I and a friend use something of a “non-conformist” approach, since Scrivener does not support the “track changes” word-processing feature. (Incidentally, I write Sci-Fi; he’s writing a ‘life experience’ novel.)
Both of us write in ‘plain text’ using markdown codes. I do it in Scrivener; he uses TextWrangler; we both use Macs. (Doesn’t matter. It works just as well in Win or Linux.) I serve as copy and proofing editor for my friend. Here’s our process.
He drafts a chapter in markdown-formatted plain text, using a text editor. He drops it into a shared folder in DropBox.
I open a LibreOffice .odt file, and ‘import’ his text in, and save the new file as ‘ChapXX edited.odt’
(NOTE: This could just as easily be in Word and .doc format; no difference, really.)
I make the editing changes using the “track changes” feature, and add editor’s comments where needed. I then send this edited chapter in (.odt) or (.doc) format back to dropbox. He opens it in (LibreOffice) (Word), reviews my edits, growls & grumbles, and accepts/rejects changes. When done, he then does a ‘save-as’ to output a text version of the revised file. In his case, the revised ‘ChapXX.md.txt’ file is then posted directly to a story site, which converts it to HTML. (Or doc or odt or rtf or epub … markdown is a master for many publishing formats!)
NO FORMATTING OR STRUCTURE IS LOST DURING THE EXCHANGE!
All the chapter, section, sub-section, bold, italic, blockquote, dividers, are preserved in the text, and are never lost during the transition to ODT/DOC and back again to TEXT.
Why do this? Because it is the only way we’ve found to easily & simply maintain our manuscript in Scrivener, send the draft to an editor to make changes and comments, get it back, accept & reject, and then run that back into Scrivener to preserve a continually updated master manuscript. All that’s involved is a simple copy/paste, and a ‘save as’ step to convert from .txt to .odt/.doc … and back from .odt/.doc to .txt for the new version.
One other wrinkle: In the manuscript binder, I preserve the original chapter, and when I get the revised chapter back, I make a new binder entry for the revised chapter. So I can have “Chap01.md.txt, Chap01-edit1.md.txt, Chap01-edit2.md.txt”
The only effort in this process is at the author’s end: copy/paste the Scrivener-drafted markdown-text into a Word doc; and then when the Word doc comes back, dealing with the edits right there in the .doc file, and then … exporting the .doc file as a .txt file, and copy/paste that back into Scrivener.
The editor simply needs to recognize the unique markdown codes you’ve added, which DO NOT interfere with readability, and take care not to strip them out. Simple. Can you type Tsu’niach Explorer for ‘italic’ and Oh my Gosh! for bold? Or # My Big Book for a title, or ## Chapter One for a chapter heading, or ### Futile Exchange for a subheading? How long does it take one to learn to write in markdown? About five minutes. It’s actually faster than entering all the control formatting codes, for a good touch typist. Look it up.
I routinely take a total manuscript in markdown text and run it directly into Calibre for a one-step conversion to produce an ePub book that needs only a meta-data tweak and a cover added. Or a complete .odt/.doc manuscript. Or HTML. Or …
It’s powerful, simple, and the damnable internal word processor codes for bold, italic, etc. never get lost. One extra benefit: text files are forever. They don’t go obsolete and get lost. Markdown has become ubiquitous.There’ll always be a converter,so there’s no reason to ever lose a manuscript to digital rot.