Interview with Keith Blount, Creator of Scrivener(syntopikon.substack.com)
syntopikon.substack.com
Interview with Keith Blount, Creator of Scrivener
https://syntopikon.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-keith-blount
13 comments
I should take a look at DevonThink (and maybe Obsidian though I'm mostly fine with Google Docs). I own Scrivener and have used it. But I don't find it ideal for research materials and, for the non-fiction writing I do, I don't find functional flow all that complicated. And then I'm going to have to transfer it to a different tool at some point anyway.
Scrivener seems like it's good at solving problems I mostly don't feel I have.
Scrivener seems like it's good at solving problems I mostly don't feel I have.
Once you get it set up how you want it, DevonThink absolutely rocks and it’s perfect for non-fiction research. It’s got a 100 hour free trial so worth testing it out. I’d recommend downloading the manual and/or the Take Control Of DevonThink book from the devontechnologies website (both free) and giving both a speed read so you get an idea of some of the stuff it can do.
Obviously depends on your own individual workflow but here are some of my recommendations:
Make sure you get the iOS companion app DevonThink To Go. This allows you to capture everything on your mobile devices. Also make sure you install all add ons via DevonThink3 -> Install Add Ons.
These add ons will:
- Allow you to view and import emails in DevonThink (you will also have to enable the plugin in the Apple Mail app for this functionality to work)
- Put an ‘Inbox’ folder in your finder which allows you to just drag any file or folder into it and have it appear in your DevonThink Inbox
- Give you OCR for all your pdfs
- Give you extensions for browsers to clip things easily.
When you clip something that you want to read or refer back to you’re generally best off using the ‘paginated PDF’ setting as not all the available options support annotation and the AI search. It’s not a big deal if you don’t because you can just right click something and click ‘Convert To’ to turn it into a pdf later.
Two settings I’d recommend trying out:
DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Retain View (On)
Stops the view from changing every time you switch databases which can be annoying.
DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Unify Inboxes (Off)
Moves each databases inbox into the database itself which makes it a lot easier for when you’re filing things.
Four Shortcuts I Find Useful:
Cmd-Ctrl-M - brings up a panel for moving a file quickly
Cmd-7 for wide screen view (makes more sense than the standard view)
Cmd-option-i - toggle right inspector
Cmd-option-1 - toggle left sidebar
Obviously depends on your own individual workflow but here are some of my recommendations:
Make sure you get the iOS companion app DevonThink To Go. This allows you to capture everything on your mobile devices. Also make sure you install all add ons via DevonThink3 -> Install Add Ons.
These add ons will:
- Allow you to view and import emails in DevonThink (you will also have to enable the plugin in the Apple Mail app for this functionality to work)
- Put an ‘Inbox’ folder in your finder which allows you to just drag any file or folder into it and have it appear in your DevonThink Inbox
- Give you OCR for all your pdfs
- Give you extensions for browsers to clip things easily.
When you clip something that you want to read or refer back to you’re generally best off using the ‘paginated PDF’ setting as not all the available options support annotation and the AI search. It’s not a big deal if you don’t because you can just right click something and click ‘Convert To’ to turn it into a pdf later.
Two settings I’d recommend trying out:
DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Retain View (On)
Stops the view from changing every time you switch databases which can be annoying.
DevonThink3 -> Preferences -> General -> Interface -> Unify Inboxes (Off)
Moves each databases inbox into the database itself which makes it a lot easier for when you’re filing things.
Four Shortcuts I Find Useful:
Cmd-Ctrl-M - brings up a panel for moving a file quickly
Cmd-7 for wide screen view (makes more sense than the standard view)
Cmd-option-i - toggle right inspector
Cmd-option-1 - toggle left sidebar
Thanks! Working on a shortish tech history book right now for which I don't have the research especially well organized--and am in the process of refactoring. This will make a good test case.
No worries. One more thing you might be interested in, they also do another app called DevonAgent that allows you to do deep dive searches across different search engines at the same time including academic paper search engines. You can also use boolean operators on the search terms as well as advanced search terms such near, before, after etc as in 'term1 near\n term2' which would run a search looking for term1 within n words of term2. You can then import the results directly into devonthink for further processing. Very cool stuff.
Where do you have time to read with this level of complexity!
Lol it's really not as bad as it sounds, just jump in and start using it and your workflow will spontaneously emerge
Try UpNote, I find it more usable than Obsidian,
Just had a look at it. It's ok but there are some serious limitations in comparison to Obsidian which would make it unsatisfactory for me:
- No command palette
- No block inclusion
- Notes appear to be stored in databases rather than just as markdown notes on the file system. Backup of markdown notes seems to create a flat group of folders with randomly generated file names.
- No plugin/extension capability.
- No graph view
- No daily note template support
- No command palette
- No block inclusion
- Notes appear to be stored in databases rather than just as markdown notes on the file system. Backup of markdown notes seems to create a flat group of folders with randomly generated file names.
- No plugin/extension capability.
- No graph view
- No daily note template support
Yeah, that's an issue, but for me, it felt more like an app rather than a wrapper. And the table support is way superior to Obsidian.
Could you outline what your workflow is like when working with DevonThink? I've always found it intimidating from the pitch on their website, and I couldn't visualize how I'd work with it, so I think your workflow could be a great reference for me to understand.
