That's a fascinating move, songwriter to novelist: I'm chiefly a script writer but I had a friend who is a poet read over one and the precision, line by line concentration she had was marvellous.

Thank you. Pages is next for the biscuit treatment - and then I'll have to recover, because it is turning out to be very long.

Excellent. Would you let me know how you get on with it?

What a tremendous thing to say, thank you. And got the Fat Mac! I came in on the SE.

Thanks. But you can’t tell me you’re in college and not say what you’re studying. Sheesh! Spill!

Thanks, that's very good of you to say. Mind if ask what the writing course is? And is it good? I like that they recommended Scrivener, it's an excellent app.

Thank you, that's very good of you to say.

Superb, I’m so pleased. Thank you for saying - and I hope you have at least as good a time using it as I do.

Is Scrivener pleasant to use on iOS? I’m looking into getting it for screenwriting and would like to use my iPhone when out and about (I don’t have an iPad, only iPhone and Mac). Are there issues?

The far greater danger for me is the burning out one. On a deadline, when I'm commissioned, there's no choice but this, if I go until I burn out, I leave disappointed and not keen to come back to it. Plus I'm right to be disappointed because the last of that session's writing will have deteriorated. What I have done sometimes is at the end of the hour, make a note, a few half-sentences about what I was going to do next. That does then also help me get started the next day. I am afraid of losing ideas, yes, but if they're good enough they tend to come back. And if I think they're great, I'll make a note, just jot a reminder down somewhere.

Thanks for the reply! I’ll try applying this to my own writing sessions :)

That's made me beam, thank you.

Sorry, I was sure I replied to this but KZfaq says no, I didn't. Good luck with the book - and please do let me know how you get on.

Thanks: that's good of you to say. Just be careful about that business of closing a Scrivener book on one device before you open it on the other. It's startlingly easy to do and I think especially with the iPad one: it's like I don't think of the iPad as a computer, I think of it as the book I'm writing. But then Scrivener for iPad is very good at reminding you about all of this. I just seem to be quite good at ignoring it.

Thank you. Now write that project, you know you must.

That's very good of you to say, thanks. I've also just got a new iPad: cannot believe how much faster it is than my (now broken) 2015 model. And the screen is just gorgeous.

I have the Mac version does that mean you have to pay again for scrivener on the iPad?

Yes, it’s a separate purchase.

Thank you. This business of finding one writing tool more pleasant than another, I completely get it but people who don't write must think we're very strange. It's the same computer, the same keyboard, but writing into Scrivener is just somehow much nicer than writing into Word. I don't pretend to understand it, but I feel it very much.

@@WilliamGallagher In my opinion, long-established programs like MS Word have grown so much in size and complexity that the sheer volume of options is an inherent distraction. As part of a software suite designed to be the primary writing tool in academic and business environments, MS Word has become a jack-of-all-trades. Smaller programs like Scrivener focus more specifically on the creative writing process while allowing for versatile approaches to completing writer tasks. Although Scrivener does have a learning curve like any program, understanding only a few of Scrivener's many features are all that's required to easily complete a project.

@@middlepath3607 I complete;y agree. I think Microsoft doesn’t help itself by wanting to show off every possible feature so that you feel you have to learn everything before you can do anything.

Is it pleasant to use on iOS? Do you have syncing issues? I’m wanting to get it on iPhone so I can work on my screenplay when out and away from my Mac, but I don’t want syncing issues or slow ui.

Thanks. Do you write on Scrivener for iPad? Or do you do what I do and talk about it so that I can put off the writing?

@@WilliamGallagher 🤣 I invested in Scrivener for iPad a year ago. Really sinking my teeth into a short book right now. It’s so easy to organise my thoughts with the app. I love it. And I can just grab my iPad to jot down the thought as I have it. Coming together fast because I know the topic. These things happen in their perfect timing 👍🏻

@@PropheticSoakingwithSarahJER A short book? A SHORT BOOK? We want EPiC BOOKS! Break a leg with it.

Thank you. I've one friend who writes in Scrivener on a Mac at home, a PC at her work, and an iPad in between. She loves it and just warns me to close the document on one machine before opening it on another!

Thank you. Is there anything you’d be particularly interested in that I might know?

Thank you!

Thank you, that's very good of you to say.

