I like making comments on a manuscript throughout every part of its development. Some go in a book diary. Some need to go into the actual draft itself as it's growing. Scrivener has a very simple and clever way to handle the latter. Let's take a look.

First, put your cursor into the place where you want the comment to appear.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7360" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.30.50" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.30.50.png" alt="" width="442" height="160" />

<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-7361" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.46.53" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.46.53.png" alt="" width="221" height="26" />Hit the comment button in the toolbar and you can type a comment which will appear in the Inspector bar whenever you select the comments icon, right, which you find at the foot of the column -- it's the icon selected here with the 'n' in it.

We now have a comment, tied to a particular line, its presence announced by that yellow colour in the draft.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.31.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7363" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.31" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.31-640x159.png" alt="" width="640" height="159" /></a>

Nice and easy and obvious, the way writing should be. You can edit out the name and time stamp by the way. There are a couple of extras you may have missed though. First, you can see your comments in full screen mode if you choose, which is a good way of dealing with revisions.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.59.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7364" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.31.59" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.31.59-640x154.png" alt="" width="640" height="154" /></a>

Even better, if you like to do your final revision in Word or Pages, you can pass on those comments to those apps in your exported final draft. There's just a small trick involved in this. Do <em>not</em> export the file as a Word document since, thanks to something within OS X, that will strip the comments. Instead use an rtf compile like this...

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.41.12.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7365" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.41.12" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.41.12-640x607.png" alt="" width="640" height="607" /></a>

That will give you a document that Word (Mac or Windows) and Pages will both import and convert. And the comments will still be there...

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.42.50.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7366" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.42.50" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.42.50-640x207.png" alt="" width="640" height="207" /></a>

This is immensely powerful stuff and opens up lots of different possibilities for managing your work. Here's one that could appeal to anyone involved in a collaboration. Imagine: you're boss of the collab, using a Mac, and your co-author works with a Windows PC and Word on the other side of the world. How the hell do you work together? Easily...

Set up a <a class="zem_slink" title="Dropbox" rel="homepage" href="http://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</a> account to which you both have private access. Then use Scrivener's sync feature to export your manuscript to a shared folder there.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7368" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.56.55" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.56.55.png" alt="" width="518" height="391" />

And make sure the export is in rtf export format.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7369" title="Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 08.57.16" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-31-at-08.57.16.png" alt="" width="555" height="511" />

Your collaborator will be able to edit the individual scene files with Word, see your comments and add some of his/her own. When they save them back to the Dropbox folder Scrivener will back up the original version of the scenes and import the new ones, along with comments.

The one drawback I can see is that your collaborator will see the project as individual files, not as a whole manuscript. Can't think of an easy way round that, except to persuade them to get a Mac and use Scrivener as well. But perhaps someone else can come up with a workaround.

Any way you look at it though this is a great way to insert comments into a work in progress, and have them carry over into other, more mainstream word processors.
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