I will always recommend Scrivener to every writer. This, however, is a special NaNoWriMo edition of ‘for the love of god download this amazing software.’
Scrivener is particularly amazing for NaNoWriMo because:
- It comes with a handy word count target. You can enter a target word count and watch a progress bar at the bottom of the screen fill up as you write.
- You can separate your novel into chapters/scenes. This means you can write out of order, skip a chapter/chapters, and move your chapters around extremely easily. You basically have a table of contents on the left-hand side of your screen that makes your manuscript a piece of cake to navigate.
- You can outline as you write with index cards. When you’re drafting quickly, it’s easy to get confused about the location of scenes and even which events you’ve already written. As you finish each chapter, write a one or two sentence summary in the synopsis section. Then, when you switch to cork-board view you’ll see an outline of your novel.
- Full screen draft mode. This will help minimise your distractions. Your word target progress bar shows up in this mode as well.
- The research tab, character sheets, and location sheets. Scrivener includes spaces for your brainstorming and research. You can even add images, pdfs, and other non-text files to your manuscript’s Scrivener file. Everything can be in one place.
- The Name Generator. If you go to edit -> writing tools, you’ll find the name generator. It can generate 500 full names in less than a second. Grab some placeholders for minor characters. Get some ideas for major ones. Never waste time trying to name a cameo character again.
- Automatic saves. Scrivener automatically saves your manuscript almost constantly and it rarely, rarely crashes. You will never have to worry about losing your work because of program failure. Never again cry because you exited without saving hours worth of work, or your word processor crashed before you even had a chance to save the document at all.
Scrivener has a free NaNoWriMo special edition trial that can be used from now until December 7th. (For over 2 months instead of the normal 30 days!) The special edition includes a NaNoWriMo novel template, with a 50K project target already set up for you.
The daily session goal will automatically calculate your word count target based on the number of days until Nov 30th and how much you’ve already written.
If you try Scrivener and love it, they offer a 20% discount to NaNo participants and a 50% discount to NaNo winners. (It’s normally $45 for Macs/ $40 for PCs).
If you choose not to buy Scrivener when your trial ends, you can compile and export your file to Word or .rtf easily.
Novel writing is messy. Scrivener knows this and was created to make your manuscript files as neat and organised as possible. In doing this, it can even help organise your thoughts.
Learn more and download the trial here.