I agree about Ulysses being smoother, though I used to find it frustrating that it would sometimes be instantly synced and other times randomly not. Always when I needed to move to the other device. There is a reason for Scrivener using Dropbox, though, a reason that's unlikely to change. You know all this stuff with it being able to hold your manuscript plus PDFs, images, URLs, web archives, audio, video, everything? While it looks to you and me as one single document, it's really a complex file. And the way iCloud works, it is possible that when you opened the document on another device, it would have only synced part of it. Using Dropbox, I believe Scrivener can say to the system when it has finished syncing and when it hasn't.

William Gallagher I’ve not experienced any syncing issues with Ulysses myself but I don’t doubt they will happen. L&L made the decision to use non standard Mac file management techniques, not knowing of course that iCloud would turn up and cause them such headaches. This is classic technical debt. Nevertheless I think that it is something that they need to address given the growing popularity of writing on iPads and other devices; and from my point of view non-support of iCloud is a bit of a showstopper. I’m reluctant t to purchase another Scrivener licence just to get bitten in the arse later on. Having said that I’m not enamoured with the Ulysses subscription model either. Great channel, keep up the good work.

Goodness, thank you very much.

Thanks. I think I say in this video that the iPad one was made simper, but that’s been carried over to the Mac. The complexity for me was in the Compiling option at the end and oftentimes I don’t even need to use that.

Thank you, that's very good of you to say.

So pleased. Thanks for saying that.

Thank you. You can use iOS's own dictation within Scrivener on iPad, but it only lets you do a couple of sentences. Ti dictate anything of any length. I use the website service Otter.ai. And I hear about compiling: I'll definitely do an episode on that, but I'll want to take my time and make sure I'm doing it all the best way. Cheers for subscribing: so pleased you did.

William Gallagher thank you so much. I will check out Otter.ai, thanks for that recom. I have been using for and paying for Dragon Dictate Mobile, and they have stopped any Mac support for all their desktop dictation programs, if you can beleive that! So I will look into the mac versions you suggested either internally within it’s own system or the Otter.ai site. Thank you again. I have to admit, I have started many books in Scrivener only to by too frustrated by the compile feature to be able to design my books exactly as I want them to look, at 6x9, with fairly large print, and maybe a photo on each page. It is so difficult to get it just to do that for me!!!

Thank you. Right this moment, I mean truly this second, I have Scrivener on my screen but also Drafts where I'm writing an article and OmniOutliner where I'm collating research for it. Earlier I was in Pages for something and I realise I've forgotten what it was. I miss the days when I used to turn to one word processor for everything, but I love the range of tools we have now.

Steven, thank you, that's very kind. And you make me feel great because I have an answer. Specifically in the iPad version, when you're in a chapter, there is an "i" for information icon. Tap that and you get an inspector panel pop up on the left of your screen - and it includes a Notes space.

I've not had any problems editing on Scrivener, I can't even remember anything where it went remotely wrong. My text is about half the length of yours so I suppose I can't guarantee anything, but I bounce between the Mac and iPad versions of Scrivener without giving it a thought. I don't like Google Docs but chiefly because it just seems ugly and clunky to me, I've not tried it with anything remotely your length.

@@WilliamGallagher thanks again, I appreciate how informative this video was and I’m surprised to get a response so soon in a 3 year old video! Have a great day

Curiously - and I know I’m on my own here - I don’t like Markdown. I so often write news stories where, for instance, I’ll have to do this: “This example [was] oddly hard to think of,” said William. The moment I type that opening bracket in Markdown, it goes off trying to format things. I realise there are escape characters but Markdown is supposed to be easy and already I’m having to learn about escape characters. Mind you, I have the benefit that most things I write go directly into publisher’s my systems so plain text and HTML works fine for me.

@@WilliamGallagher Hi William and Curtis, maybe you can help me with your experience. I'm looking for an app for my Ipad. I want to write with this, format everything and add illustration. I use keynote. :) Thats worked very well. But maybe you have a tip for me. Greetings Thomas from Germany - Leipzig

Hans Glück I love Keynote but I wouldn’t write anything in it:. I think it will always be better to write in a writing app - including Scrivener - and then flow the text into a design app. I’d take a look at Affinity Designer for iPad: because it’ll give you finer control than Keynote and should at least be a little easier to write text into.

Hello back from the UK. I think it might be fiddly, especially if you have a lot of footnotes and endnotes, but I don't know the Bachelors' requirements well enough to be sure. I'd give the free trial a go and see how it handles a sample.

There are a lot of keyboards that physically connect to iPads, sometimes like a protective case that happens to include a keyboard. Those are tricky to recommend because different ones work with different iPads, but if you can check the one or ones that do work with yours, they can be excellent. I relish the Magic Keyboard for iPad, for instance, because it's this strong protective cover and also a really excellent. But for years I used to use completely separate keyboards which aren't as convenient for carrying around, but they can also be full size and so feel better to type on. The models available keep changing and I don't think any I used are still available, but try Logitech's ones: I've given those as presents before.

