I have recently started a biography after thinking about writing a piece of creative fiction for about 20-years. When someone suggested that I write a biography, it finally occurred to me that it was exactly the style in which I should write. I’m a terrible creative writer. Sometimes, what you are looking for is right in front of you.
I’m mostly posting these comments because I have yet to find any other posts about biographies and I am curious to know if there are others in this forum engaged in the same genre.
Looking forward to more interaction with all of you.
Hey Ross.
I must admit I was curious whether anyone was writing in the autobiography/biography style in Scrivener.
I started writing by writing an autobiography for my son in Apple Pages (which ended up 90,000 words). I then decided I enjoyed writing and ended up doing a number of short stories, a novel and the plan for a number of other novels. All in Scrivener.
But the original autobiography still remains in Pages.
I was wondering if anyone uses Scrivener for diary writing or autobiographical writing.
I cant answer your question but am also wondering if people use it for other purposes than Fiction? I know they do, but wondering how they set it up.
I started writing a memoir (mini biography) for two years of my life. I’m only about 1/4 of the way through it. I am using Word but I’m thinking of transitioning to Scrivener - that it will be a better tool…especially in the area of previous versions and research areas. I have about 20,000 words and I need to better organize the chapters and stubs for new sections. I’m hoping that some of Scrivener features will make it easier for the transition from section to section gets better. If the 30-day trial goes well, I’ll be subscribing.
What I’ve read about memoirs/biographies is that there is no genre for them. It really depends on what you’re writing about. For example: If your biography is about your early life, then it might be a coming-of-age story.
Mine is about my military experience after leaving home - but not war. It might be considered an over-coming obstacles story.
I think you’ll find the Binder a great aid to visualizing your work’s structure.
Scrivener has a fundamentally different philosophy from Word, so be sure to work through at least The Basics section of the Tutorial (Help > Interactive Tutorial). This will likely save you some frustration.
If you have any questions about anything Scrivener, create a new thread and post your question in these forums. Lots of very helpful customers and L&L support staff hang out here.
L&L charges a one-time purchase price for Scrivener–it’s not a subscription model. (When L&L rolls out major upgrades (v1 → v2 → v3, etc) there is an upgrade fee, but these are “from the ground up” rewrites and they’re very few and far between.)
