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Scrivener 2 (for Mac) - Review 2020

Scrivener is the best writing app for long-form writers because it was built with their needs in mind. Whether you're pounding out endnotes for a nonfiction book or crafting characters to set loose in your next novel, Scrivener gives you a place to create, edit, and organize all your work. Considering Scrivener for Mac costs a one-time fee of only $49 (there are apps for iPhone, iPad, and Windows, too), you get a lot more than you might expect. Scrivener is PCMag Editors' Choice writing app for long-form writers.

While many appreciate Scrivener's treasure trove of features, others see its library, templates, corkboard, menu options, and formatting panels as potential distractions from the writing itself. An alternative app that minimizes visual distractions is Ulysses, the Editors' Choice for distraction-free writing apps. One more high-scoring writing app worth mentioning is Final Draft, which specifically caters to the needs of professional screenwriters. Final Draft is more expensive than nearly any other app in this category, but it continues to be an industry standard in film and television.

Scrivener Pricing

Scrivener is available for macOS ($49), Windows ($45), and iOS ($19.99). There is no Scrivener Android app. Each app sells separately, though you can get a small discount by bundling together the Mac and Windows app ($80). Additionally, you can get a 30-day trial of the Mac app, and those 30 days are counted based on active use, not calendar days.

There's an educational discount for students and academics: $41.65 for Mac and $38.25 for Windows. Upgrading from a previous version of Scrivener is also discounted. It's $25 for versions purchased before August 20, 2017, and free for anyone who bought the app on or after that date.

The Scrivener Windows app has never been the company's main focus. As of this writing, the Windows app is still in version 1; the company is skipping v2 to bring it up to speed at v3. A blog post from Literature and Latte (the company behind Scrivener) dated November 2019 says the new Windows app is still in development and is expected to be released in 2020. It was initially expected two years earlier. If you buy a copy of the current version now, you can upgrade to version 3 for free upon its release.

The iPhone and iPad apps sell separately for $19.99. You sync your work across devices using an online storage service, such as Dropbox or iCloud.

You can install the desktop app on as many computers in your household as you need, although only for one platform. In other words, if you buy the Mac app, you can install it on as many macOS machines as you need, but not Windows computers, and vice versa.

How Do Scrivener's Prices Compare?

Scrivener's price is competitive. Specialized writing apps don't cost much to begin with, and many of them still sell for a flat rate rather than a recurring subscription fee.

There are some lightweight writing apps that cost next to nothing. yWriter is free. WriteRoom costs $9.99. iA Writer is $29.99. These types of apps have very few features and aren't suited for long-form writing, however. They are simpler apps designed for short-form writing, such as blog posts or articles.

Full-featured writing apps cost more. Final Draft, which supports collaboration (Scrivener doesn't) and has a wealth of tools for professional screenplay writers, sells for $249. ScriptStudio also has more in store for screenwriters, and it sells for $199.

Ulysses, one of Scrivener's primary competitors, charges a recurring subscription fee of $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Ulysses has a much more charming interface that Scrivener's, although Scrivener has more tools for organizing research, creating character sheets, and doing other background work for a piece of writing. Plus, with Scrivener, you pay once and don't have to think about being charged again until it's time to upgrade, and we can estimate three years for that. The cost of Ulysses can add up, especially if you don't use the software daily.

Scrivener grow your MS

An App Made for Writers

Due to the fact that the macOS version of Scrivener is ahead of the Windows version, my comments from this point on refer to the Mac app.

Since its last big release, Scrivener (version 3) looks a bit fresher and lighter than it had before. The interface is still loaded because this app has features galore. The key to using Scrivener as efficiently as possible is to master the features you need and hide or minimize the rest whenever possible.

One of the most important features for long-form writers is the Compile function. Compiling is similar to exporting a project, but it is specific to writers' needs. For example, let's say you want to send a copy of a file to a publication for review, and this publication requires a specific font and line spacing. The publication also doesn't want your foreword at the time of submission. When you compile your project, you can omit parts of your file, such as the foreword, and change the formatting for the exported version without changing anything in your original pages.