So it will, to varying extents, reduce time you spend in any of the following programs:
- Finder
- Preview/PDF Viewer
- Bookmark Manager
- Hazel (automated file management)
- RSS Feed Reader
- iBooks
Everyone's needs are different and my workflow is still a work in progress but I basically run it on similar principles to Inbox Zero. It goes like this:
You have your Global Inbox database which is your in-tray. You then have a bunch of different databases which you could just view as being top level folders. Each of these has its own Inbox. Within each database you can create groups which are basically just folders. You can nest as many as you like. I hope from this description you can see that it is basically like a fancy Finder.
Anytime I find anything on the internet I find interesting I clip it into the global inbox as one of two things (there are more options but these are the ones I use):
- A bookmark if it is just a general site I may want to check out again. I particularly use this for my Coding database for storing useful tools I may want to use at some point.
- A clutter free PDF if it is something I want to read, extract quotes from, annotate etc
DevonThink also adds an Inbox folder to your Finder sidebar so if you have any other files you've acquired throughout the day e.g screenshots you can quickly add these in by dragging them into this folder.
I then make sure that each day I go into the global inbox and move each item into the respective database's inbox (or just the top level of the database if I'm feeling lazy). This way nothing ever gets too out of hand. I have databases for all my broad interests e.g Maths, Coding, Fitness etc as well as a Misc database for everything that doesn't warrant having it's own database.
All of these category databases gets at least an Other folder. This means that, when organising each database I can keep the top level free of files: if I don't know where to file something it goes in the Other folder. Think of it as the junk drawer of the database. Periodically I will go through a database's Other folder and will look to see if any new natural groupings have emerged in which case I will select the files and create a new group for them. Otherwise I'll just leave them as is.
You can also set up smart rules to automate a lot of this for you so you can just tag things as you are clipping or importing them and then DevonThink will automatically move them into the right places for you. You can do much more than this with Smart Rules: for example you could have a script triggered when a file was added that met certain conditions but I don't have any need for this advanced level of control right now. You can also set it up to track RSS feeds and import them if that's your thing.
As well as the category databases I also have a few databases that are organised differently. I have Non-Fiction and Fiction databases which house pdfs organised in folders by author name. These are for general non-fiction and fiction only. Specific subject textbooks and papers live in their respective databases instead. I have an encrypted database for important stuff like insurance details, and I have an Articles database.
The Articles database currently has no groups inside it just PDFs at the top level of any articles I found interesting. By article, I primarily mean blog posts and journalism not (normally) academic papers which tend to be specific enough to add to a category database. If something is obviously category specific like a coding tutorial I will move it into the relevant database. I do not bother with folders in the articles database as I have found it is almost impossible to organise general articles due to them often touching on several different themes and you never know what is going to trigger remembering an article or when or what you will use it for. This is also probably why newspapers resort to using such broad categories like Culture, General Affairs etc. I thus find it better to just have them all at the same level. I may group them into folders by the year I added them into the database if I feel it getting too messy.
I'm not being disciplined enough with myself currently, but what I want to start doing is skimming the newspapers each morning, clip the articles I want to read, and then do all my reading in DevonThink. This way I can highlight and annotate as I go rather than reading in the web browser and going back after the fact and highlighting the parts I found interesting. As you're highlighting you can choose to right click and Add Note to add a specific comment you may want to make. You can then click Tool -> Summarise Highlights -> As Markdown which will generate a file with all the quotations and comments you've made along with app url links to both the general file and the page number of each highlight for easy access.
As well as dragging files and folders into DevonThink you can also index files and folders stored elsewhere, allowing you to keep them in their original location but access them from within DevonThink. You can take advantage of this by creating a new database for your notes and then clicking File -> Index Files and Folders... and selecting your Obsidian vault. You can then use the Quick Finder (cmd-ctrl-m) to move your newly created highlight note into Obsidian for further editing. Or you can just edit the note from within DevonThink using the built in markdown editor. If you add it into Obsidian you can take advantage of block inclusion which allows you to keep the quote in its original file but use it in many other files without having to copy paste and potentially losing track of where something came from. To do this you just start typing ![[filename^ at which point Obsidian will give you a drop down list of sections in the file. You select the part you wish to use and Obsidian will then automatically generate and add a hash that represents that block e.g your markdown text will now look like ![[filename^1js3cj]] and the WYSIWYG editor will display the quote in your new file as if you just typed or pasted it there.
I think by now you can see how you could use this kind of workflow to not only organise all your different bookmarks, files, highlights in one relevant place, but to also use that information to generate your own new content quickly and easily. Having everything organised so well has even more benefits when you want to retrieve something as you have a much better idea of where it is going to be located and can then take advantage of that by doing a search on that specific database rather than having to do an entire file system search from Spotlight/Alfred. DevonThink's search is much better than either of these as it will search the contents of your file not just the filename so if you have no idea about the name of the article but can remember some of the topics it contained you can pretty much always find what you're looking for. You can also use search operators such as AND, OR etc as if you were doing an SQL query if you want to get find grained. There is also an Alfred workflow available so you can type your search queries out lightning fast.
