Scrivener 2.0: A Writing Software Review

When you first open a document, you'll see that the interface has a much cleaner looking design. You are given six options: a blank document, fiction, nonfiction, scriptwriting, poetry, and miscellaneous. If you select on the fiction category, scrivener will give you three new templates: a regular novel, a novel of parts, and the short story.

The nonfiction section contains templates for an essay, an APA paper, an MLA paper, research proposal, and an undergraduate humanities essay. The scriptwriting section gives you six options. BBC radio scene style, BBC tape drama, comic script, screenplay, stageplay parentheses (UK), and stageplay (US). The poetry and lyrics section just contains one template for a poem. Miscellaneous section is kind of interesting in that it has two templates one of which is for recipe collection.

The first improvement I missed aside from layout, is the ability to highlight words in this section and to be able to see how many words are in that selection out of the number of total words. For instance I have 100 word paragraph and I select five words. At the bottom of the screen I will see words: 5/100, plus the number of characters involved. I have wanted this feature since I first caught scrivener 1.4.

There are number of things available in Scrivener 2.0. The toolbar offers several new options I haven't seen before. When I click on binder, and it removes the sidebars and displays only your writing. Clicking on the bookbinder icon again.

The collections icon is is rather interesting in the way it displays him from nation in your sidebar. If you click on the collections icon, beside bar will display in a tabular format. Clicking on the collections icon will return it to its default state.

You have the typical add and delete icons that were there in the prior version. They are bigger now. When you hold down the triangle on the plus icon, you have several options. They are to add a new folder or new text. There is an option to import a Web file, but it was great out so I couldn't check into that.

Other icons on in the toolbar include full-screen keywords quick reference comment wrap compile in view mode. Then, if you click on the double arrows on the far right side of the toolbar, you'll get the inspector which fills the right side of your board. The inspector contains your synopsis, general metadata, and document notes. Click on the double arrows again and select inspector and it will disappear.

Perhaps the best feature of scrivener 2.0 is the ability to compile all of the documents in your project and send them to the word processor of your choosing. You can export this collection in a variety of formats including, PDF, Word, Kindle, ePub, Final Draft, HTML, and more.