When a writing project gets big enough, in length or in scope, a single word processing document just won’t cut it. Writers of complex and researched projects need organization, flexibility, and tools. Sometimes that’s filing systems, or post-it notes, or index cards, or piles and piles of papers. Or it can be all one thing: Scrivener.

Scrivener is a word-processing program designed for authors of all genres, with space to collect and annotate research and notes, draft, organize, and revise. But it is a hefty piece of software, with far more features than any one project requires, or any one person can easily learn. This lecture-based class will provide a tour of the Scrivener features most useful for wrangling research, drafting, feedback, revision, and fact-checking of book-length or otherwise hefty projects. (But Scrivener is not only for books—your humble instructor uses it for everything from fellowship applications to essays to, yes, researching and writing her book.) This class is aimed at fiction and non-fiction writers, but will be most useful for writers incorporating research into their work. Students do not need to purchase Scrivener (or have any familiarity with it) prior to this class, but you can use the standard free trial to download the software and have a casual poke around to familiarize yourself.

Course Takeaways:

Get an overview of Scrivener’s layout and tools.
Learn how to organize a daunting amount of research and make it accessible as you’re writing.
Find ways to integrate Scrivener in your writing process, and use it to make that process more productive and satisfying.
See the options for big-picture structural revision in Scrivener, and get a sense of when to transition a project to Word or another program.
Figure out if Scrivener will be useful to your work.

Scrivener for Creative Writers