Review by Tracy Rowan

I’ve spent years writing in Word. I’ve tried other programs for writers but until Scrivener came along, there was nothing that really worked the way I needed it to. I needed to make notes, I needed to keep reference photos, I needed to have separate folders for the story itself, and all the bits and pieces of information I’d collected about it. I needed a place to keep templates for character development and other aspects of the story. In short, I needed a place where I could keep my story, story bible, and all my resources in one place so that I could click back and forth between them in one program rather than hopping around from one program to another. Scrivener is that program.

I’ve begun to think of Scrivener as Photoshop for writers. You can do good work in it without even scratching the surface of what it can do. Honestly, I discover new functions in it all the time. I only recently discovered how to make comments on my text! The point here is that you need to keep at it. Do the tutorial, poke around in it and see what it does. Yes, there’s a learning curve, but there is for virtually any stand-alone word processor worth using, too, and Scrivener does so much more than a word processor will.

I was lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a half-price offer given to NaNoWriMo winners, but I can tell you that now that I’ve used it for close to a year, I would happily pay full price for this program and still feel I got a bargain.