Another key feature for writers is Writing Statistics. Many writers aim to hit a daily word count while writing, and the Writing Statistics track that and other data. You can look up the average paragraph length, average sentence length, and even the frequency of word use. The Writing Statistics feature can even estimate the number of pages your text will take up in a paperback book.

If you haven't touched Scrivener in a few years, a few other changes worth noting in version 3 include the ability to export to Epub 3, improvements to exporting to Kindle, enhancements to the outlining tools, and the ability to refer to up to four documents at a time in the main window with a feature called Copyholders. On macOS specifically, Scrivener 3 supports the Touch Bar.

What Makes Scrivener Different?

What strikes me about Scrivener is how much more it looks like office software than other writing apps do. Menus, buttons, view modes, formatting tools, statistics, annotations, labels, keywords, uploads, and so forth. There's a lot to explore.

The first time you launch Scrivener, you begin with an interactive tutorial, which helps you learn the ropes. Skip it at your peril. You'll need it.

The tutorial takes the form of a manuscript so that you're reading about the app while you're interacting with it. It's epic in length, and you may want to break up your reading into sessions. You can return to the tutorial pages whenever you're ready to learn something new. It lives in the app as if it were one of your saved projects.

With or without the tutorial, most people should be able to figure out how to create new pages and folders without much help. The interface will be familiar to anyone remotely comfortable with software since the 2000s. You compose in the center part of the interface and use the left pane to organize your files into folders. You can drag and drop files into different folders to rearrange their order. Using control+click on any file or folder opens up new options. The primary menu appears at the top. A few handy indicator icons show up at the bottom. It's all straightforward.

Within 10 minutes of poking around, I had thrown in a few dummy chapters of text, added footnotes and comments, created research files such as character sheets with images, and began experimenting with different views. The appropriately named Composition Mode puts your active file into a full screen view, darkening everything behind it. Mousing to the bottom of the screen reveals a toolbar with a slider that lets you can control the opacity. In other words, you can block out everything on your desktop from view, or you can merely dim the desktop if you still want to see whatever applications you've left open behind Scrivener.

Scrivener composition mode

The Composition Mode toolbar has character and word counts, a text zoom tool, inspector info (where you can put notes and metadata about the chapter or section for reference), keyword info, a slider for changing the width of the composition box, and more. I could see how one might make the case that there's too much stuff packed into Composition Mode, but most of it disappears when your cursor isn't at the bottom of the screen. I, for one, am a fan.

When starting a new project, you can begin from scratch with a blank page, or you can rely on one of Scrivener's many templates. Options include novel, novel with parts, screenplay, documentary script, BBC taped drama, APA paper, MLA paper, Chicago Manuscript style essay, general nonfiction, research proposal, and several others.

For writers who need help structuring their works, these templates guide you to include all the pieces you might need. The templates have sample text, including parts such as a title page and foreword where appropriate. You're not required to use any of them, but seeing them in the template reminds you that you can use them. Once you copy a template to use, everything in it becomes editable, so you're not locked into the suggestions.

What About Markdown?

Scrivener includes WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) formatting, which some other writing apps eschew. The belief is that formatting tools are the work of the devil, or at least that they distract writers from focusing on what's most important: the writing. If you have a tendency to spend hours playing with typefaces instead of typing, Scrivener might not be for you.

The benefit of WYSIWYG is its ease of use. The standard alternative in the writing world is to use Markdown language. Markdown is a simplified set of characters that are used in place of formatting. If you've ever typed asterisks around a word to make it *bold* or used underscores for _italics_, that, in a nutshell, is Markdown. Scrivener does, in fact, support Markdown if you want to use it, although I'm inclined to believe that most people who use this app aren't Markdown converts. It's not a selling point of Scrivener by any means.

The writing app Ulysses uses Markdown, and it is a selling point there. If you're not supremely knowledgeable about Markdown, Ulysses has a cheat sheet showing the codes, and there are some menu selections and keyboard shortcuts for applying styling if you get stuck. In any event, people who prefer typing in Markdown tend to look for apps that actively promote its use rather than support it as an option, which is Scrivener's approach.

