Getting the Right Writing Tool
As much as I love Mellel I never thought I would say this, but, I have started using another Word Processing program. Never fear Mellel faithful, I have not abandoned Mellel, I have just added another tool to my word processing repitoire.
Meta-Explanation(feel free to skip if you want)
I have been thinking a lot lately about how are writing tools shape our writing habits (partly because of the discussion over at Kairosnews about teaching students to use various word processors). In essence this is something I am always thinking about, as the question of augmenting the human is in some sense at the heart of my dissertation, but lately I started thinking past the hardware/digital questions that have dominated much of my thinking and what others have written, and started to think solely about software, in particular how similar most word processors are. That is, for the most part (I realize there are exceptions but bear with me), word processing applications are designed in a linear way. This is why most look like you are typing on a page, a virtual typewriter on a virtual piece of paper. Sure there is some deviation from this model (look I can change the color of my virtual page . . .) but again the writing is mostly linear. MS Word, Pages, Nisus Writer, Open Office, GoogleDocs, all operate under this conceit, which is a good idea given that much of what gets written still has as a goal the presentation on a piece of paper (i.e. the important print function). But what if you aren’t planning on printing to paper, or what if you just don’t want to constrict what you are writing to that format just yet. I realize part of this is sort of obvious, of course I use a different program for writing in html than the one I use for writing academic papers. But really, there are not many options out there for writing not-confined to the page format (there are a few, and I know some people who write everything in an outline program like OmniOutliner but none of these have ever appealed to me.) Enter Scrivener.
End Meta-Explanation
I was working on the introduction to my dissertation and having trouble conceiving of the “whole” document. Usually I have a plan of how the sections are going to work in writing a larger piece and I just compose from there, but for some reason this was not working. So, I decided to give Scrivener a try. What Scrivener allows you to do, or at least this is the claim of the program, and I generally think it lives up to this, is just write—get down on “cards” your thoughts, and worry about the order, flow, and detail later. This is a bit hard to explain, I think especially since we are so trained to think of writing as a linear process (write page 1, write page 2, write page 3–go back and edit), but what you can do in Scrivener is just start writing. It is not a page layout program, but rather an instrument for capturing and sorting text.
Scrivener is designed to let you write in blocks/chunks of text and than sort and edit those blocks/chunks. It is a bit like writing on note cards except each note card is as large or as small as you want. What I really like about writing in Scrivener is that it “feels” like a free-writing environment, because I know ultimately the text will have to be sorted, rearranged and edited to fit on a piece of paper, I don’t worry as I am writing about making it adhere to those restrictions just yet. (What I have found though is that this does make the editing process a bit longer.) This probably has its advantages for composing works that are intended for digital distribution as well, where your organization need not necessarily be determined by a page format.
Scrivener was designed with creative writers in mind, and it seems to me that these would we the people most likely to use the software. The ability to write scenes, sort, track and edit those, and finally position them in a narrative arc seems to me what the programer had in mind here. But, that having been said I am finding it tremendously useful for my academic writing.
One of the best features of Scrivener is the full screen mode. I like working in the full screen mode, but no application to-date has had a full screen mode this well done. You can change the size of the writing space, and fade the background, in order to leave subtle notes still viewable on the desktop. There is also a pop-up menu (located at the bottom of the screen) which allows you to change some of the features of full screen mode without leaving and returning.
The other thing I really appreciated about this application was the instruction manual, which comes as a Scrivener file rather than just a .pdf. The advantage here is that the instruction manual teaches you how the program operates as you work through the manual. Which is a good thing, because as I mentioned it does require some getting used to, a bit of a paradigm shift in writing on a computer.
There are actually a lot of other features, useful for storing research, splitting the screen, summarizing what a chunk/block of text says, or your editing comments. I haven’t used most of these, except for to try them out, as again they seem to play to the “creative writing tool.”
I still start some of my writing in Mellel, especially when I have a clear idea of where the paper is going, or its layout. But for my fledging writing I now turn to Scrivener first, compose in it, and export it to an .rtf when it has taken shape as a “paper” rather than just a draft of ideas. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Scrivener is it helped cure some of my writers block that I was having writing the introduction and got me to the next step, and thus has earned a prominent place in my writing applications. Scrivener is $34.99, more than reasonably priced for an application with its feature set, a thirty day trial is free. One other positive note, I emailed the developer with a couple of questions, and he got back to me in less than 24 hours, this always speaks well of an application. Scrivener is not for everyone, I could definitely see this actually getting in the way for some of my students, but it is worth a look if you want to try something a bit different.(Sorry PC folks, Mac only. But if anyone knows of a PC app that works this way let me know or drop it in the comments.)
February 26th, 2007 at 2:14 am
I haven’t used Scrivener so can’t compare the two, but I use Tinderbox as a note management tool for writing. It has several features I like. One is that it is a database that lets me search and find anything I’ve written. Another is that I can make links between my notes. A third is that I can create agents to collect and group notes. What is also really nice is that I can look at my notes in several different viewing options: map, chart, outline, treemap, explorer, html, and nakakoji (with all views open at the same time if I wish).
February 26th, 2007 at 6:23 am
To see how your students might use Scrivener, try setting up a bit of research material - any old stuff will do. Put is in DRAFT folder in its own FILE. It could be a pdf, an rtf, or a quicktime movie. Now you have a file in the DRAFT folder.
Assume you are going to use that source material to inform your ‘paper’.
