dallas moore

I’m a big fan of the writing application Scrivener. Not just for its creative writing capability, but for most of my writing in general. It hearkens back to my college days when word processing was an established norm as typewriters had become antiquated. For all the modern acceptance of this by my professors, for a reason unknown to me at the time, they still required students to rely on some non-technical solutions when doing research. Namely, the use of those little 3″x5″ note cards.

I just didn’t get it. I thought it was just another antiquated system for jotting down where you found your quotes while you muck about the library. For the most part, my professors never went beyond that either.

“Just turn them in the order that you used them in your paper.”

This was in addition to a redundant works cited page at the end of the paper. It was duplicitous busy work at best. I tended to fill out the note cards after I finished my paper because it was a requirement of the assignment and that felt like the quickest way to get the job done. Just use the computer for the editing, then copy the works cited over to the cards after the fact. My professors never took the time to explain to the class the “why”. They just went through the motions of their time honored syllabus and didn’t really communicate a good reason other than “because”. For a long while past then, I had always viewed note cards as a wasteful practice when writing. I wish I would’ve known then what I know now.

Note cards are incredibly useful!

As a student, I was required to turn them in for the cited quotes. However, if I would’ve known to actually use them beyond citations … for, oh say … my actual thoughts on the subject, it would’ve been an entirely different writing process. It would have allowed me to visibly shuffle my thoughts and ideas. I could have laid the cards out on a table to see where my arguments may be weak, where I needed more research, and (most importantly) where to trim some fat in order to be more concise. My lesson has been learned and note cards are now integral to many of my writing tasks. This is where Scrivener comes in.

Many writing tools out there are highly specialized for a particular type of project. I’m not going to buy a writing package that specializes in screenplays or novels. I do lots of technical writing, but I don’t want to be tied down by a specialized technical package either. I want something that gives me the freedom to move thoughts around, be they technical or even fictional. With moving thoughts, the first thing that comes to mind is moving around those note cards again and that just so happens to be Scrivener’s approach.

Even though it is generally billed as a creative writing tool for novels and screen plays, at it’s core, Scrivener is all about virtual note cards. You type thoughts, notions, quotes, or even attach images, sound clips, or movies to them. I visualize the note cards as a frontal representation for the “bit” of writing you’re actually doing. Be it technical manual or a fantasy novel, the actual writing takes place “behind” them. You can just write away to expand that thought, notion, quote, etc. as much as possible. And then, you can take it further. It’s a process. After that, you can label the cards (e.g. needs more work, finished, revise), sort them, assign them a color (for quick visual cues when sorting/arranging), and more. The writing that took place “behind” the cards doesn’t change, but its order follows the order of the cards.

You can continue editing your text in a combined view of multiple cards or export them to your favorite word processor at this point. I tend to go the word processing route once I have the order of the note cards in place. Once exported I can make a few revisions, proof-read, and edit and then I’m done. No matter what I’ve brought to Scrivener, the use of its virtual note cards has allowed me be more organized when handling a writing task.

Scrivener is a software package written for Mac OS X (no Windows version planned) and is available from the Literature and Latte website. Download and try it out for a trial period and if you like it, you can purchase it for $39.95.