@@WilliamGallagher Thank you so much. I am excited now about writing my second book. The first was on my laptop using Word and I wasn't looking forward to using Word again. I have subscribed. I have a lot to learn.

@@JanesNewJourneys I think we really learn only by writing - so get back to that second book!

Delighted: thank you for commenting. Now, it's November 2nd - how's your NaNoWriMo book coming?

Thanks. It's a Logitech K811 - but I should tell you that it's now quite hard to find. Logitech's own US site still lists it here: www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/bluetooth-easyswitch-keyboard-business

That's a story and a half, isn't it?

In theory, yes. On the iPad version you can definitely drag in an image and position it where you want in the text. As I understand it, though, controlling that position when you make a PDF is a problem. And I can understand that: an image won't ever be shown in two halves, for instance, so it can well bounce to the next page in order to be shown complete. Which might be fine, or might give you a big white gap on the first page. If you're sending your novel to a publisher, I'd send images separately and just say where they are. If you're self-publishing, I'd look at something like Affinity Publisher which is no good for writing in, but excellent for fine control over what goes where on the page.

@@WilliamGallagher hi, thanks for your reply ... so not sure if you’ll know, but if one exports from Scrivener to Word document, will it include the images in the word doc?

Yes: I just tried it. Scrivener includes the images in both the Word and PDF formats in Compile on the iPad.

It's so tricky to be sure. If you have the budget for it, I know the 12.9-inch one is marvellous. I had the original 12.9-inch version and it felt like you were more absorbed in your work. I remember feeling like my hands were inside the work instead of observing it through a screen. When that iPad broke down on me, after some five years of heavy use, I couldn't justify the cost of a new 12.9-inch one and I went for the 11. It is the best iPad I've ever had, but sometimes it does feel constrained. Strange how just a further 1.9 inches, diagonally, can make such a difference. One more thought: my old 12.9-inch iPad was bigger than today's ones because as well as the screen, it had a very large bezel around the sides. That meant I did have think about when I would take it with me to places, where I could go that it wasn't a problem hefting the thing about. I imagine that isn't the case anymore with the newest ones.

Keith, yes. Writing in Scrivener has a different feel to Pages, but it’s when you say that about a writing space, research and organisation. Pages has none of that, you have to do it all yourself. You can, absolutely, but Scrivener is built to keep all of your research right there together with your writing draft. So it’s always available, you always know where it is and so where to save research. There’s still an issue about how you choose to organise multiple different projects; it does group them together but you still need to think about where you put things? Do you have access to a Mac or a PC? On those, you can get a free trial and try out the app. I’ve just checked and there doesn’t seem to be a trial version on the iPad. But I like Scrivener a lot, I think it’s more than worth the $20 to buy it for iPad. But would you let me know if you make the move? I’d be very interested to know how you find it.

William thank you so much for your prompt reply. Indeed I am a mac user, though my machines are older imac and mac laptops, used for photography. Bother of which I have upgraded to their max with SSD drives and max ram. They are 2010 machines but they still easily meet my demands for stills photography etc. My ipad is a recent 2020 edition and in my thinking, I have assigned its use to write, and hold any connected projects and any imagery or content for my endeavours in writing. And yes with icloud I can access the obvious pages, keynote or preview/pdf files , from other devices. As I say the iPad is my station for shaping, learning and exploring this creative edge. I feel like if I can develop a structure even in how my documents, research, my learning even with words, shaping the language, context structure etc... develops that would be good in 2021/2022. I had the thought its not as easy with pages would that be better learning ? Of course, the cost of the iPad edition is really a no brainer; my preference is to have a working space that will help with structure, discipline and give good logic to where everything is ? Definitely will try the free trial, and am tempted to buy it for the iPad simply because I want the ipad to be my main workstation for typing etc.. . Finally, I have become aware that writing long hand on my yellow legal pad is often part of my process of feeling my way into what might be content, not every single word, but things always begin there for me, just sayin'.... and indeed on my iphone voice recordings have become very useful for the 'suddenlies' that bring clarity in the walking, tesco's, the pub, etc....

Thanks. I'm conscious of the syncing issue, because I have made it go wrong, but just being conscious of it and knowing to close on each device before moving to another has sorted me out. Plus what I said in the video about why Scrivener has to work this way, somehow knowing that made me think okay, fair enough, I'm in.

