Hey guys and welcome back to the Keep productive YouTube channel in francesco here today
i'm
Actually to be passing over to Abbie
Emmons who is a
youtuber who talks all about writing and the reason why it's gonna be an exciting video is because she's reviewing with us today an
Application called Scrivener. I know a lot of you guys have heard of this application
We also did a top 10 writing apps feature that may be helpful for if you choose the writing app
But Abbie today is going to go through her own use of the application
Dive into some of the features that make it so special for her and also compare it to some of the other apps
She's tried now
I'm really excited because
Abbie someone I followed on YouTube for a little bit of time and I've actually really enjoyed all of her videos
She does writer's life Wednesday
Which is an exciting future
Giving you tips and advice as a writer and how she sort of overcame those challenges which is going to be great
So I'd love to pass over to Abbie today and put this video into her capable hands
You can subscribe to her below and some of the other relevant channels, too
And also if you're brand new here subscribe to keep productive as well. Anyway, guys
subscribing a review by Abby
What's up guys, I'm Abby and
Creativity is my passion. I'm what I like to call
Multi-talented which basically means it's really hard for me to introduce myself
I'm a writer entrepreneur singer song writer blogger traveler and big dreamer
I run my own YouTube channel all about creating your dream life and staying happy healthy and productive
While you're at it
I also have a channel just for writers called writers life Wednesdays and
A channel just for my music original songs and covers before I begin
I just want to give a big thank you to keep productive for having me on their channel today
I'm going to talk to you about Scrivener how I use it for my writing life my business life my
life life
To stay organized and get stuff done. I first discovered Scrivener through an authors podcast and being a writer myself
I knew that I had to check this software out and I'm so glad I did most people know Scrivener as writing software
But I find it incredibly useful for all sorts of things because unlike word processors
Scrivener is designed to basically be like a virtual office where you keep all your
Notes all your files all your folders all your reminders all your lists in one organized place
Of course just like an office Scrivener only serves you if you keep it functional and organized, right?
So today I'm gonna show you how I do
Just that so let's dive into the computer and take a look at this thing
Okay
So this is how I set up my Scrivener for success while writing Scrivener does have templates built into it for for fiction writing
But I've found that this setup works best for me. I think it's great to just customize what works best for you
That's the cool thing about Scrivener is that you can really customize it so much and make it the best work environment for you
So essentially what I have going on here in the binder is my pre write task list
which is what I have to write before I
Begin to write the actual novel when I'm in the process of planning and outlining and plotting and doing all of that fun
I will create a pre write task list and basically here I will list what I need to research what I need to outline
what I need to sort and
Any other questions I have about a book that I need to answer before I start writing next in the binder
I have my manuscript folder and as you can see
I have three folders within that act 1 act 2 and act 3 that's because I write in
what they call a three act story structure you might be familiar with it if you're a writer and
You can read more about that online lots of articles out there about this three act story structure a lot of my favorite stories
Follow this structure and that's kind of why I follow it too. Then I have my research folder in this folder. I will create
Documents that usually are just copy and pasted articles or any other notes
anything that I'm learning that I'm taking notes on reading books all my research whether it's historical scientific or
Geographical like whatever's going on in the book that I need to know about that. I don't already know
All of those notes will go in my research folder and that's just kind of a nice way to keep them all organized
Next is my outlines folder
so first
I have the three-act story structure that I just mentioned and
This is essentially what you'll see and a lot of articles online about the 3x story structure
This is how it's all laid out and I'll go through here and figure out
How my story that I'm developing fits into the three-act story structure next
I'll copy and paste that whole outline into what I called my short outline and my short outline will be between
3,000 to 5,000 words long and I'll kind of figure out what happens in the story start to finish
The long outline is very similar
I just embellish a lot of things fill in a lot of blanks make sure that I know exactly what happens start to finish with
Nothing left out. Absolutely. I have to know everything and that
Usually ends up being like 17,000 words long. Roughly. The plot problem is just another thing to think about when I'm developing a story
Subplots, I will list by whatever character they're associated with. Usually there's a couple characters that have subplots going next
I have seen cards, which I also outline according to each act. My scene cards essentially look like this
I have a whole video about this on my writers life Wednesday channel and
How they how the scene cards work why they work for any scene in the novel next?
