To Scrivener to Not To Scrivener

whaa--

tons of writing apps have the binder and the corkboard. you can get those features anywhere.

 

Such as ...?

 

I keep cycling between Nisus Writer and Mellel. Between bookmarks and headings/TOC entries in the navigation panel, I don't miss Scrivener's binder.

A corkboard would be nice. Curio is about the nicest I've found, but I can't say I've really explored what's available.

 

For your BTK wall of madness, check out Curio. It's not free, but if it fits your style I can't imagine not getting your money's worth. It's not a subscription, so that's a plus, and there's a free trial.

Basically, Curio gives you a tree of what it calls idea spaces. You can think of them as documents where you can put text boxes, index cards (text boxes with features), mind maps, kanban stacks, and lists of various flavors. I'm sure there's stuff I'm leaving out. These things are all called figures, in Curio-speak.

You can draw lines, either independent of anything or stretchy lines linked between figures.

Everything in Curio has a note. A figure has a note, all nodes within mind map figures have notes, kanban stack entries have notes. That's handy.

You can embed files so you can open your manuscript from within Curio.

Everything - figure, item within a figure, idea space, etc. - has a jump action. This is what happens when you double-click on the thing.

Everything also has cross references. These are like links, but they appear on a little flyout menu along with a list of back references.

Curio 16 is going to be released shortly. Truthfully, I keep coming back to Devonthink for idea management. Curio will handle thousands of documents in a single project, but that's not what it's for. It's more of a notebook. My Devonthink writing projects often contain Curio projects (what Curio calls its files) inside DT.

Sometimes if I want to work out the relationship of vague ideas, I'll turn to MindNode. Sometimes, I use Curio. If one of them had to disappear, if I absolutely had to choose, I'd keep Curio. It will do mind maps, and since every node in a mind map potentially has a note, a Curio mind map isn't far behind MindNode. Curio does much more, too.

My first task with Curio after being forced to delete MindNode would be to plot my revenge for losing MindNode, of course.

 

For reference (and disambiguation): https://www.zengobi.com/curio/

 

Thanks - I forgot the link. Silly of me!

 

I got Scrivener a few years back ( free in a software bundle) - glanced at it and ignored it.
I did an autobiography for my son in Apple Pages ( you could use Word if on windows). It worked well because the project was linear. When I got past 50,000 words I made a table of contents which helped me jump to the sectionI was working on. After this I wanted to try writing a variety of things - so had a look at Scrivener again. I am now hooked. It is a great organisational tool ( as well as word processor). It keeps all your files ( notes, research, drafts etc) in the one place. You can also write scenes or sections as they come to you and organise the order later. It does all sorts of things that you may or may not use. But it is fairly easy to get up and running using the basic layout. Tried a few different pieces of software that I spent more time learning the software rather than writing. At least with Scrivener you can even have a distraction free writing page ( like Text Edit) if you wish to eliminate all the distractions and tool bars.
Worth preserving with. Good tuts and helpful people on the Literature and Latte website.

 

Sorry for the late response, but several products offer similar features, not always called a "binder" or a "corkboard" though. I've been through most of the free or cheap ones. Some are quite good, BTW, but in the end, I wind up going back to Scrivener. Each has some issues that I can't seem to get around.

• SmartEdit Writer (Atomic Scribbler) - has the "Document Tree", no corkboard. I like it.
• WaveMaker Cards - has an unnamed tree structure similar to binder. Has the Grid Planner. I like it.
• Quoll Writer - has an unnamed tree structure similar to binder. no corkboard. It's OK
• WriteItNow - has both kind of a Scrivener wannabe. It's OK

 

I wish I had an app that was a corkboard with preview features. Imagine keeping notes in Devonthink or any application supporting deep links to individual notes and then posting the links on the corkboard.

See the data in a mind map-ish display, click on any item to edit it in the app where it's actually stored.

The goal is to have a repository of notes which can feed a plan. Deleting a note out of the plan shouldn't delete the note, it should just drop out of the plan.

Maybe I should take another look at Tinderbox. Not sure if it will do that or not.