It may be helpful to know that with Scrivener, you can import text with Markdown and get the right formatting. Look for an option called Copy Special. Among the export options is a MultiMarkdown format. Again, most people who love writing in Markdown probably won't love Scrivener the same way they might love Ulysses. In a nutshell, Ulysses is designed for Markdown whereas Scrivener is designed for people more comfortable with WYSIWYG.

Scrivener outliner

Tools for Organizing Your Work

Scrivener has many options for how you can view and organize your work. Once you learn the ropes, it's easy to change the order of chapters, parts, or scenes. An Outliner Mode helps writers create the outline for longer works, which they can refer to while writing. There are also specific places for storing and referring to general notes, research, character development sheets, and more.

One view that I appreciate is Split Screen view. When enabled, it divides your writing window vertically and puts an identical copy of the same content you're working on below. When I revise material, I often have to scroll back and forth to check what I've already written and see what's coming next. The Split Screen lets you write in one window while referring to the same text in a second window without losing your place. This view isn't unique to Scrivener, but it's useful enough to be worth mentioning.

Another notable feature in Scrivener is its Corkboard view. Here you can look at your chapters or sections as if they were cards pinned to a board, and rearrange them by dragging and dropping. It's a handy organizational tool, especially for longer or more complicated works.

Final Draft has tools for making and scene cards notes, too, and they're much more advanced than Scrivener's. But they're also more specific to screenwriting. In Final Draft, for example, you can lay out cards on a corkboard-like space to map out the beats of your script, and also target them for a specific page of the script. In other words, if the turning point of your plot needs to happen by page 26, you can note it textually on the card and visually on a page timeline. Scrivener doesn't offer that level of detail.

Exporting and Collaborating

At the end of your writing phase, you'll want to get your manuscript out of Scrivener and into the hands of an agent or publisher. Scrivener offers a number of exporting options: ePub, .html, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, as well as OpenOffice (ODT), Final Draft (FDX), Final Draft 5-7 File Converter (FCF), and Fountain Screenplay (Fountain).

Scrivener doesn't have any native collaboration features, such as co-authoring tools or the ability to share a file with someone and let them add comments or make suggestions. If you're desperate, you can hack your way to them using third-party tools, such as Draft. It takes some configuration, but it's possible. Google Docs mastered that feat years ago, as did Microsoft Word and Apple Pages. For my taste, Google Docs does it best and is a better app to choose for collaborative writing. Final Draft can enable co-authoring but with strict limitations; only one author can edit at a time.

Missing Pieces

Scrivener is rich in features, but there are still some significant improvements it could make. In an ideal world, Scrivener would have an Android app as well as a web app. A web app lets writers get at their work in a pinch, such as if their device isn't available (lost, stolen). Because Scrivener lets you save your work to a cloud storage service, you at least have a backup copy of the files. You still need to install a copy of Scrivener to actually access them, however.

As mentioned, Scrivener isn't a good option if you need to collaborate with co-authors. For the time being, that's best left to online apps that do it best, such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Apple Pages.

Other writing apps I've tested have some neat features that don't make or break them but that are worth mentioning just to give a sense of what else is out there. In Ulysses, I was ga-ga over a really simple feature that shows a preview page of a manuscript before you export it. It's a big deal because depending on what kind of export option you choose, you might want or not want comments and annotations to appear. Seeing a sample page is a much clearer way to check than going over the export settings. I also liked being able to see how the final style and formatting would look before asking Ulysses spit out a 200-page PDF.

Built for Writers

Scrivener is one of the best apps for writers because it was built to give them the tools they need to draft ideas, compose words, edit, organize, and output their work. It's inexpensive, and the fact that you can install it on multiple machines adds value because you can work on your writing from any computer or iOS device with the app. The app is packed with features that could take ages to explore. That said, the app is structured in a way that lets you jump right in if you'd prefer to stick with the basics and just get on with writing.

If Scrivener isn't what you need or it just doesn't sound right for you, I recommend Ulysses instead, if you're using Apple devices. If you're on Windows, you might also try IA Writer.

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