One final thing worth mentioning is another program devontechnologies makes called DevonAgent. This allows you to do searches of many different search engines simultaneously (including academic ones), including deep searches where it will follow links on the pages found to as many levels deep as you set. You can search with boolean and advanced operators such as term1 near\n term2 which will search for term1 with n words of term2. You can also set the program to do these searches periodically e.g every 24 hours if there's a particular field you want to keep up on. You can even get it to send you the results as an email. Once you've got your search results, you can then either open them in the app, in the browser or import any interesting looking articles directly into devonthink.
I should have my new blog finished soon and I may create a post and video or something at some point to go into even more detail but hope this helps in the mean time!
- Finder
- Preview/PDF Viewer
- Bookmark Manager
- Hazel (automated file management)
- RSS Feed Reader
- iBooks
Everyone's needs are different and my workflow is still a work in progress but I basically run it on similar principles to Inbox Zero. It goes like this:
You have your Global Inbox database which is your in-tray. You then have a bunch of different databases which you could just view as being top level folders. Each of these has its own Inbox. Within each database you can create groups which are basically just folders. You can nest as many as you like. I hope from this description you can see that it is basically like a fancy Finder.
Anytime I find anything on the internet I find interesting I clip it into the global inbox as one of two things (there are more options but these are the ones I use):
- A bookmark if it is just a general site I may want to check out again. I particularly use this for my Coding database for storing useful tools I may want to use at some point.
- A clutter free PDF if it is something I want to read, extract quotes from, annotate etc
DevonThink also adds an Inbox folder to your Finder sidebar so if you have any other files you've acquired throughout the day e.g screenshots you can quickly add these in by dragging them into this folder.
I then make sure that each day I go into the global inbox and move each item into the respective database's inbox (or just the top level of the database if I'm feeling lazy). This way nothing ever gets too out of hand. I have databases for all my broad interests e.g Maths, Coding, Fitness etc as well as a Misc database for everything that doesn't warrant having it's own database.
All of these category databases gets at least an Other folder. This means that, when organising each database I can keep the top level free of files: if I don't know where to file something it goes in the Other folder. Think of it as the junk drawer of the database. Periodically I will go through a database's Other folder and will look to see if any new natural groupings have emerged in which case I will select the files and create a new group for them. Otherwise I'll just leave them as is.
You can also set up smart rules to automate a lot of this for you so you can just tag things as you are clipping or importing them and then DevonThink will automatically move them into the right places for you. You can do much more than this with Smart Rules: for example you could have a script triggered when a file was added that met certain conditions but I don't have any need for this advanced level of control right now. You can also set it up to track RSS feeds and import them if that's your thing.
As well as the category databases I also have a few databases that are organised differently. I have Non-Fiction and Fiction databases which house pdfs organised in folders by author name. These are for general non-fiction and fiction only. Specific subject textbooks and papers live in their respective databases instead. I have an encrypted database for important stuff like insurance details, and I have an Articles database.
The Articles database currently has no groups inside it just PDFs at the top level of any articles I found interesting. By article, I primarily mean blog posts and journalism not (normally) academic papers which tend to be specific enough to add to a category database. If something is obviously category specific like a coding tutorial I will move it into the relevant database. I do not bother with folders in the articles database as I have found it is almost impossible to organise general articles due to them often touching on several different themes and you never know what is going to trigger remembering an article or when or what you will use it for. This is also probably why newspapers resort to using such broad categories like Culture, General Affairs etc. I thus find it better to just have them all at the same level. I may group them into folders by the year I added them into the database if I feel it getting too messy.
I'm not being disciplined enough with myself currently, but what I want to start doing is skimming the newspapers each morning, clip the articles I want to read, and then do all my reading in DevonThink. This way I can highlight and annotate as I go rather than reading in the web browser and going back after the fact and highlighting the parts I found interesting. As you're highlighting you can choose to right click and Add Note to add a specific comment you may want to make. You can then click Tool -> Summarise Highlights -> As Markdown which will generate a file with all the quotations and comments you've made along with app url links to both the general file and the page number of each highlight for easy access.
As well as dragging files and folders into DevonThink you can also index files and folders stored elsewhere, allowing you to keep them in their original location but access them from within DevonThink. You can take advantage of this by creating a new database for your notes and then clicking File -> Index Files and Folders... and selecting your Obsidian vault. You can then use the Quick Finder (cmd-ctrl-m) to move your newly created highlight note into Obsidian for further editing. Or you can just edit the note from within DevonThink using the built in markdown editor. If you add it into Obsidian you can take advantage of block inclusion which allows you to keep the quote in its original file but use it in many other files without having to copy paste and potentially losing track of where something came from. To do this you just start typing ![[filename^ at which point Obsidian will give you a drop down list of sections in the file. You select the part you wish to use and Obsidian will then automatically generate and add a hash that represents that block e.g your markdown text will now look like ![[filename^1js3cj]] and the WYSIWYG editor will display the quote in your new file as if you just typed or pasted it there.
I think by now you can see how you could use this kind of workflow to not only organise all your different bookmarks, files, highlights in one relevant place, but to also use that information to generate your own new content quickly and easily. Having everything organised so well has even more benefits when you want to retrieve something as you have a much better idea of where it is going to be located and can then take advantage of that by doing a search on that specific database rather than having to do an entire file system search from Spotlight/Alfred. DevonThink's search is much better than either of these as it will search the contents of your file not just the filename so if you have no idea about the name of the article but can remember some of the topics it contained you can pretty much always find what you're looking for. You can also use search operators such as AND, OR etc as if you were doing an SQL query if you want to get find grained. There is also an Alfred workflow available so you can type your search queries out lightning fast.
