Scrivener - good for the long haul?

Scrivener remains 100% instantaneously responsive, at least up to 200,000 words, which is the most I've put into a single project file.

It's a wonderful overall writing program for novelists, since it's designed to properly organize and handle 100,000+ word documents.

I'm using the new windows version and I can't say that I've had any problems with it at all. Well worth the price of admission IMHO.

recurry said:

Hi All,

So I've just started doing some writing, and have been using a software tool called Scrivener. I'm sure a lot of you may be familiar with it - maybe, maybe not.

The question I have is for folks who have written full-length novels with it. Does it stay as responsive, etc. as you get into full-length novel territory?

Click to expand...

On OS X?

Absolutely. Downright sprightly. The developer is amazing, in terms of support and improvements, as well.

I've got approximately 250k words and a couple pictures in my largest scrivener project at the moment. It's not as fast as it used to be, sure, but it hasn't slowed down enough to be annoying, it also still doesn't crash. It freezes for a moment when I ask it for "Project Targets", though. But all in all, I wouldn't trade it for anything. (I'm using the windows version)

The only time I experience a slowdown using Scriv is when I fancy writing in a different room and am working on a netbook directly from the USB stick. Other than that, Scriv is great and never gives me any problems (winblows version).

Edit: Oh, it is slow loading up any PDFs you insert on PC

It's fantastic for organizing and arranging your notes. If you need to change the order of your chapters, you just click 'n' drag in the left sidebar and you're done. You also have the option of creating note cards that can be printed separately from the rest of the manuscript and attaching weblinks in your research so you can go directly to the page if you need to refer to it again without the hassle of creating a bazillion bookmarks in your browser or trying to remember the URL.

I finally made the jump to Scrivener recently after my version of Dark Room kept throwing up errors and crashing on me. I've also used yWriter as well, which is pretty good, but really I just wanted a full screen text editor so yWriter just didn't fit the brief. Admittedly I'm not miles into my WIP yet, so I may fully appreciate Scrivener's features later, but for now it's above average but not a dream come true. The full-screen text editor is what I was after, but there are a few niggles, such as the menu bar appearing whenever I move my mouse to the bottom of the page to scroll down, and having to cut out of fullscreen mode to activate certain functions that I'd really like hotkeys for. I also felt yWriter dealt with character and items very well by giving them cards that could be filled in. If there were some way of designing these cards myself then that would be perfect. Other than that though, it's cool . I like the autosave feature, the compile feature and how you can view multiple chapter's simultaneously. Pretty cool! If you can afford then go for it, it's the best of the program's I've used.

I'm very interested in using it for an R & R, but the trial version I downloaded crashes. A lot. I loaded a chunk of novel into it, pulled some out into a scene, and touching the text in just about any way blows the program up.

I use the Windows version and it works great. The book I'm working on is about 500 megs-lots of pictures.

It can run slow if your computer is bogged down and you have limited memory.

Scrivener looks very interesting to me, but I've heard it doesn't work as well on netbooks as it does proper, full-sized laptops/desktops. Can anyone comment on this?

I use it on a lap top.