. Anything that kept me from having to use ed.

The nightmare was trying to figure out how the hell to get out of whatever messed-up emacs mode you happened to be.

9

Thanks, Devin and Milo. I’ve never used a Unix system (or even Linux), so I guess I’ve missed out. I did use edlin. Just saying the word makes me want a drink. (And I don’t drink.)

10

I agree with the first part: Vi (well Vim*) is wonderful. Compared to it, all other text input systems feel dumbed down and inefficient: there is nothing better for writing and editing large amounts of text as efficiently as possible.

There are a few of us of this forum who now and then beg Keith to implement a full vim clone inside Scrivener… So far he’s resisted. I can’t think why. :slight_smile:

DavidR: Emacs and Vim work very well on Mac Sierra and it’s possible to get them to work on Windows as well. You don’t need Linux.

  • Even better, Evil (Vim inside Emacs).
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You are a horrible person. It is because of people like you that this reality can’t have anything nice.

12

Blasphemer.

Vim just needs a decent operating system. Emacs just needs a decent text editor. Evil brings them both together and makes the world a better place.

13

Emacs needs sustainable nuclear fusion.

14

Respectfully, I think you are over-simplifying and mis-stating the desire for a single, consolidated writing tool. I like using specialized tools, too. I also do not expect one tool to meet all my needs.

I don’t expect Scrivener to have the greatest grammar checker, or research coordinator, or time and budget tracker, or any number of other conceivable and real supplementary packages. But, I don’t think that’s what folks are asking for. I’m certainly not.

But, I can easily see how and why one would want to maintain a single, core document project, with revisions from collaborators somehow brought back into the home project. Scrivener is not an everything tool. But, it is a very good structuring and writing tool. It is also very good at compiling to other formats. It is completely understandable that some folks might like to keep this single-source writing tool under one roof.

Single-sourcing makes sense in several scenarios, such as with documents that are updated regularly or frequently, and documents for which polishing and prettifying is not the end of the line. And certainly, not having to remember which app has the latest revision of a particular project, and not having to remember that the place where one does the vast majority of his or her time, in Scrivener, does not contain the latest version, makes life beautifully simple compared to the alternative.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me, David. I recognize that using this single-source workflow model, many of these revision mergings may just have to be done by hand. I am not advocating that Scrivener should do them all for me magically. Of course, any tasks that Scrivener can automate in this regard will make me drop to my knees in gratitude.

So, I am not arguing that Scrivener should be a one-tool-fits-all solution for all my needs. I’m merely responding to your request for understanding why some folks might like to bring revisions back into their Scrivener projects. Thanks for asking.

15

writemood, this was awhile back, and I’ve pretty much lost the thread. As I said on that other post that I referenced at the beginning of this thread, I don’t do a lot of collaboration, and so I simply haven’t encountered the need that you’re discussing. Thanks for your response (I was out of town for a week).

16

I also use Scrivener for academic writing. For me, it would depend on what final corrections consist of precisely, and how long the manuscript is. If it’s only polishing (phrasing, perhaps some additional details and references) I’d do it in word. As soon as any tampering with the structure is involved, I’d definitely want to get the manuscript back into scrivener, because Word is horrible for that sort of thing. Especially if we’re talking about a book-length manuscript here.
I know this thread is somewhat old - but as a fellow academic, my perspective is that all that word is ok at is… track changes (although that can get unstable) and using a file format that my colleagues can read. I don’t use Scrivener for everything, though; my ‘bucket’ for information is Evernote, I manage references in Bookends… etc.

17

Excellent question and thread. Scrivener has gradually expanded to consume more and more of my writing world.
• Long form writing. At first, I used Scrivener primarily to write my nonfiction book and long form literary journalism, where its unparalleled ability to organize smaller chunks of info into bigger structures was most valuable.

• Short form journalism. When the iOS version came out, I found to my surprise that I wanted to use my iPad Pro for shorter journalistic stories I create each day, and as Scrivener is even more comfortable to use than my previous writing apps for that task, Pages or iAWriter, providing basic two-level outlining that’s useful in almost all my writing, I’ve recently moved that journalism into Scrivener as well.

• Note taking, I tend to use iAWriter (I suppose I could use Apple’s Notes and/or TextEdit, but since I already have iAWriter, which I used to use a lot more before iOS Scrivener, why not use it? ) and then import those notes into a Scrivener project.