One final thing worth mentioning is another program devontechnologies makes called DevonAgent. This allows you to do searches of many different search engines simultaneously (including academic ones), including deep searches where it will follow links on the pages found to as many levels deep as you set. You can search with boolean and advanced operators such as term1 near\n term2 which will search for term1 with n words of term2. You can also set the program to do these searches periodically e.g every 24 hours if there's a particular field you want to keep up on. You can even get it to send you the results as an email. Once you've got your search results, you can then either open them in the app, in the browser or import any interesting looking articles directly into devonthink.
I should have my new blog finished soon and I may create a post and video or something at some point to go into even more detail but hope this helps in the mean time!
Thanks a lot! This is incredibly detailed and very useful!
Incidentally, DevonThink is 25% off through Monday.
It occurs to me , reading these comments, that Windows/Linux are not really considered to be first class citizens by those who make publishing/authorship software.
Scrivener Windows release trails far behind the Mac release, DevonThink is unavailable elsewhere outside Mac, Vellum is Mac only.
Kind of a shame , no? I understand the whole 'Artists-skew-Apple' thing, but this type of software doesn't have a lot of valid reasons to lack portability to such an extent other than catering to specific markets.
So, if you're an authorship/publishing software person, 'We're out there, and we'd love to use your software on PC.' .
Scrivener Windows release trails far behind the Mac release, DevonThink is unavailable elsewhere outside Mac, Vellum is Mac only.
Kind of a shame , no? I understand the whole 'Artists-skew-Apple' thing, but this type of software doesn't have a lot of valid reasons to lack portability to such an extent other than catering to specific markets.
So, if you're an authorship/publishing software person, 'We're out there, and we'd love to use your software on PC.' .
I've been making Notebook.ai for over 6 years now, so I have a little experience with the other end of the spectrum. A standalone, downloadable Mac app is one of the most common "feature requests" I get, and I used to get a lot of support requests that basically just boiled down to "where is the mac download".
I try to treat Windows, Linux, and Mac all as first-class citizens on the web (especially since I'm close to ~40/60% Safari/Chrome usage), but ctrl+f'ing my feedback/request spreadsheets produces 4x more results for "Mac" than "Windows". I can see how other companies that are more focused on growth would be incentivized to prioritize Mac.
I definitely agree with your sentiment though. I'm a PC writer and wish more tools were available to me! (In fact, I made Fiction.Tools with an available-on-Windows filter, which might be helpful for you!)
I try to treat Windows, Linux, and Mac all as first-class citizens on the web (especially since I'm close to ~40/60% Safari/Chrome usage), but ctrl+f'ing my feedback/request spreadsheets produces 4x more results for "Mac" than "Windows". I can see how other companies that are more focused on growth would be incentivized to prioritize Mac.
I definitely agree with your sentiment though. I'm a PC writer and wish more tools were available to me! (In fact, I made Fiction.Tools with an available-on-Windows filter, which might be helpful for you!)
- knock, knock
- who is it?
- Opportunity
If you know how to program validated business ideas just fell into your lap.
Make a Windows clone of DevonThink or Vellum.
Better yet, make a Scrivener, DevonThink or Vellum clone as a web app. The technology is more than capable.
But you won't do it.
Your parents didn't have emerald mine so you couldn't possibly be successful.
Also, Survivorship Bias!
- who is it?
- Opportunity
If you know how to program validated business ideas just fell into your lap.
Make a Windows clone of DevonThink or Vellum.
Better yet, make a Scrivener, DevonThink or Vellum clone as a web app. The technology is more than capable.
But you won't do it.
Your parents didn't have emerald mine so you couldn't possibly be successful.
Also, Survivorship Bias!
> make a […] web app
I’d make a different recommendation. If you want it on Windows, make the best Windows app you can. Take advantage of all the APIs and features the platform has to offer. If you do a good job, you will make something faster and smaller that follows the platform conventions and is comfortable to use by other people like you.
Right now I think the Mac has the healthiest ecosystem of interesting software from small developers. I’m excluding games - Windows and the three big consoles rule the games space. For personal software (like the titles you mentioned) Windows feels like it’s fading and Linux is doing what Linux has always done.
I’d make a different recommendation. If you want it on Windows, make the best Windows app you can. Take advantage of all the APIs and features the platform has to offer. If you do a good job, you will make something faster and smaller that follows the platform conventions and is comfortable to use by other people like you.
Right now I think the Mac has the healthiest ecosystem of interesting software from small developers. I’m excluding games - Windows and the three big consoles rule the games space. For personal software (like the titles you mentioned) Windows feels like it’s fading and Linux is doing what Linux has always done.
I build marketing software for authors (called StoryOrigin if you want to look it up for credibility purposes), so I'm quite familiar with the space.
Exactly what you've described is already out there: https://www.atticus.io/ (released last year - I have no affiliation.)
Exactly what you've described is already out there: https://www.atticus.io/ (released last year - I have no affiliation.)
This is the first I've heard of it. Looks neat. I do like the Front/Body/Back Matter view in the sidebar.
