Scrivener 3 is on the way…

Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 30, 2017 at 05:21 PM

Good grief, Scrivener goes WAY beyond just being a writing tool - it’s a complete knowledge management system. What with the extensive possibilities for modifying labels, keywords, status etc. of every item, creating links between them, creating new “Collections” from searches for items (using any of the above-mentioned criteria), using multiple window panes for interacting with items as editable notes, outlines or card indices, it’s astonishingly powerful. Not totally unlike ConnectedText, in fact.

I can see why it overwhelms people (I was overwhelmed by version 2.0), but having now spent some time getting to know it (and bringing to bear experience gathered with other very competent writing/info management systems like Ulysses, Outlinely, Bear, Firetask etc.), I am beginning to realise why people spend their entire time in Scrivener. I’m currently experimenting with transferring my personal task management system to it, and so far, it’s blown me away; I now have two sets of task in outline format side by side (Personal + Work), with “copyholders” below each of them, linked to each outline so that the text/notes in a given (i.e. clicked-on) to-do item in the outline appears in the copyholder immediately below the relevant outline. This arrangement means you can write extensive notes for a given item, and if you use a folder other than “Drafts” as the basis, you can also store all kinds of documents alongside/as sub-items of your to-do items. Or link to documents in other folders, of course.

Hem! ANYWAY, moving on… I’m very impressed, especially now that the search function works so fast. I’m contemplating moving my personal journal and other research databases over to Scrivener as well, although DEVONthink is a close contender as the ultimate research repository. But the sheer flexibility of Scrivener is difficult to overstate.

And that’s before I even attempt to write a book with it!

Cheers,
Bill