Scrivener and WriMo

Literature & Writing NaNo Materials
1

I don’t know if this is more a ‘feedback’ type of message, or something related to NanoWriMo, so excuse me if this is the wrong place for this message.

Scrivener has been developed with the WriMo in mind, so it should not come as a surprise, if I discover how fast it is writing with it in such a contest. But as of now, I’ve used it for previously structured texts, with a series of research materials relevant to the igniting topic.

Now, I’ve enrolled for the WriMo. We are requested to write fast and as much text as we can, with just a vague idea of the plot in mind. So, the structure is something slipping in the background, with the foreground crowded with springing ideas that might eventually be of use in the final work.

Scrivener is proving excellent and very robust in this situation. During this first day, I find myself jockeying short fragments around, maybe grouping them under other documents, or under dedicated folders. And I do this at the speed of light, since I’m not preventing any idea, any intuition to take its shape in an endless series of experiments.

I could finally really appreciate the difference between folders and groups of documents. The latter being excellent for grouping pieces pertaining to the same scene, but in need of a separate treatment for still some time, without dramatically breaking the flow into separate folders.

Folders, on the other side, are great to put apart any subplot, as far as they spring out. They stay away of the main plot, but sit in the same ‘scrivening’ – or complete story.

I could also greatly appreciate how easy it is to let Scrivener count all the words in several documents (by selecting them in the binder, and activating the Edit Scrivening mode). And label do a great job of helping me quickly locate documents written today, documents waiting for a serious revision, and (within a few days) completed scenes.

So, thank you, again, Keith, for writing the right app for this complex task. I already completed a long article with it, now it is time to complete a novel…

Hu, and did I say I completed the first lot of 1,700 words during the first three hours?

Paolo

2

Another quick way to get the word count of a group of documents is to select them all in the Binder, and then just use the Project statistics (Cmd-Opt-Shift-S) and utilise the “Selection” section. The nice thing about this method is that if you have a lot of annotation in there, it will subtract that from the word count. The Edit Scrivenings method counts everything, including annotations, footnotes, and accidentally included non-exporting documents. When I was doing Nano, I found that I would annotate a lot because I would have an idea about what to write next, but did not want to leave the current context that I was currently writing in. At a more leisurely pace, it would be better to make a ‘stub’ card and place it appropriately, but when working under a tight deadline, I’d rather just put the idea down where I’m already typing and come back to it later. The ability to “label” annotations and then search for them by that label later: Priceless.

Good luck to everyone competing this month! :slight_smile:

3

Good idea, Amber. I usually put my plot into some sheets inserted between the narrative documents, so by turning their content to annotations I can simply select the whole draft.
Paolo

4

I did it!
I just worte the word ‘caffellatte’, i.e., ‘latte’, in my WriMo draft!
Ok, back to writing. That scene requires some more sugar in the latte…

paolo