I wonder if this is the case because if you publish with a publisher, you'll eventually have to end up in .docx or something. I think that for a lot of people, Microsoft Word would be enough (and maybe Google Docs nowadays).
I used Scrivener more like a generic [Outliner + DB] combo than a tool for long form writing.
IMO combining outlining and databases could be powerful if fully exploited (research...).
I truly consider Keith Blount to be a "hero" in the sense that he offered this power for all writers out there (at a reasonable price.)
---
FYI, Other outliner+DB beasts include the "overlooked for way too long" Infoqube [0] and the "probably soon to be a rising star" Tana [1].
[0] https://www.infoqube.biz/
[1] https://tana.inc/
IMO combining outlining and databases could be powerful if fully exploited (research...).
I truly consider Keith Blount to be a "hero" in the sense that he offered this power for all writers out there (at a reasonable price.)
---
FYI, Other outliner+DB beasts include the "overlooked for way too long" Infoqube [0] and the "probably soon to be a rising star" Tana [1].
[0] https://www.infoqube.biz/
[1] https://tana.inc/
I would throw in yWriter as a competitor as well, Windows only but I use the 5th version via wine on linux
I wrote my novel with scrivener, and while it sometimes tries to do too much, I love it. Coming from word it was a game changer for me, being able to write in any order you want and organize your scenes in the binder. Snapshots are also really good and helpful. And the corkboard has become essential for me.
Scrivener could cut some options it doesn’t do very good like publishing, that would streamline it. And syncing could be much better. But overall it’s one of the rare tools, that changed the way I work for the better.
Scrivener could cut some options it doesn’t do very good like publishing, that would streamline it. And syncing could be much better. But overall it’s one of the rare tools, that changed the way I work for the better.
My entry to Scrivener was similar, except I came in from Pages. It was between Ulysses & Scrivener and, while I like Ulysses's look, I went with Scrivener and am glad I did.
It does have a few too many options, which makes it a bit daunting, but one could simply stick with the basics and it'd be great. The syncing is probably the worst aspect, but as I don't write on my iPhone/iPad, it wasn't ever really an issue.
It does have a few too many options, which makes it a bit daunting, but one could simply stick with the basics and it'd be great. The syncing is probably the worst aspect, but as I don't write on my iPhone/iPad, it wasn't ever really an issue.
Scrivener is amazing on macOS.
I tried doing the cross-platform writing story with the new versions on Windows and mobile apps, but it just has too many issues of syncing and random formatting bugs across the OS.
I absolutely love the mac experience though and it has helped me author two books in less than two years. I've tried markdown generators and traditional word, but Scrivener just feels right.
I tried doing the cross-platform writing story with the new versions on Windows and mobile apps, but it just has too many issues of syncing and random formatting bugs across the OS.
I absolutely love the mac experience though and it has helped me author two books in less than two years. I've tried markdown generators and traditional word, but Scrivener just feels right.
Scrivener is great...I've used it on Mac, iOS and PC. But the proprietary file format and requirement to use Dropbox for syncing killed it for me. I could live with the proprietary format since it works on every platform I use, but I use Dropbox for literally nothing else anymore.
To be fair, the proprietary format is very transparent. It's a folder with a bunch of (IMO very readable and self-explanatory) XML with your writing stored as a RTF files further down the folder hierarchy.
If I ever wanted to abandon scrivener, I think I could whip up a python script to convert it to a folder of markdown or LaTeX files per section pretty quickly. I have no concerns about losing my data to bit rot or the software no longer functioning on future computers.
As for DropBox, yeah... that sucks; it's the only thing I use DropBox for nowadays too.
If I ever wanted to abandon scrivener, I think I could whip up a python script to convert it to a folder of markdown or LaTeX files per section pretty quickly. I have no concerns about losing my data to bit rot or the software no longer functioning on future computers.
As for DropBox, yeah... that sucks; it's the only thing I use DropBox for nowadays too.
Ah, I'd actually forgotten the RTF files at the bottom of the folder hierarchy.
I dropped Scrivener for LaTeX and have never been happier. Obviously, Word is a bad choice - it's not really built for publishing - but I do like the long form single-file approach. I use LaTeX's ability to write comments as a way to archive old chunks of text, leave margin notes, separate scenes for easy cut/paste, etc.
My main problem with Scrivener is that my scenes tend to be short - many under 400 words - and it just gets unwieldy to have a couple hundred of these.
My main problem with Scrivener is that my scenes tend to be short - many under 400 words - and it just gets unwieldy to have a couple hundred of these.
I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that?
I definitely like how your approach keeps everything in a human readable file, I never liked the way Scrivener uses an opaque format which doesn't play nice with any other tool you might use (I would much prefer a tool that annotated scenes in org-files or (pandoc) markdown).
I definitely like how your approach keeps everything in a human readable file, I never liked the way Scrivener uses an opaque format which doesn't play nice with any other tool you might use (I would much prefer a tool that annotated scenes in org-files or (pandoc) markdown).
> I've not used Scrivener myself but as I've heard it described it is as a tool to organise chapters / parts of a book and sort out their relations, how are you using LaTeX for that?
It doesn't really do that though. It's not a relational database. You can't say, create a MainCharacterProfile document that then gets "attached" to certain scenes. The closest you can get is manually typing out "characters in this scene" and then manually hyperlinking to that document. Which won't update automatically if you were to remove that character from the scene. It's kind of a mess to use it like the marketing says you should.
