I'm a great believer in reading a manuscript from as many different perspectives as time allows. A printout in 1.5 line spacing on A4 pages. A second version in typeset-style pages, two to a printed page. As a pdf file on an iPad or laptop. And, in other pieces of writing software.

My usual workflow these days is to deal with story development to first draft through Scrivener and then pass the file on to Word (preferably in Windows, version 2010, which is the best general word processor around I think). Word is how the file will be delivered, and 2010 (though not so much 2010 on the Mac) is a great way to deal with a final polish once the sequence of scenes is in place.

But perhaps that working method will change with Scrivener 2, which brings in some interesting syncing possibilities. I covered these briefly <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2011/01/how-to-make-simple-manuscript-comments-in-scrivener/">in an earlier post about comments</a>. Let's take a closer look because this is quite something.

<!--more-->Scrivener, as any user knows, breaks down a book into separate sections and scenes. This isn't for show. A Scrivener 'file' is actually a folder made to look like a single document. In fact all those different scenes are individual text files. What we're about to do is sync the text as distinct files into a folder dedicated for that job, then share them with a Windows PC through Dropbox.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.15.34.png"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-7429" title="Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.15.34" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.15.34-300x279.png" alt="" width="300" height="279" /></a>Here's the first step.

You'll find the Sync command under the File Menu. Create a new folder on Dropbox for your project. If you want to use Word choose the options here and make sure you choose to save in RTF format.

You can sync files to an iPad or Android tablet too. But at the moment these will only work with plain text files. You won't be able to deal with comments or any text formatting. I did try this but frankly I found it a bit faffy. iPad writing apps seem to insist on files being in special places a lot of the time, and the nicest one, iAWriter, can't deal with this sync terribly well at all because it's very rigid about what has to go where.

When tablets can do rtf I will look again. For now editing with them won't work for me -- I want comments and I want formatting.

When you've synced you get a confirmation dialogue. Now let's move to a Windows laptop with Dropbox on it. Here's what the synced files look like.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox.jpg"></a><a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7430" title="dropbox" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/dropbox-640x403.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="403" /></a>

As you can see they're now all separate rtf files representing individual scenes. Forget about those numbers. They're Scrivener's way of keeping track of synced documents. Don't change them or you're headed for trouble.

Let's open one in Word 2010 for Windows and insert a comment.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Word.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7431" title="Word" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Word-640x292.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="292" /></a>

I really do like this piece of software. It's fast, slick and very intuitive. Nothing to touch it for big document editing on the Mac in my book. All I do now is save (as an rtf file -- don't convert to Word or any other format) and then quit. The edited scene is synced back to the Mac by Dropbox. Note that I've closed the original Scrivener file after the sync. This is important because Scrivener is set to look for updates to synced files when it opens.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.16.png"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-7432" title="Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.16" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.16-300x276.png" alt="" width="221" height="203" /></a>So when I call up the document again I see this.

All I have to do is click OK and Scrivener will then do the following...
<ul>
	<li>Import the new versions of any changed scenes</li>
	<li>Show me a list of imported scenes in the sidebar (you can get rid of this using the close button at the bottom</li>
	<li>Back up the previous version of the scene as a snapshot.</li>
</ul>
I should also note that I backup all complete documents on close to Dropbox too. So there are two fallbacks if something should go wrong somewhere. I can call up the snapshot and I can go back to the previous version of the Scrivener file.

When I go back to my scene in Scrivener it looks like this.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7433" title="Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.23.50" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50-640x193.png" alt="" width="640" height="193" /></a>

The comments are viewable and editable within Scrivener as if they were written there. Formatting is all accurate, paragraphs and line spacing are unchanged. If I look at the Snapshot pane in the Inspector I can see the previous version in its entirety and check for changes between new and old versions if I wish.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7435" title="Screen shot 2011-02-05 at 14.24.27" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.24.27.png" alt="" width="227" height="627" />

What would you use this for? Perhaps if you're on the road with a small Windows laptop reading scenes outside Scrivener to see how they feel. Different, I guarantee it. Or you could collaborate with someone else who uses Word only.

The first idea is appealing to me. I'm always keen to get some extra perspective on a manuscript. Looking at a small part of it -- and nothing else -- can reveal things you don't see when you're viewing the work as a whole.

I'm sure there are other uses too. Scrivener 2 is turning out to be a very flexible and open beast indeed.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-05-at-14.23.50.png">
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