Scrivener 3 For Windows: From Beginner to Published Author

Scrivener V3 For Windows

From Beginner to Published Author

Robert Roughton

Disclaimer:

While every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this book is current and accurate the author and the developers of Scrivener software shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by readers as a result of any information contained herein.

Dedication:

Thanks to my critical friends and beta reviewers for pointing out the inevitable errors that slipped past my editing and for making great suggestions to improve readability.

Thanks also to the incredible team at L&L. Without their dedication we would not have this amazing program.

Copyright © 2020 Robert Roughton.

Copyright © Avro RJ 85 Photo Pier Francesco Baglivo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be sold, altered or reproduced in any form, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, apart from short quotation for the purposes of review, without the author's express written permission.

Scrivener and the Scrivener Logo are trademarks of Literature and Latté Ltd.

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All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

FIRST STEPS

Welcome to this tutorial book on the new Scrivener V3 for Windows.

A Little Background

Scrivener was initially developed by English author Keith Blount when he could not find a program to organize his writing the way he wanted. Over the years Scrivener has built a deserved reputation as one of the best programs available for long form writing.

Though in his own words, a ’wannabe novelist’ with his own vision of what he wants in Scrivener, Keith has responded to input from users and developed Scrivener to cover fiction and non-fiction, screenwriting and poetry. In my own experience of Scrivener, I have found it useful for novels, non-fiction, university assignments, and blogging.

Initially developed on Mac and intended to remain only on that platform, Keith was approached in 2008 by Lee, who was studying a Master of Science in Software Engineering at Oxford University. Lee, had found Scrivener useful for his dissertation and fiction writing but was not happy at having to buy a Mac for this one piece of software.

In his initial approach he asked if there were plans for a Windows version, to which Keith responded there were not.

Over almost a year Lee pushed the concept of a Windows version, offering to undertake the development. Keith finally agreed and the process of developing Scrivener for Windows began.

In Lee’s own words, he did not appreciate the power and complexity Keith had programmed beneath Scrivener’s deceptively simple interface. Over several years, the first version of Scrivener for Windows was developed and released, by that time well behind the ever improving Scrivener for Mac. Tiho joined as the second member of the Windows development team and development of Scrivener for Windows 3 was announced.

Lee and Tiho have chased the ever moving target that is Scrivener V3 for Mac, developing the underlying structure of the Windows version and adding each new V3 Mac feature to the list of required functionality.

For those writers who languished on Scrivener 1 for Windows since late 2017 while they watched the many additional features available to the Mac community, the wait has been long and the Literature and Latté Windows beta forum has been the scene of many ‘are we there yet?’ appeals.

Windows does not include many of the development aids built in to MacOS, resulting in Lee and Tiho having to develop Scrivener 3 for Windows from the ground up with third party development tools, adding to their challenge.

As an example, with the inbuilt Mac tools, it is possible to have the help menu search point to the menu item you need and allow you to click on that item to select per the Scrivener 3 For Mac example below.

No such development tools exist within Windows, and while the team have not achieved exactly the same look and functionality, Lee and Tiho have achieved something extremely close, and what’s more something I have yet to see in any other Windows program, including from Microsoft or other cross platform applications such as the Affinity suite of apps.

This is a major achievement, indicative of their commitment to developing the best application possible within the limits of available development tools.

With the release of Scrivener for Windows V3 Literature and Latte, have provided writers with a modern, full featured writing platform on par with Scrivener 3 for Mac. Of major importance, the Scrivener project files on both Mac and Windows V3 versions are now fully compatible.

💡If you also write with Scrivener for Mac, I have also released a book covering that version. While the content is much the same as this book, screenshots and menu selections relate to V3 for Mac.

The Aim of This Book

This Scrivener V3 For Windows book is focused on authors wishing to write with the recently released Scrivener Version 3 For Windows. While I shan’t attempt to teach you how to write, I’ll guide you through the Scrivener process focusing on the main points supported by images wherever possible.

I aim to take you from a beginner with little or no Scrivener experience to self-publishing your first book with Amazon, Apple, and other eBook publishers, or submitting a manuscript to an agent or publisher.

But Scrivener is hard to learn!

You may have heard Scrivener is difficult to learn. Forget that.

Scrivener is very easy to learn for the basic tasks needed to write and self-publish or submit a book. Yes, it has very powerful features under the hood. Like large programs such as Word and Excel, many Scrivener users never explore the most sophisticated features. There is a learning curve to obtain the most from the program. However, you can be ready to start writing after a run through the basics.

As I assume most readers will be unfamiliar with Scrivener and seeking assistance in getting their first project off the ground, I’ll start with the basics and lead into more advanced topics. Readers with some exposure to Scrivener wishing to become familiar with Version 3 can skip chapters as best suits you, though there have been significant changes with the release of Version 3.

I’ll start by showing how to start a project and select an appropriate template for the type of book you are writing. In these first steps, we’ll discuss the Scrivener interface options, including tailoring it to your own preferences.

A broad topic that might not apply to everyone is importing, whether importing material to a research folder or bringing in a half-finished project from the likes of Word or other text editors when you discovered they really are not suited to long-form writing.

We’ll dive into one of the great features of Scrivener, the Binder, covering splitting large documents into smaller individual documents and re-arranging content.

A significant point that differentiates Scrivener from straight word processing is the multitude of view modes available from full-featured to the distraction-free editor only options. We’ll step through the modes and discuss some of the benefits of those options.

