Writing a novel with Scrivener - David Hewson's new ebook

General Announcements
1

A lot of people seem to find the blog posts I’ve written about using Scrivener for my novels useful. Unfortunately as blog posts they become horribly disconnected over the years and naturally aren’t written in any logical order.

So after lots of requests I’ve put together an ebook about how I use Scrivener in writing fiction. It’s very personal, covers outlining, writing, revising and then delivering as manuscript or ebook. The book was, of course, written entirely in Scrivener and delivered to Kindle from a compile too.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive ‘how-to’ guide to Scrivener. It’s very much focused on writing and developing a full length novel, and there’s a free template that goes with it (which anyone can download whether you have the book or not). You can find more details on my web site here and links to the book on Amazon US and Amazon UK:

http://www.davidhewson.com/writing-a-novel-with-scrivener/

I hope this is of use to some of you anyway. Keith was, as ever, incredibly helpful when it came to writing it, though any errors or omissions are entirely my own. I discovered quite a few new things about Scrivener along the way too.

For the record I’ve been using Scrivener since shortly after it first came out (2007 or so?). I’ve written five or six published novels in it (you stop counting after a while). The latest, The Fallen Angel, has a winding, quite sneaky narrative, one I don’t know I could have developed and managed easily in anything else. It seems to be going down well judging by the reviews http://www.davidhewson.com

So I hope this helps both users and in spreading the word about Keith’s amazing creation. If you have questions directly related to the book can I suggest you ask them on the new ‘ask a question’ bit on my web site which has just gone up for this purpose? It’s at http://www.davidhewson.com/questions/

That way they will be there in one place and people can chip in too. I’ll endeavour to get round to them when I’m not writing.

Thanks again, Keith. Now back to the book for 2013…

2

A really excellent idea. Bought it. I look forward to seeing what I can learn.

3

Hi,

Ditto

Giovanni

4

And Me. Looks good will adapt my learnings for the windows Scrivener

5

Was wondering if there will be an iBooks version?

Thanks
Phil

6

No sorry. It’s not practical to publish directly to iBooks from the UK. I’d need to buy a pointless and very expensive US ISBN for one thing. And if I used Smashwords I’d have to reformat the entire thing as a coded Word doc. Ibooks looks very unattractive from here

7

Right! Gorrit! Cant find the Idiots’ Guide to, ‘Writing a novel with Scrivener’,though. Suppose I’ll have to pay another four quid for that as well! Jeeez!

8

That’s a work in progress! Seriously … if I could find an easy way to get it on ibooks I’d do it

9

I bet y’ would! You pros don’t miss a trick. tch!tch!
Oh, by the way, I read ‘Garden of Evil’ a short while back. Loved it! Will we be seeing more of Sister Thingy, the art expert. I thought the character had an awful lot of potential.
Vic

10

Thanks for the answer.

Bought it from Amazon.

Phil

11

Thank you! Trust me - if I could get it on iBooks easily I would. But it’s a nightmare. I must blog on this at some stage because there’s a lot to say. Kindle is so very easy once you’ve set up an Amazon account and given them your US Tax Identification Number (which I had already). I uploaded the book on Thursday and it was online Friday.

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Vic - ‘Sister Thingie’, who I know as Agata Graziano, reappears in a big way in the new book The Fallen Angel. She’s not the sort of woman to stay away.

13

Cheers guys!!!

Another load of crime fiction books I have to download to my kindle and read, just when I thought I was ready to write my own novel!

14

For anyone thinking of going down the epub route here are my reasons for not being on iBooks. Wish it were otherwise but it ain’t as far as I can see…

davidhewson.com/blog/2011/5/ … books.html

15

Hi David.

Thanks for the lesson in “How to sell an ebook”. :slight_smile:
I got one, too.

Franz

16

Well I’m a dead newcomer to all this Franz. I’m sure others can do it a lot better than I can. Thanks for the sale!

17

Apple has not been as enterprising as Amazon in the epub market.
If you want to read a Kindle book on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac lap/desk top,
Just install the Kindle for Mac app on those devices.
You may access the same library and archive on all of them.

18

Absolutely agree. I gather sales for individual authors through iBooks are low too. Amazon are winning that battle. Wish there was more competion myself…

19

I am loving this book - er-- ebook. Thank you, David! I’m 57% of the way through. GRIN.

I’'m pretty familiar with the original Scriv, but I haven’t had much opportunity to explore Scriv 2.0, so this is a welcome introduction. But what I’ve found even more helpful is the built-in scalpel factor - as a novelist, your counsel to use what’s useful and resist the rest is invaluable for me. I am easily led down the rabbit hole, and there is no carrot quite so tempting as the plethora of bells and whistles Keith has created for us. It’s far too easy to get lost in experimentation and play when the full screen mode with no additions would be serving my original intentions (I.e. get that story out of my head and onto the screen) so much more effectively.

Of course, the guide itself is a fair distraction, but an entirely useful one.

Many thanks again. Excellent piece.

20

You’re welcome. Glad it’s useful. I wasn’t trying to do an alternative version of the already=excellent manual. More to show how I work with it on my novels. Focus is essential it seems to me because Scrivener is an incredibly powerful tool. It’s important to work out the parts you want and ignre the rest.

Scrivener 2.0 is a huge step forward from the original version. I’m still learning.