If it was relational, that'd be fuckin' dope. It's best to think about it as a combination of a filing cabinet, a typewriter, and a cork board. You can manually sort your filing cabinet, rearranging your scenes by page or by folder. You can type up new scenes and edit old ones. You can drag and drop things on your cork board. You can add labels and colored flags for filtering and sorting. But that's functionally it. The only things it writes to disk are rtf docs. No library or structured metadata or anything; just more rtf docs.
It's honestly closer to "wordpad with tabs and folders" than anything else. I've been doing NaNoWriMo on most years since ~2011, and I think it's total garbage. Plus my editor always wants a word doc, so revisions after the draft just happen in Word anyway. I think there's a good chance I could convince them to read a LaTeX document though, maybe even teach them how to add comments. As a bonus, the word document that scrivener generates doesn't have all of my background and notes, but the LaTeX doc has them right in-line as comments, so I think the feedback would be more constructive in a lot of places.
It doesn't really do that though. It's not a relational database. You can't say, create a MainCharacterProfile document that then gets "attached" to certain scenes. The closest you can get is manually typing out "characters in this scene" and then manually hyperlinking to that document. Which won't update automatically if you were to remove that character from the scene. It's kind of a mess to use it like the marketing says you should.
If it was relational, that'd be fuckin' dope. It's best to think about it as a combination of a filing cabinet, a typewriter, and a cork board. You can manually sort your filing cabinet, rearranging your scenes by page or by folder. You can type up new scenes and edit old ones. You can drag and drop things on your cork board. You can add labels and colored flags for filtering and sorting. But that's functionally it. The only things it writes to disk are rtf docs. No library or structured metadata or anything; just more rtf docs.
It's honestly closer to "wordpad with tabs and folders" than anything else. I've been doing NaNoWriMo on most years since ~2011, and I think it's total garbage. Plus my editor always wants a word doc, so revisions after the draft just happen in Word anyway. I think there's a good chance I could convince them to read a LaTeX document though, maybe even teach them how to add comments. As a bonus, the word document that scrivener generates doesn't have all of my background and notes, but the LaTeX doc has them right in-line as comments, so I think the feedback would be more constructive in a lot of places.
Huh, interesting. I do know someone who is quite happy to use Scrivener, so if it works it works I guess, but it seems to do way less than I thought it would.
At this point something like org-mode or markdown sounds more useful. At the very least you could annotate scenes with metadata and read this metadata using other programs. Should be reasonably doable to tag scenes with the characters in it etc. From what I know of org-mode it could do quite some magic with just that info.
I reckon LaTeX is also a good choice, though it's tricky for other tools to read, you'd basically always need to compile it first, or stick to simple LaTeX.
At this point something like org-mode or markdown sounds more useful. At the very least you could annotate scenes with metadata and read this metadata using other programs. Should be reasonably doable to tag scenes with the characters in it etc. From what I know of org-mode it could do quite some magic with just that info.
I reckon LaTeX is also a good choice, though it's tricky for other tools to read, you'd basically always need to compile it first, or stick to simple LaTeX.
I put together a set of Org-mode key bindings, config variables (file-local) and tag color codes for a screenplay project. Org-mode's HTML output was way off from what I wanted, so I hacked up a CLI filter, in a language I know better than Elisp. From HTML it's easy to get to PDF, an industry-standard format.
I wrote a book in Scrivener - loved it, but when it came to prepping it for print and various ebook formats - what a total nightmare, I couldn’t get anything to distill how I needed - really needs basic functioning templates for print and Amazon KDP etc. I want to write books not get tangled up in the tech.
I published my book via Scrivener - both print and ebook. I'll admit it wasn't straightforward but once I "learned" it, I saved that away as a template for my next book. There's a fair bit of customization and not very obvious how it works. I relied on the forums for hints/tips and even then it took some trial/error attempts. I'd say in total, I spent a full weekend figuring it out. I wonder how much of that memory is now lost and will need to be relearned when I publish my second book (template and all).
This has triggered a memory, whereby I had spent probably a similar amount of time getting a custom template done - then, by the time my book was finished, there was an upgrade and the template vanished/became unusable - and then the whole templating system seemed to have changed dramatically, and I didn’t have the energy to burn another 2-3 days re-learning it all… Anyway.
Scrivener is one of those app purchases that I highly value. I have written two screenplays on the Windows version of the app and though using First Draft is the industry standard, I like the ease of use of Scrivener. A lot of the features (even the corkboard) seem harder to grasp and I don't use them, but for playing around with chapters/sections and maintaining focus, it's one of the best writing apps I have used.
(Other favorite is Zettlr, but that's another story)
(Other favorite is Zettlr, but that's another story)
> I guess I’m just lucky in that I enjoy what I do: getting to sit at home all day, making my own hours, coding an app I love and which is used by others to create novels and screenplays and other stuff - what more motivation do I need?
I have to say that this gave me a very broad smile.
It's fantastic that it's still possible to write an App like Scrivener solo or with a very small team.
I have to say that this gave me a very broad smile.
It's fantastic that it's still possible to write an App like Scrivener solo or with a very small team.
I used Scrivener for a while. I switched to Vellum, which I like much better.