• Research storage & organizing. I long resisted using Scrivener for organizing info tidbits that don’t belong to a specific project, first using DevonNote and then (when Spotlight improved) the Finder/Dropbox for that purpose, later importing the notes into the appropriate Scrivener project. But that’s changing too. Most of my daily short journalism work now relies on the same set of constantly arriving notes (press releases and research), used in different stories. Those might be text files, pdfs, rtf or .doc files. Even with iOS 11 and Files, I find it more comfortable to just import them all from Safari or Mail or Spark into the Research section of a single continuing Scrivener database that contains all the info I’m currently using in daily or weekly projects. That way I have all the info in one place, including previous stories that I might re-use in other publications. And its easier to organize on screen than using Finder/Files/Dropbox plus Pages or IAWriter. I just love writing in Scrivener!

For now, I’m still importing research into the Finder/Dropbox as well (where they show up as TextEdit files or PDFs) but I may soon eliminate that step and just start importing all incoming info destined for my daily short journalism directly into that continuing Scrivener database. (Note: to keep that project from swelling, I trash the Research files when I know I won’t need them again.) It somehow seems a little easier to get info from Mail and Safari into Dropbox.

It would be really helpful if I could clip info directly from emails (both the body and attachments) and the web directly into that Scrivener project on iOS — using the Share menu from the source app, not Scrivener. At the moment, I mostly have to use copy and paste or drag and drop. Maybe I should note that request in the wish list forum, although maybe that’s something that has to be handled by the developers of Safari, Mail and Spark?

I wish I could use Scrivener for all writing, but I still have to rely on other writing apps for some of my work.

• Web publishing. For posting on the journalism website I help direct, I paste directly from Scrivener into the WordPress editor and then add images, keywords, batch-transform rtf style characters and to WordPress’s and , etc. I realize I could save a little time by writing in Scrivener and exporting into Markdown, and I’d appreciate any advice on that score, but really, the WordPress prep time is minimal in our usage.

• Editing/Collaboration: Pages and Google Docs are the easiest way to track changes and leave comments on stories I’m editing. When I write stories myself that require editing or sharing, they usually start in Scrivener and then are imported into Google Docs or exported as .doc or rtf files and emailed to editors directly from Scrivener. I barely use Pages these days, now that I don’t need to use footnotes as I did while writing my book. (I also have the free version of Word on my iPad Pro, but Pages seemed easier for handling .doc and rtf files.)

It still seems so silly to use so many applications (Pages, Google Docs, iAWriter, TextEdit ) for what are essentially the same functions, writing and editing, and I hope to pare even further eventually. But for now, the best tool for the job of writing about 90% of my work is Scrivener. Someday maybe it’ll be only Scrivener and Notes, or just Scrivener including a general Notes depository project. Hmm…
18

What, no love here for the great DEC text editors like EDT and KED? My first few published pieces were created with EDT. I believe my fingers still remember the keypad shortcuts.

Scrivener’s my main tool, because it suits the way I work perfectly. Not long ago I wrote a 8500 word piece that had about a dozen named sections that didn’t need to be in chronological order. Everyone here knows the joy of Scrivener rearrangement, so I won’t go on and on about how easily I moved my sections around, trying different orders.

However, like most writers, at some point I have to send Word documents around for comments, and most of my writer friends use Track Changes to make those comments. When it’s time to deal with suggested changes and/or comments, I shrink my Scrivener window to about half my 27" screen and put the Word document up so I can see them both and either correct by typing into Scrivener, or by copy/pasting from Word.

For me, it’s all about what tool I’m comfortable (and adept) with, and which one seems appropriate to the task at hand. When I was writing that 8500 word piece in Scrivener, I didn’t do much careful formatting (it had texts and interview transcripts, for example, that needed to look distinctive). I don’t make much use of Scrivener’s formatting tools because I never felt the need to, beyond basic stuff. I do the final formatting in Word (not that there’s usually very much to do).

When I was preparing that piece for submission I exported it from Scrivener and then faced the task of doing more formatting in Word than I was used to. So, because I design books on the side, I imported the Word document into InDesign and did all my final formatting there, and exported a PDF and submitted that.

My point is that for me at least, I select a tool because I’m comfortable in it and am adept at certain operations in that tool (and not in others). A Word expert would have had no trouble doing my final formatting, but I’m not a Word expert. I judged it not worth the hassle of learning to do some things I wasn’t sure how to do. I’m an InDesign guy, so I did it there.

And how did I get my final back into Scrivener, so as to synch all my versions? Copy/paste from InDesign.

For me, Scrivener is my single creative tool and I couldn’t do without it. But I’m content with doing the other writing-business tasks using other tools.