We’ll discuss other menu options, including search and replace within your document, links to media and resources on and off your local computer, and entering metadata.

We’ll also discuss the importance of backups and several safe strategies, including local and cloud options. We’ll briefly discuss syncing should you also have Scrivener on iOS.

Finally, we’ll delve into the daunting for some topic of compiling for various output options, including PDF, Kindle, and ePub. This topic on its own could warrant a separate book; however, the aim in this book will be to impart sufficient knowledge to compile to the most common formats and achieve a professional finished product.

Menus

Throughout this book, I may refer to menu options from the Scrivener Main Menu. The format I shall use is relatively standard in the industry.

1. It starts from the Main Menu, which is the top menu bar in the Scrivener window.

2. The menu selection begins with the Primary menu option from that bar,

3. Then the Secondary and so on to the menu item selection. 

File > New Project, signifying, select the File menu from the Main Menu (The menu bar across the top, per the screenshot) then within that menu New Project.

Before you finish this book, I trust you will be enthused to launch into your own project, knowing that Scrivener provides the best platform for successful writing.

Just a few notes before launching into the book.

Language:

I am based in Australia, where English is primarily UK English, with some examples of US English and a few unique Australianisms thrown in.

I have written in US English as non-US English speakers seem to adapt to American spelling and grammar readily. Should you find any UK spelling has slipped through, please drop me a line at [email protected], and I shall correct.

Images:

Every attempt has been made to ensure images appear on the same page as related text. Depending on which version of this book you have purchased, and the device you are viewing it on, there may be instances where images slip to the following page.

Beta:

This book was started during the Scrivener V3 for Windows Beta program, and Beta screenshots have been used as placeholders. Every effort has been made to ensure all screenshots have been updated where necessitated by late changes. In the event you find an image that does not agree with your screen or does not respond as expected, please do drop a line and I’ll assist with any issues and ensure it is corrected.

Symbols:

You will see two symbols throughout the book.

📝 = NOTE: Will be followed by information I consider to be important.

💡 = Tip: Usually followed by a tip I think might be helpful.

Scrivener:

If you’ve purchased this book. I’m assuming you already have Scrivener installed, however, if that is not the case, please click one of the following links:

If you are still uncertain whether Scrivener is the right tool for your writing, download their 30-day trial.Big news! L&L gives a 30 days use trial! That’s 30 days of actually opening the program. If you opened Scrivener every second day, the trial would last for 60 calendar days. If you only used Scrivener on weekends, that’s a whole 15-week trial! Try finding that with other software vendors!

Assuming you’ve already tried the trial or are ready to jump straight in and purchase, follow this link.

Disclosure: I may receive a small commission from purchases made following some of the links in this book; however, that does not impact your purchase price.

PROTECT YOUR WORK

Before we get started, I want you to take a couple of minutes to take care of an essential task. It may save you endless heartache in the future and protect the significant investments of time and emotion in your great work.

Backup!

Computers are marvelous things, but even the best of equipment can have an off day or even die on us. Your utility provider or the weather may also chime in with blackouts to take down your computer at the most inopportune moment. For these reasons, it is essential to ensure you have a backup strategy that can rescue you should things go wrong. 

💡 My backup strategy also includes an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to keep my systems running long enough to shut down in the event of supply interruption.

If you are installing Scrivener for the first time, on opening it, you will see a screen such as this.

PLEASE, whatever you do, do not just click Next. While doing so will give you some protection, it backs up to the same hard drive as you are working on (Assuming you are not using Dropbox to sync with an iOS device). Even if you are using Dropbox, I seriously suggest a backup location off of your computer, either on a networked hard drive (NAS) or preferably a cloud location. If the computer experiences a glitch or dies, this process will allow you to restore projects from your latest backups. This will save the angst of countless lost hours and all the thought you put into getting words into your project. From time to time, I also manually backup an additional Zip file to a third location.

Which backup solution to use?

While a local network or external plug-in drive is quick, reliable, and effective, it is a ‘local’ backup. In the unthinkable events of fire or theft, that backup could be lost along with your original. For that reason, I recommend a cloud service for your backups in addition to any local backups you may keep.

Which one to use? As all the major solutions are practical and reliable, it comes down to personal preference. However, I will put a few thoughts out there.

Dropbox - Reliable with a small free tier of 2GB, which is more than sufficient for storing multiple projects. A word of caution. If you are going to be using Scrivener on multiple devices, Dropbox is currently the ONLY service that supports the Scrivener file structure for syncing. Therefore it is the only service recommended by Literature and Latté for use in syncing between iOS (and possibly soon Android) devices and Windows or Mac.

If you are going to synch between multiple devices with Dropbox, I do not recommend using it as your sole location for backups. I believe live projects (the items you are syncing) and backups should never be on the same drive/location unless you also back up elsewhere. Why? In the event of catastrophic failure if they are in the same location you may lose both your live projects and backups.

📝 Live work and backups should ideally be in different physical locations.

Some people complain about the small free limits on Dropbox, including a limit of 3 connected devices. They should consider that while Google, Microsoft, and Apple are huge corporations with multiple revenue streams to support larger free tiers, Dropbox relies solely on paid tiers to support their free offering.  One point missed by many, you do not have to have your iOS device as one of your three approved devices. You can synch between iOS and Win/Mac without the iOS device