What was the decider? I wanted to have "drop caps", that cool feature where the first letter of a chapter is 3 or 4 lines big. The forums for Scrivener suggested some very complicated ways to do it involving CSS. In Vellum it's just one of the styles. Silly, but it's my book and I wanted it.
Vellum also seems to know publishing conventions better (the half-title page, the copyright page, About the Author, etc.) They make your book not look so self-published.
I'm not trashing Scrivener, though. It's a good product.
What was the decider? I wanted to have "drop caps", that cool feature where the first letter of a chapter is 3 or 4 lines big. The forums for Scrivener suggested some very complicated ways to do it involving CSS. In Vellum it's just one of the styles. Silly, but it's my book and I wanted it.
Vellum also seems to know publishing conventions better (the half-title page, the copyright page, About the Author, etc.) They make your book not look so self-published.
I'm not trashing Scrivener, though. It's a good product.
I think Vellum's whole value proposition is typesetting ebooks and other "rich" formats. I've never tried to sell my writing, so Pandoc with a bit of custom CSS has worked great for me, but if I ever feel the need to build a fancy ebook I'll be looking at Vellum first.
When I first got serious about writing fiction I used Vim (with Markdown), then switched to Scrivener, but I can not deal with the rich text crap anymore so I went to Obsidian for the best of both worlds, sort of. If Scrivener had a plaintext mode I'd probably still be using it.
WYSIWYG editing is a curse on mankind. Write first, then typeset.
When I first got serious about writing fiction I used Vim (with Markdown), then switched to Scrivener, but I can not deal with the rich text crap anymore so I went to Obsidian for the best of both worlds, sort of. If Scrivener had a plaintext mode I'd probably still be using it.
WYSIWYG editing is a curse on mankind. Write first, then typeset.
I think Scrivener also has different goals: Vellum looks like it's intended for publishing, but Scrivener I think of more as an organizational tool. That said, I've been using Dabble if only because it's all cloud-based and I don't have to worry about syncing files around myself.
Strange comparison. Scrivener is for writing books, Vellum for publishing, even if scrivener has a publish option. But they rather complement each other. Scrivener is incredible value for money.
I recently wasted three days trying to get Scrivener to do something very basic - autonumber sections in a book without including part numbers.
It should have been easy, but the autonumbering features didn't work as advertised and I ended up with something that is probably a hack that relies on some bugs.
It's good VFM, but considering its audience it's also one of the most user-hostile pieces of software I've ever used. [1]
There's far too much "Yes it does that but it's not designed for it so keep your expectations low" for comfort.
Either include features and make them professional, or don't include them at all. I'd happily pay two or three times as much for something that does all the things it sorta kinda implies it does but you know actually not really.
Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books. But perhaps that may be of some interest to writers?
[1] TBF it's far better than Calibre. But that has the excuse of being free.
It should have been easy, but the autonumbering features didn't work as advertised and I ended up with something that is probably a hack that relies on some bugs.
It's good VFM, but considering its audience it's also one of the most user-hostile pieces of software I've ever used. [1]
There's far too much "Yes it does that but it's not designed for it so keep your expectations low" for comfort.
Either include features and make them professional, or don't include them at all. I'd happily pay two or three times as much for something that does all the things it sorta kinda implies it does but you know actually not really.
Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books. But perhaps that may be of some interest to writers?
[1] TBF it's far better than Calibre. But that has the excuse of being free.
Yeah, I gave up on Scrivener for anything to do with formatting. If you are going to use Scrivener, use it for an editor/organizer, and export the result as a word doc, and then process that in Vellum. Then you get good tools doing what they are good at.
Kinda my feeling. But I won't trash Scrivener.
> Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books.
Exactly. That's all I want. Hopefully a higher price means they can live on that alone.
And they have fonts which not everyone in the world is using. Maybe Scrivener does too; haven't checked.
But maybe this will start a flame war: Guy Kawasaki recommends Adobe InDesign. To hell with monthly fees, so no.
> Vellum does almost nothing in comparison except produce a limited range of beautiful books.
Exactly. That's all I want. Hopefully a higher price means they can live on that alone.
And they have fonts which not everyone in the world is using. Maybe Scrivener does too; haven't checked.
But maybe this will start a flame war: Guy Kawasaki recommends Adobe InDesign. To hell with monthly fees, so no.
InDesign is great, if you want to precisely layout print books. It does not support ebooks at all.
Doing both at once is Vellum's sweet spot.
If you don't want to pay subscriptions, I've heard Affinity Publisher is a good option.
Doing both at once is Vellum's sweet spot.
If you don't want to pay subscriptions, I've heard Affinity Publisher is a good option.
"writing books" vs. "publishing" ? Is that a sharp distinction?
It's usually done by different people with different job descriptions.
A writer's output are manuscripts, works of art.
A publisher's output is a commercial offering of books, a business.
[1] https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-p...
A writer's output are manuscripts, works of art.
A publisher's output is a commercial offering of books, a business.
[1] https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-author-and-p...
I agree, but the latter can also be a work of art. Typesetting is definitely something that can be done right or wrong, and sometimes to a breathtakingly high standard.
The publisher engages or hires typesetters, as part of the publishing process.
Scriveners tools are designed to help a person write like keeping track of timelines, character sheets, and the like.
It sounds like the other product has tools for typesetting and layout, which are tools for publishing your finished work.