Thank you.

There is a discount for Writers’ Guild of Great Britain members - and as of just a few months ago, there’s now a student membership of the Writers’ Guild. I’m Deputy Chair of the Guild here and very proud to be involved in what they do: writersguild.org.uk/join-renew/

Control-Command-F is a system-wide keystroke to take the current app full screen, rather than being a Scrivener-specific one. By default, unless you're using Stage Manager, iPad apps open full-screen anyway, so you should have the same effect.

Good point, thank you. If I remember correctly, the "this" was about several things I do afterwards, but I wasn't remotely clear enough.

Penny, I try to vary it - and sometimes I'll cut away if there turns out to be something confidential on the screen that I've forgotten to hide. But noted: you'll see more screens in this week's iOS 14 review and I'll remember you said this, thanks.

The short answer is that I like Scrivener for screenwriting: I've done a couple of scripts in it and enjoyed it. I'd actually been using it for prose for a couple of years before I even realised you could do this, though, so I think switching over to screenwriting mode isn't obvious. Plus - this is getting so picky, forgive me - one thing I like about Scrivener for prose is that I do each chapter as a separate section. You can do that with separate section for each scene, yet somehow when I'm writing scripts I'm flowing from one scene to the other so quickly that I don't stop to create a new section. Which means I end up with one document with one section that has the entire script. That's fine, but if I took the time to split it up as I wrote, I could now reorder scenes. And as you'll know, it's much easier and far more common to reorder scenes in a script than it is chapters in a novel.

@@WilliamGallagher thx for your reply , and thanks for your great contents

I offer that right now you would be happy with either of them. Unless you put them side by side, you would find the iPad is fine and that greater storage capacity is tempting. However, the iPad Pro is the better machine: the screen is better and overall it’s much faster. So the iPad Pro would last you longer. You could, though, consider going for the iPad Air instead of either of them. It has the same processor as the iPad Pro and very close to the same design and specifications, but for less. I have the 11-inch iPad Pro with 256GB but I bought it last year. If I were buying today, I’d get the iPad Air. Plus the iPad Air and the iPad Pro can use the Magic Keyboard where the regular iPad can’t. Even if you didn’t want to go for the Magic Keyboard yet, it’s an option. Do you have or plan to get any kind of keyboard? And do you have any other devices that you can copy your Scrivener files on to?

No, I’m afraid not.

@@WilliamGallagher thank you very much

Have you see the developer’s suggestion for an alternative to Dropbox? I just looked because I was (wrongly) sure that you could choose a different cloud service and that only iCloud was problematic. You’re right, though, that it’s only really working with Dropbox - except the company has a quite convoluted alternative suggestion here: scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/cloud-syncing/alternative-method-of-keeping-projects-synced

Seemingly not. You can definitely use Apple Pencil to tap on controls, but I'm sure you mean being able to handwrite your text and that doesn't appear to be possible, no.

I now exclusively use Apple's Magic Keyboard for iPad; it's costly but so good that it instantly replaced all the separate portable keyboards I've been trying. You do have to get the right size for your iPad, and it only works with the iPad Pro and the latest iPad Air. Here's the one I got: amzn.to/3JqExeW

@@WilliamGallagher Thank you, sir. It is a bit pricy here, but I will consider it after your comment. Have a joyful and inspiring day.

Is this in Scrivener or just generally on the iPad? Can you tell me more about which toolbar or maybe what it is that you need the toolbar for? I can tell you that Apple tries to show you just what you need, when you need it: for instance, the way it will only display the keyboard when you tap on somewhere you can type text into. I'm not clear enough on what you mean to say this is definitely what's happening with you, but it could be worth tapping or selecting whatever you want to work on and seeing if the toolbar appears.

@@WilliamGallagher I’m using an iPad Air 2, iPadOS 14.7.1, and it’s the top toolbar. Thank you!!!

KZfaq doesn't seem to let me post images here. Let me check something: do you mean the controls that appear at the top of Scrivener? So things like the book title, full screen, search and so on? There's no chance you're thinking of a Mac instead of an iPad, is there?

@@WilliamGallagher Yes!!! There’s a whole suite of controls across the top - I don’t have the suite displaying. I’m on an insane tear of writing, I’m at over 11,000 high quality words in 5 days

I'm afraid not.

And counting?

That's very interesting: I blocked KZfaq from showing some of the ads it wanted. I'll keep an eye out: thanks.

And I can tell you’re in the difficult middle bit of the job. By the end, you’ll be racing to write your second.