Create your world with a Setting Sketch for each location In the same way, as a scriptwriter sets the scene for a film, a novelist needs to invent a world for the cast of characters to inhabit. The choice for each setting within the world of your novel is entirely yours. You could stick close to home using familiar locations. Distant lands could give you the excuse to travel for research purposes. ...
Today's guest is Tad Frizzell, author of Letters to a Perfectionist, released on Kindle this week. Having always been a perfectionist myself, Tad's 22 letters provide much food for thought and - at the time of writing this blogpost - there are 20+ reviewers on Amazon who agree with me: this is a must-read book. When did you start writing, Tad? I have been scribbling out poems all my life, along with some...
Time for casting! One of the fun parts of writing a new novel is casting your characters: giving them names, deciding their hopes and dreams, and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Everyone needs a secret, and only you will decide what it is and if and when the other characters might discover it. Casting time: Setting up a new character sketch To set up a new character sketch, right click on the Characters folder and select Add /...
Managing the Scrivener workspace boils down to deciding what you want to see while you are working on your manuscript. The Scrivener workspace The basic workspace can be separated into three panes: The Binder on the left The Editing pane in the centre The Inspector on the right What appears within the Editing pane? The choice is Scrivenings (as shown above), or Corkboard, or Outliner. Which one you see is determined by your selection of the...
Let’s start at the very beginning: setting up a new project file on Scrivener and deciding what our novel is about. Setting up a new project file In this one file, everything that you need to write your NaNo2017 novel can be collected ahead of 1 November. You won’t write a single word of your manuscript until NaNo2017 officially starts, but you’ll have everything at your fingertips when the whistle blows at...
I use Scrivener - for all my writing projects. Why? Because it makes me feel I am in control. Correction: I am in control! Why use Scrivener for NaNo2017? (NaNo is short for NaNoWriMo which stands for National Novel Writing Month, and that’s November – the month I set aside each year to write, write, write.) Why use Scrivener for NaNo2017? A good question! There are four quick answers: Scrivener will make the planning of my...
Ready to Rock? NaNo2017 is only 8 weeks away and this time will fly by, so – if you are keen to use Scrivener for NaNo2017 – now is the time to start learning how. What is NANO? NaNo, short for NaNoWriMo, is the National Novel Writers Month. Writers all over the world spend the 30 days of November writing the first 50K words of their novel. Some aim higher. 80K. 100K! The NaNoWriMo website...
The Format search is one of three types of search tool available in Scrivener. Project searches allow you to find instances of particular words or phrases within the whole project, subject to choices you make about where you want the search to happen, and how fussy you are about what is to be found. Document searches are confined to the selected document(s) and for these, there is also a Search and Replace option. Format searches find particular...
The Document search is one of three types of search tool available in Scrivener. Project searches allow you to find instances of particular words or phrases within the whole project, subject to choices you make about where you want the search to happen, and how fussy you are about what is to be found. Document searches are confined to the selected document(s) and for these, there is also a Search and Replace option. Format searches find particular...
Today's guest is Megan Wagner, Author of the recently released Fighting FIRED with Fire: A Guide to Coping with Job Loss, Rising from the Ashes and Igniting a Career You Love. Megan's book is written from experience and she's sharing her story - and her love of Scrivener - with us today. Where did this journey start, Megan? As a 12-year marketing communications professional, I’d always dreamed of a more meaningful career and owning my own business. So, I...
