The gold standard for any writing seems to be Microsoft Word. It’s used by businesses as well as people with home offices. I like Word but it is more difficult to use when I’m trying to keep track of characters, scenes, settings, research, notes, and my emerging manuscript.

Many writers use Scrivener for their projects to keep everything in one place. We don’t have to search various folders to find what we need. I tried several writing programs before I discovered Scrivener and it’s the best so far for me.

The learning curve for Scrivener is not too steep. The user’s manual looks formidable but it isn’t that hard to follow. I bought a copy of Scrivener for Dummies by Gwen Hernandez because it has a lot more illustrations, and, well, it’s for people like me. YouTube has numerous instructional videos as well.

Scrivener is available in both Mac and PC formats.

You know how when you’re writing away and a thought about your manuscript occurs to you? Your choices are to either stop the flow of ideas and go back to rewrite the section, or, insert the thought somewhere into the manuscript in parentheses, hoping you’ll be able to find it later. Maybe you change the color of the font to make it stand out.

Using the Notes area of the Scrivener screen makes it easy to keep thoughts in the same section with where they go in the manuscript. When I finished working on my WIP yesterday, I realized I needed to add some things. So I put my ideas in the notes.

To the left is the text of my manuscript and on the lower right is the Document Notes section.

As you can see, I’m a little weak on description in my writing. 😘