It sounds like the other product has tools for typesetting and layout, which are tools for publishing your finished work.
I only tried the trial of Vellum but, from what I remember, it was easy to use and beautiful to boot. Definitely a lot less complicated than Scrivener (which, if your goal is to write a book, is probably the way to go). It seems like a joy to work in for the long haul.
The thing for me is price. Vellum is $200-250, Scrivener is $60 (I got it for ~$40 with NaNoWriMo discounts a few years ago, if I recall correctly). Plus you can write screenplays in it, which was another bonus. I have spent more time than I should customizing it, but that ended up being part of the joy. I've more than a million words in it so it's unlikely I'll switch, but it's a joy to use.
The thing for me is price. Vellum is $200-250, Scrivener is $60 (I got it for ~$40 with NaNoWriMo discounts a few years ago, if I recall correctly). Plus you can write screenplays in it, which was another bonus. I have spent more time than I should customizing it, but that ended up being part of the joy. I've more than a million words in it so it's unlikely I'll switch, but it's a joy to use.
If you’re interested in screenplays you might be interested in the fountain file format. It’s like markdown but for screenplays. It allows you to write screenplays in any text editor and I really like the simplicity of it; keeps me focussed on the task at hand. There’s a very cool app created by screenwriter John August (Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) called Highlander2 on the Mac App Store that is purpose built for it (technically it uses a custom file format called highland but it’s basically just a folder with a fountain file inside it and a few other files for editor settings, metadata and handling images if you have any). There’s also fountain extensions for VS Code, Sublime Text, Obsidian and probably other editors out there I don’t know of.
Links:
https://fountain.io/
https://highland2.app/index.php
Links:
https://fountain.io/
https://highland2.app/index.php
Highland 2 is fantastic. For sheer speed and beauty when writing it's great. The UI is like a much simplified but also much nicer (because of that) version of Scrivener (I own both). And the file format is easy to parse if you need to.
I've listened to John August's Scriptnotes podcast (fantastic and ad-free) but I haven't tried out Highland 2 yet. Will check it out – thanks!
Give Beat a look, too.
https://kapitan.fi/beat/
https://kapitan.fi/beat/
This is awesome, never heard of it until now. Seriously cool bit of software. Love that it uses Courier Prime as well, it's my default font everywhere!
Podcast interviews with screenwriters of major productions -- Die Hard, Terminator 2, Back To The Future -- Script Apart by Al Hoerner.
I actually think the higher price is an asset, not a liability (unless you can't afford it, of course). It means they have a business model that doesn't require a huge mass market to survive, so they won't go broke or get acquired and watered down by some big company.
I'd agree with that. I certainly hope they're able to stay in business – it seems as though Vellum takes care of everything. About the only thing it can't do (I might be wrong) is that it can't output to Word format? I'm the process of publishing a book right now and they've requested everything in Word.
Edit: Turns out that as of ~10 days ago, you can, in fact, export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/) in Vellum.
Edit: Turns out that as of ~10 days ago, you can, in fact, export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/) in Vellum.
Strong recommendation (echoed by many I've talked to). Write in word, format in Vellum. Don't use Vellum as an editor, that's not its strength.
If you make any changes to the word doc, you just use "reimport word document" in Vellum, and you are ready to print/upload again.
If you make any changes to the word doc, you just use "reimport word document" in Vellum, and you are ready to print/upload again.
I just looked: you can export to RTF. So couldn't Word import that?
I was wrong. Just took a look at their blog and apparently as of 3.4 (Nov. 16, 2022) you can export to Word (https://blog.vellum.pub/). That's excellent.
Vellum is expensive in comparison to Scrivener, but the output is very nice and you soon see the increased value of using it.
Scrivener and Vellum do different jobs. At a simplistic level the former is for creating the content and the latter for producing the final outputs (Scrivener can do both but really only excels at the first).
Scrivener and Vellum do different jobs. At a simplistic level the former is for creating the content and the latter for producing the final outputs (Scrivener can do both but really only excels at the first).
Vellum looks excellent, thanks for mentioning it.
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"Scriviner" is onomatopoeiatic. It's the sound of quill pens scratching away.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen that suggested, but it does make a bit of sense. That said, a scrivener was an occupation: a professional copyist or clerk,
like Bartleby the Scrivener.
It’s from Old French escrivain (same meaning) which is in turn from Latin scribere (“to write”), which might be from proto-Indo-European “skribh-“ which is a stem for cutting or separating.
From https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener
It’s from Old French escrivain (same meaning) which is in turn from Latin scribere (“to write”), which might be from proto-Indo-European “skribh-“ which is a stem for cutting or separating.
From https://www.etymonline.com/word/scrivener
skribh is a cutty-sounding syllable for sure.
Swing your vorpal sword, skribby skrab.
Swing your vorpal sword, skribby skrab.
Any recommendations for writing manuscripts for scientific journals?
Should also add that I do have a soft spot and gratitude for Scrivener as, coming from Word, it was the first software that I used that allowed you to organise all your notes together in folders and contained other cool tools for writers such as the built in name generator (which I still use), the corkbord organiser etc. Scapple (made by the same company) is also great if you want to do some quick mind mapping and integrates really well with Scrivener as you can import all the bubbles and get to work fleshing them out.