I made a terrible mistake: I used scrivener to compose an essay, and it’s so difficult to use that I have to look up how-tos on everything from footnote formatting to figuring out how to make the display have enough differentiation for me to see.
I have 2000 words, and when i compile it, paragraphs are broken out across 2-3 pages. I can’t figure out how to just … embed a picture without the software burping out garbage all around it for pages.
My essay is now late, and I’m going to have to copy everything into Word and start from scratch, because I have spent more time looking up what should be really basic formatting steps than I have researching and writing the paper. Waste of money, waste of time. If your software user manual rivals War and Peace in length, your software is not user friendly.
Hello. In order for someone to help you, you should have more specific information. It may be an improper configuration. The ease of use is quite relative. For me, as an advanced user and programming student, it took me a couple of hours to know how to use all the functions of Scrivener. And if something is not clear, the manual explains it well. You have to be patient. 2000 words for an essay is almost nothing. Even if it contains advanced formatting you can always copy and paste.
Regards.
I can empathise, when I think back to my first encounters with Scrivener.
Initially, I found the software to be quite unintuitive to use, and I was very frustrated, and I still think that it is not a tool that you can expect to be able to use immediately.
However, Adrlopgal makes some good points when he writes that the ease of use of Scrivener is relative, and that prep (becoming familiar with Scrivener), and reading the manual - plus other strategies I mention below - can help a lot.
Once I had made up my mind to make an effort to really get to know the program (and it took me longer than Adrlopgal), my experience of Scrivener changed completely, and I now cannot function without it.
I use Scrivener for fiction, and many non-fiction projects, including using it as a kind of low-level database.
I really would suggest watching the tutorials here on the L and L website, asking questions on the forums, watching Youtube videos, and reading articles, in order to familiarise yourself with the way Scrivener works.
I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
All the best.
Yes, you did. You should never switch to new software with an imminent deadline. Never. Even if you are told that this new software is the best writing application there is. Because new means different—if it were not different, then switching would be superflous—and you have to learn the new first. Learning takes time and is best done playfully and without pressure. Spending time on something other than writing with a deadline increases the pressure immensely.
In some respects, Scrivener is very different from word processors like Word. So it will take a bit more time than switching to, say, LibreOffice, which is very similar to Word.
Is it worth learning Scrivener? Yes, it is. In my opinion, you won’t find a better software for writing long texts, academic papers and research-heavy texts. Once you understand how it works, you will find how great and actually time-saving working with Scrivener is.
To get there, the tutorial is the best place to start, not War and Peace, pt. II. And this online community will be at your side when you need it.
So I recommend that you give Scrivener another try—when you are ready.
I would also suggest that it’s partly a question of choosing the right tool for the job. I have written three academic books in Scrivener and wouldn’t use anything else, but for everyday, short documents (letters, reports and policies, etc.) I use Word; Scrivener feels like overkill, especially since I don’t have to refer to lots of research notes.
And even with books, I always give the final, compiled ms a polish using Word (I just know it so well that its formatting options seems more intuitive than Scrivener’s. Plus Scriv doesn’t fully support the bibliographic software I rely on.)