Whether you’re plotting in advance or completely winging it, Scrivener can help you win National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
Here are some of my favorite features to help you hit 50K in November, or whatever your writing goal is, any month of the year.
Handling Ideas, or the Lack Thereof
When you’re writing for speed, you can’t afford to be slowed down by ideas for future scenes, or get stuck trying to conjure the perfect piece of dialog. Nor do you have time for additional research.
Instead, make a note and get back to writing. Scrivener offers several options for leaving notes.
Annotations and Comments: These are notes you can leave at a particular point in your text, which makes them great for reminders about fixing a bad description, looking up precise medical details for an injury, or anything else that’s spot-specific.
Document Notes: Think of these like a sticky note you can slap on the scene. They’re best for general thoughts about the overall scene (e.g., research needed, ideas for changes in a character’s scene goal, ideas for where to take the scene if you’re plotting it right before writing).
Documents: For manuscript-level notes and ideas, you might instead create a document to jot down things as they occur to you. I also like the idea of having a Change Log document for notes on scenes I’ve already written, so I’m not tempted to fix them when I should be writing new material.
Another use for documents is to create one when you have an idea for a future scene, and use it as a placeholder. You can enter a brief description of what you think will happen in the Synopsis card, or maybe quickly write out the conversation or piece of action that came to you before you forget. When you get to that point in the manuscript, the scene will already be waiting.
Synopsis: For those who plot—either the whole book in advance, or each scene immediately before you write it—the Synopsis (see image in Document Notes section) is a great place to keep a reminder of what’s supposed to happen, in case you forget. If you don’t plot at all, you can add a short description of what happened after you write the scene, to help you keep track as your story builds.
The Corkboard lets you view the synopsis cards storyboard-style. If this is your thing, I recommend not grouping your documents into folders until you’re done using the Corkboard to view, plot, and reorder your story.
Blocking Out Distractions
Scrivener’s Composition Mode (called Full Screen Mode in Windows) is the next-best thing to noise-canceling headphones. It hides everything but the document you’re working on, and even allows you to customize the background color or image. I like to use a background image that’s either calming, or relevant to the story to keep me in the mood.
You can use the control strip that appears when you point to the bottom of the screen to adjust the paper width, view the Inspector, jump between documents, and more.
Tracking Word Count
There’s no way around it. To hit 50,000 words by November 30th, you’ll need to write 1667 words every day. Only writing weekdays? You’ll need 2381 per day.
But don’t sweat it. Scrivener’s Project Targets can not only track how much you’ve written toward your overall goal, but how you’re doing on today’s—or this hour’s—goal.
And if you give Scrivener a deadline, along with which days of the week you plan to write, it’ll even calculate your daily goal for you (Scrivener 2 and 3 only).
Adding Research and Images
To avoid the frantic search during NaNoWriMo, import research documents, images, or web pages you want to have handy while writing ahead of time. Select the desired folder (outside of the Draft/Manuscript folder, e.g., Research) and go to File>Import, or drag and drop from Finder or File Explorer.
For web pages, I recommend using Bookmarks rather than importing. You’ll get better results and won’t bloat your project file.
Split screen is a handy way to view your writing and your notes or images side by side.
Getting a Discount
If you haven’t bought Scrivener yet, but decide you love it, wait for the NaNoWriMo discount at the end of November before you buy. Winners get 50% off, and all participants get a 20% discount! For more info, head to NaNoWriMo.org and look under Writer’s Resources>Offers.
Are you participating in NaNo this year? Feel free to ask me your Scrivener questions for NaNoWriMo, or anything else you’re working on.
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About Gwen Hernandez
Gwen Hernandez (she/her) is the author of Scrivener For Dummies, Productivity Tools for Writers, and romantic suspense. She teaches Scrivener to writers all over the world through online classes, in-person workshops, and private sessions. Learn more about Gwen at gwenhernandez.com.
Wow! Thank you for this! I do Nanowrimo every year and I have used Scrivener for years but I haven’t used all the features. This is exactly the info I need. I will go and check out your book on it, too.
I love Scrivener for the way it allows rearranging scenes (files) so easily. If I put one or more scenes into a chapter (folder), I give the chapter a title instead of a number. It’s much easier to think of rearranging chapters if they aren’t numbers. They get numbered automatically, anyway.
So glad this was helpful, Ada! The ability to rearrange scenes is great, and it’s nice to have the flexibility not to number things if you don’t need/want to. Good luck with NaNo!
Great info! I’m a huge Scrivener fan but didn’t know about the Footnotes & Comments section, since I usually have the Notes section up. For items I need to look up later, I’ve been highlighting them, but the Footnotes & Comments section will allow me to be more specific about the issue. Thanks for this!
Thanks, Diane! I’m glad I was able to help you find something new/useful.
Thanks for the tips and explanations on ways to make note of things as I write. I am very easily distracted and it’s best I don’t stray too far from the page. I love my NaNoWriMo month and look forward to it every year. Major medical issues last year keep me from participating so this year is extra special.
Take care and stay safe.
Yay for feeling better, Frances! Good luck with NaNo.
A wonderful article, and so useful. I wonder what hardware would complement a Scrivener-based writing project. For example, does a particular keyboard help? A certain trackpad or mouse? A specific type and/or width of monitor? For instance, would a quite wide, curved monitor help one immerse better into Scrivener and therefore the work in progress? Perhaps you can also post an article on arranging a physical writing space (a room, cubbyhole, outdoor office, etc) so that it is author friendly.
Thanks, Bob! I think whatever hardware is comfortable for you so you don’t have to think about it, and so you avoid injury is best.
I love a comfy chair with a sturdy lap desk for writing, and an adjustable stand-up desk with bluetooth keyboard and mouse for everything else. And unlike Stephen King, I prefer windows in my writing space. ;-)
This was a super welcomer refresher on Scrivener and comes just in time for NaNo. I need to review carefully since I run in to my ms. from time to time and can’t remember how to do one thing or another. So grateful.
Happy to hear it, Kay! I’m not sure how obvious the links are, but I linked to more detailed articles on each topic within the post. Good luck with your writing!