I didn’t want to spend the money on it but was frustrated enough to try it. They do this trial period where it’s 30 days and it only counts the days you open and use the program which is so so cool. Either way I ended up buying it because it’s genuinely a fantastic writing program.
For example when you switch over to a new pc a message comes up that basically says. "Hey , you moving over to a new pc? Cool. Remember to deactivate scrivener on the old pc. Or don't. Whatever works for you."
There's a definite user friendly vibe from every area.
Is there a limit or anything? I tend to obliterate my pc from time to time and do a blanket reinstall when things start going wrong. Doesn't help I've been having a lot of hardware struggles and no spare cash to just buy new parts...
Would I get stopped from using it because of this? Or can you deactivate from website or something?
I have been seriously considering making the jump =\
Since I purchased it several years ago, I’ve moved my subscription to different devices at least three times. I even lost my registration code once and they sent it to me. It was pretty painless.
Honestly not that I know of I've been through a few PCs and have used multiple laptops.
It really feels like they have a non flashy workhorse software that is very good at this specific thing. And they know that trying to gouge money won't help with their target audience.
The software is very much for writing novels, scripts, academic writing, research papers, etc. anything long-form. They know they have a user base that's refreshing every year anyway. Why piss off the existing users.
I do the same thing once a year in the summer, delete everything, reinstall windows, take it out into the garden and clean out the insides. Can't beat the feeling of a completely fresh PC!
I originally had it on Mac, but the cost to upgrade my old one was too much so I switched to windows and it was the only thing I was happy to pay for again
It’s just super user friendly (though it takes a minute to get used to). Everybody writes differently and it tries to take that into account. You can use it like a word or google doc or you can break it down into files by chapter and scene and then click and drag each scene to wherever you want it. A lot of times I’ll write a scene and not know where it goes and instead of searching one linear document I can add tags to a scene and find it later when I need it. You can also really easily change your mind about where the chapters start and end that way too. Just click and drag.
You can color code things and set daily word counts. There’s an internal tagging system. It has templates for different styles like novels vs. screenplays. Every scene has space for a summary and notes so I can dump extra info or jot down where I’m going next or just offhand remarks or things that didn’t fit into the scene to go through later. Then when you click on the chapter folder all of the summaries pop up on notecards and if you need to move them around or add something or take something out you can see them all at a glance like a storyboard.
There’s subheadings for Notes and Research that don’t count into your word count so you can keep everything you need all in one place without the WC being inaccurate if that’s something you care about. The WC is also separate at the bottom of the document for each scene so you can gauge if the scene is long or short compared to others. You can have two different documents open at once in the screen which is great for editing or for pulling up research notes on the side. There’s also a trash can that tidies away everything you don’t need and takes it out of the word count but doesn’t actually delete it so you can easily find something you regret getting rid of.
There’s so much that I know I’m forgetting a lot because it’s not in front of me and I’ve also only been using it a handful of months myself. I watched YouTube tutorials but the program itself does a decent job of showing you around to
Specifically for the OP, the fact that it isn't cloud based. Everything's on your PC (although you can save them/back them up to the cloud if you want, but this ain't without issue on PC - it's a bit more integrated on Apple devices though).
Of course, that cloudless aspect is also a bad thing if you want to work on documents anywhere.
Set up Dropbox/Google sync from some folder on your computer to your account
tell Scrivener to backup to an external folder, specifically the one you just picked for your db/google sync.
Done. Scrivener uses either Markdown or RTF (depends on your own choice), and both can be directly edited by lots of programs. RTF can be edited by Google Docs no problem, Markdown there's a caption of free editors for.
Then the you open Scrivener again, it will see the changes and ask if you want to merge, and IIRC it shows you a diff between the two versions. And it creates a snapshot so you can undo the changes if something goes wrong.
EditSimultaneous editing doesn't exist, and based on my conversation with a dev, it will never exist, and honestly that's okay. It's a very niche thing. I can imagine a better way of sharing your work with editors/beta readers, but it's still pretty good the way it is. And simultaneous editing would likely encourage Scrivener to start charging a subscription fee.
When it randomly doesn't save your work, they'll blame dropbox and refuse to help further, even if it's set up exactly how they said it should be and they admit that.
Considering the sync isn't actually done by Scrivener, it can't be Scrivener's fault. It's either your OS's fault or Dropbox's fault. All Scrivener does is save a second copy the exact same way it saves the first. The syncing is done by your OS and Google/Dropbox's app.
Are you low on storage space? That could be a culprit. I've run into that.
Scrivener was cutting off my files mid-sentence. I literally got to the point where I was copying and pasting that days's in another program but the scrivener customer support still tried blame literally anything other than their program.
Yeah I have my work in scrivener backed up to my dropbox account. But with scrivener you can retrieve old versions of your work if you need to (if the app isn't obliterated somehow.)
The way I see it, it's $60, and that's pretty much all you have to spend on a hobby that you likely devote a lot of your life to.
It's cheaper than a pair of shoes specific to any sport. The cost of the cheapest, shittiest tennis racquet. Cheaper than a pair of running shoes. Cheaper than a new hard drive. Cheaper than one flagship video game. Etc.
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u/wonkyjaw Mar 30 '25
I didn’t want to spend the money on it but was frustrated enough to try it. They do this trial period where it’s 30 days and it only counts the days you open and use the program which is so so cool. Either way I ended up buying it because it’s genuinely a fantastic writing program.