Rate this book

Scrivener For Dummies (2012)

by Gwen Hernandez(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1118312473 (ISBN13: 9781118312476)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

For Dummies

review 1: Scrivener for Dummies focuses on introducing readers to the software. Author Gwen Hernandez writes clearly and with great enthusiasm about how to use Scrivener as a writer's ideal writing tool. She makes the case that Scrivener offers unique features that writers will love--I have also come to love Scrivener.My own interest in coming to Scrivener for Dummies for more depth in looking at specific challenges. In my case, I have ported a manuscript from Adobe InDesign that I used to publish a paperback book into Scrivener to develop a Kindle EBook. The move from fixed format to flexible format makes it hard to retain some of my fixed format design. In particular, I had trouble porting several Wingdings, my scriptural index, and dropped cap letters into Kindle. The text ... moredid not address these particular questions. My task did not, however, line up well with the objectives of Scrivener for Dummies. Consequently, while I was not able to solve my particular problems with this text, it is not due to any weaknesses in the text that I experienced. My rating should not therefore reflect badly on the text in the case of others having different objectives.Stephen
review 2: I have been a fan of Scrivener for a number of years now. It was recommended as a favorite Mac writing program and I took a look and then adopted it. To learn it then I spent time with the tutorials and knew then that I barely scratched the surface.Still it was a much better solution then Word, and when Pages came along, Scrivener was still much better to write in. We each have the way we like to configure our space, but the research folder on the left of the main pane became a place to hold so many wikipedia pages that were relevant to my writing, or maps, or place names, and the right side where I could have long lists of places, people and things listed made the software invaluable.Yet as I mentioned, there was more depth here.So the Scrivener community embraced Gwens' book and for a new person it probably has much more detail that is useful than I found. That everything is in one book is handy. What is not is the transition of a Dummie guide where some steps are outlined with a great deal of slowness and formatting, yet assumptions are made about options in this, and not enough screenshots are given.As I remember in the tutorials of the program, an example takes you from start to finish so you can see the use of the program. Gwen needed to do that with two or three different types of writing and as we tackled new aspects of the program in her guide, she could have shown how it all related. Instead she did the disservice of writing that you could use an element without showing how to use that element in such a way. This was clearly a time when screenshots of show don't tell would have been valuable.It will sit close on my shelf when I need to compile, or look up how to keep track of revisions, but it could have been much better. less

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