How I Use Scrivener to Draft My Novels
I just finished the first draft of my mystery suspense novel, so I thought I would share some insights into how I use Scrivener to draft my stories.
If you’ve never heard of Scrivener, it’s an online processor and writing software that is highly customisable and made specifically for novels, screenplays, and academic papers. I’ve used Scrivener since 2019 and I couldn’t imagine using anything else now to draft my books.
*Affiliate link at no extra cost to you!
~ Organising my folders and files
The main reason I made the switch to Scrivener was for the ease of moving sections around in my stories. As a pantser (someone who doesn’t plot much before drafting) I am constantly reordering scenes and chapters and chopping and changing things.
Scrivener uses folders. Each folder needs a text sheet. These folders and text sheets can represent individual scenes or chapters. For me, I use one folder per chapter and one text sheet, regardless of how many scenes there are.
Knowing that it’s just a simple drag and drop between folders to move scenes and chapters around makes it so much easier for me to reorder things in my book when I need to.
Here is an example. All my folders (chapters) are on the left. If you open the folder you can see there is only one text sheet for the entire chapter.
~ Tracking my story acts
Another thing I love about Scrivener is that you can colour code your folders and text sheets.
On the left, I used different colours to indicate the different acts in my story.
Light blue indicates Act One, green is Act Two, the yellow is the midpoint, and orange is Act Three. This helped me easily identify where certain chapters were and how I was pacing the story — eg: if the second half of Act Two was significantly longer than the first, if the midpoint was really the “midpoint”.
I’ve never used this technique before, but it was absolutely necessary for this story and I found it extremely helpful when brainstorming the coming chapters because I knew exactly where I was in the plot progression.
I colour code by right-clicking and adding a label. (I always customise the colours to a shade that appeals to me.)
~ Including chapter summaries
In addition to colour coding, I also use chapter summaries. I like the “corkboard” view in Scrivener (although there are different types of layouts). When I select “manuscript” on the left sidebar I am shown all of my folders. For each folder, I included the date and day in the story and a summary of what the chapter included.
I’ve used this method only once before and find it absolutely invaluable. Because this book took place over seven days, it was essential that I tracked the timeline. Likewise, it was essential that I could find the chapters I needed when I had to check something. Having these summaries meant I could just scan my list of chapters, find the one I needed, and open it.
~ Checking word count progress / setting goals
Another favoured feature by many users is the word count tracking. Selecting Project at the top > then Project Targets opens a pop up which shows how many words you wrote throughout the day, how many total words you have, and how many words you have written towards your own specific word count target.
I personally don’t use word count targets, as that isn’t a system that works for me. However, I know a lot of writers find it useful to have a daily minimum word count goal or to have a total manuscript goal so they can see their progress as they get closer to achieving it.
~ Other notable features
Search bar. Another feature I use constantly is the search bar. This is found on the left side just above the sidebar. This searches every document within your manuscript and I’m always using it to check in which chapter something was mentioned.
Note section. I have a note section available in my corkboard overview where I can brain dump ideas as I draft — ideas for things to add in later chapters as well as ideas for things to include when I revise. This keeps all my notes in one place.
Research space. There are numerous existing folders you can use, including a research folder, character and worldbuilding sketches, and more. I love the research folder and usually pad this out with details about all my characters, important links I need to keep for reference, and even images.
*Affiliate link at no extra cost to you!
Scrivener has so many amazing features and this really just scratches the surface. There can be a steep learning curve if you want to take full advantage, but the small amount of features I use were incredibly easy to get the hang of.
There are so many ways to draft a novel, but I hope this has given you some good ideas and a little insight into my process.
How do you like to draft? Let me know in the comments!
I love getting a glimpse of other's creative process, I love how our brains work omg this was so so cool !!!