I have my characters folder
Which is essentially where I'll put my character profiles
And I have a whole series on my writers life Wednesday channel for creating characters
The ultimate character profile and I share my template the questions
I asked myself about my characters to develop them and create the most relatable and addictive characters possible next
I have the backstory folder and that is backstory for my protagonist
If you watch my character series you'll see there's that's a huge element in
Developing good characters. It's figuring out their backstory next
I have a notes folder and that is just random notes and stuff that I'm not
sure where it's going in the outline or just things I have to remember and
the various other things like if I started writing a blurb I'll put that there and then I have my trash folder where all my
My my first draft goes just kidding
So this is the sort of template that I stick to every time and the cool thing about Scrivener
is that
whenever you make a project and you make all these folders and you're like I know that I'm always going to return to this and
Have the same layout all these folders and you don't want to go and make them again
You can always go up to file and then click on
Save as template and then once you type in a name and save it
it will appear every time you go to start a new Scrivener project and you can just pick that template and
boom
It loads a whole new blank Scrivener project
With all your folders already set up already named exactly what you want them to be
So that is essentially how I organize and optimize my Scrivener for success
While writing now for those of you who aren't writers or maybe writers who have a couple of side hustles going on
There are so many ways to use Scrivener for making sense of any project
event goal in your life
So let's jump back into my computer and I'll show you how I use Scrivener to play in my life
so this is what I do every
Year to start my year out right and even a little bit before New Year's I will start my Scrivener
project for the following year now
I love Scrivener because it has all these features where you can put folders within folders and
See the big picture of everything you have going on
It's a really nice way to organize things and keep them all in one place and also keep them offline
like I know there are a lot of apps online and stuff that you can use but I don't know necessarily about the
Availability that they can go offline. So it's kind of cool to have this project that's constantly updating
That's just it's just on your computer. It's just saved. It's a very simple format easy to navigate
So, this is my Scrivener project for 2019 now, I'm still developing it
So you're gonna see that it's not filled in that much yet
But I will start with a binder that looks like this there's a folder for each month of the year
And then I also have a couple folders down here that are some other things in my business life that I have to keep track
Of and that is my blog content my YouTube content from my various channels and my travel plans for that year
So up here, you'll see at the top. I have what I call big list of goals for 2019
So I make this every year at new years and obviously I have a not finished this list yet
It's gonna get way bigger because knowing me I'm an over committer extraordinaire
So that's gonna be unrealistically huge list by the time I'm done with it
But for now, this is what I'm starting with and then from there we have the month folders
So I actually made a whole video on my productivity channel about
planning a really productive month and how to
get everything done and I talked about the hag twos and the want twos and how you have to really separate those two things and
figure out what you have to do plan those things into your month and then figure out what you want to do because
So often those things that we want to do get kind of tossed by the wayside, right?
We kind of are like well those aren't important
So we never make time for them, but that is sad
So I like to list out
Before I start my month just list out all the things that I have to do the the goals. I have to accomplish obligations
I'm under deadlines
I have to meet those we'll go into my half two's list and then I want to list will be those unnecessary
Things that I'd really like to do and like to make time for and I know I can make time for if I pay attention
to my schedule and plan accordingly
So once I list all those things out, I will go about figuring out how to fit those things into my month
That's something I like to do on a paper calendar. So
Obviously, I won't show that here but I will break down my weeks like this and I don't have anything planned
That much yet because it's it's still it's not 2019 yet
But I'm going to plan this when the month gets closer and I'll plan out like week by week
I'll just have a list just a real simple bullet point list of things that I want to accomplish in that week
So that kind of holds me accountable to make sure I actually put in work and get those things done
So I'm not just like well this month I have to do that, but and it never actually happens
So that's important to hold yourself accountable I think week by week
So depending on what kind of big goals overarching big goals I plan for 2019
I will play in a little bit of these months in advance
Like oh I know in September. I'm going on a road trip. So I'll start to plan some things accordingly
But other than that, I kind of just keep the Scrivener project as my go-to planner. It's a really nice layout for that
I feel it's it's simple, but it's also aesthetic and user friendly and I just I love it
It's great. So that's how I use Scrivener to plan organize and
make sense of all the different things going on in my life whether they be
Writing novels or business related projects or just things I want to do
Another thing I love about Scrivener is how affordable it is
You can get all this organizational beauty for just 45 bucks or if you're not sure about it
You can get their free trial the trial is exactly the same as the full version of Scrivener
But it goes away after 30 days of use and 30 days of use doesn't mean just 30 days
Means if you use it
Every day will go away after 30 days if you use it two days a week
It will go away after 15 weeks
and if you're using it every day, I mean
Come on, just buy it then
Even if you have a project or ten already going in Scrivener in your free trial
You just buy your license code pop it in and your machine keeps running smoothly. I can't recommend this software enough
It has changed my life forever both with creating new worlds and making sense of this one
I hope you liked this video and if you did
Please smash that like button and be sure to subscribe to this channel keep productive because they have so many amazing insightful videos
I just I need to binge watch them all and you should too then after that
Be sure to check out my channel where I talk all about creativity productivity and chasing your dreams
also
If you're a writer you might want to check out my other channel writer's life
wednesdays where I post helpful videos about writing every week dream big stay invincible and
Get Scrivener, okay
rock on
You