Now use ADD to start a new file in the same DRAFT folder. This will the ‘PAPER I am writing’.
Now get both of them up in a vertical split.
Then fire up the INSPECTOR - you can choose notes in the inspector - very useful for research.
Then click the green button at the top of the visible panel (top left of screen). It should space the vertical panes properly - fiddle with the space dot to make adjustments.
Now you should have your research files in the ‘BINDER’ panel on the left. Your source in the vertical panel next to the Binder, then the PAPER you are writing, then a notes panel. The notes panel is related to whatever file you click. It could be a ’source notes panel or a ‘paper’ notes panel.
When you see this layout you will instantly grasp how it can be used by students - or any academic - wanting to write a paper using a myriad of sources.
Oh, of course, the files in the BINDER can be coloured for even more clarity when you group them. For example all blue files are text resources, all pink are media files, all green a paper related etc.
Dr. Patrick Maher
February 26th, 2007 at 9:16 am
[...] Getting the right writing tool [...]
February 26th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Nice idea Patrick.
My concern with Scrivener for students though would be the difficulty in “putting it together.” I find that students have trouble with the global editing process, thinks like what to cut, what needs a better transition, etc.
Which is not to say that Scrivener wouldn’t help with this, it actually could be better than traditional word processors, but I think that might call for a reworking of the writing process, some extra steps etc. that I would want to think about first.
I wouldn’t want them to just use the research format to drop research in and summarize, which could be an issue.
February 26th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I use Boswell. It is a very good program to store your text. You can export the text and use it in a word processor. I’ve used it for years, and the company has great tech support. Because Boswell is plain text, it takes up very little space. You can create notebooks for your projects, and then export those projects into a word processor, or text editor to finish your editing. I also use Tinderbox and DEVONthink Pro.
February 26th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Recently I’ve been playing with word processors, trying to find what works best on the Mac.
Whatever hegemony it may have, I’m REALLY fond of Word 2007 (not so much earlier versions) and while I have it via Parallels I really don’t like working outside the primary environment of my computer since I make such use of Devonthink and such.
Finding a good alternative has been tough. OpenOffice is not really up for primetime in Mac yet. Word 2004 bites. But I did try Scrivner, Mellel and Nisus Writer Express.
I really liked the idea of Scrivner, but a lot of its features I was already doing in DevonThink or Yojimbo or Curio (for organizing a paper.) Adding another that wasn’t a primary editing tool didn’t seem wise nor cost-efficient.
I played with Mellel - but it just didn’t do a lot for me. It used such a strange setup that I spent more time than I really like trying to figure out how to do something. I probably, however, would have spent more time on it except that I then tried Nisus Writer Express - which I liked a lot. The style controls are right there, which is something I use a lot, and the controls were very much what I’m used to. It also saves everything into an RTF, which is great for popping it into DT afterwards.
February 28th, 2007 at 4:39 am
I love scrivner, I just used it to write my seminar paper - 45 pages long, with 15 different documents for notes, outlines, etc. The dual pane writing mode sold me instantly.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:45 am
DEVONthink and DEVONagent for research, Scriviner for writing, Nisus Writer Express for formatting. I agree with the observations about Mellel: way too complicated.
One to avoid: Papyrus Word. Good enough when installed, but expensive. Installing and updating are a nightmare, and they are tardy communicators. I finally tossed it out.
March 5th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
What about citation handling? As an academic writer, it always frustrates me how the makers of word processing software either a) don’t understand/realize the need for citations or b) realize the need, but spend no time implementing solutions because the market may be too small to justify the expense. MS Word 2007 actually implements citations in different formats, but still lacks 90% of the functionality found in a basic bibliography manager such as Endnote.
What would kill Scrivener for me is the lack of any citation support or the ability to directly integrate with a bibliography manger such as Bookends or Endnote.
March 5th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
JW:
Yes I agree this is a serious problem. Mellel handles citations really well. It works with both Sente and Bookends. I have been using Scrivener just to get the text down and semi-organized. Once I have the text I export as .rtf (Scrivener supports this easy) and open in Mellel. At this point I work in Mellel to complete the draft, Scrivener acts more like a drafting place. If you are going to do this you can actually write the citation in Scrivener and when it goes over to Mellel, Mellel will convert. For example in Mellel whatever is between {} it turned into a citation, so, when I am working in Scrivener I use these as well, and when it goes over to Mellel, Mellel knows this is a citation. But this is a bit labor intensive, only worth it for really long documents. As a side note, I was told by the developer of Scrivener that he was planning on adding in Sente support.
May 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
May 9, 2007
Having written everything from a book (but not a thesis, admittedly) to poems to essays and every genre but screenwriting, and having used Scrivener and the other “creative” word processors, like Ulysses, Smultron, TextMate (in project mode), Jer’s Novel Writer, Z-Writer, Avenir et al., and the very versatile hybrids like VoodooPad and NoteTaker, and the cumbersom project manager features of WORD and OpenOffice, I now prefer DEVONthink for any longer project (this is made to order for theses given it is a very flexible, scriptable database into which you can dump thousands of images, files, webpages, etexts, entire books in whatever language - am currently working on a project in Attic Greek). It has customizable (via preferences) window shapes and locations and very powerful concordance, classification, search, sorting and other features. I do like Tinderbox but am still on the steep (I can see the gentle sloping flat part of the curve in the distance) ascent of the learning curve.
RMR