Using Scrivener - Find and Replace

I should probably be in bed, sleeping for a long day of part-time work followed by mandatory overtime at my job... but I went on Facebook and I saw a need...  So for this Scrivener tutorial, we're going to cover (very briefly)...

Find and Replace in Scrivener Projects!

Okay, let's pretend for a moment that you're like I am... You write 30,000 words on a young adult novel, and you've had the perfect name selected for your perfect character all this time. You love it. Your friends love it. Your beta readers love it. Heck, even your mother loves it, and she won't read your novels anymore because you've put her through 8 completely different versions of the same dang character from High School Mystery story to a story in another world with androids and aliens...

You're 30,000 words in to version 17 of the story because obviously you can't just edit a completed version of the novel... you've changed "the" somewhere and suddenly your plot imploded and aliens abducted your character in the prologue, and now you just have to sit there and wonder why, when, where, and how these blasted aliens came in or came from.

Laugh all you like, but it is a true story and it has happened to me. It has happened to me since my Nettie novel began in 2001. (I finally stopped trying to ask questions, in case you were wondering. Now my characters have full reign over my impetuous fingers...)

Anyway, you're that far into your story and your character suddenly digs their heels in and says, "Look, you idiot writer... Do I look like a Regauldo Dramorphus to you? Do you see this stern chin? The way my nose arches just a bit? Or how my eyebrow twitches when I am angry - and I am angry at you, you nincompoop! I hate my name! I never liked it, and you won't write another word unless you change it to something I like!"

And now you have to pick up your fantastic Razer Mechanical BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard up and smack it on your head just to hear the fantastic clicking of the keys in unison as you attempt to knock yourself out all to ignore Reggie's whining over a name you painstakingly spent several days and weeks selecting for him.

Why? Because dang it all, you're going to have to spend another several days and weeks selecting a new name! But since you can't use the Cybermen from Doctor Who on Regauldo Dramorphus without turning your original piece of genius into a fanfiction (DELETE, DELETE), you need a quicker option.

Scrivener can be a little tough for Word users because we've been using Word for so long that all of its keyboard short-cuts are typically stock short-cuts for Word knock-off programs too. Scrivener on the other hand seems to have a motto going for it, "All or Nothing". It works, but it also means we might require a tutorial or two hundred in order to fully utilize all of its potential.

So, let me very quickly explain how to Find→Replace with Scrivener.

Screen capture of Scrivener
select image for larger view

First, at the top bar of the screen you'll see the following list:

• File
• Edit
• View
• Project
• Documents
• Format
• Tools
• Window
• Help

Select Edit to open the drop-down menu using your left mouse button (unless your mouse is configured for a lefty person). Locate Find. As you can see in this picture, at the time of writing this tutorial, it is second to the bottom of the Edit drop-down menu. Hold your cursor over "Find" until a second drop-down menu appears. If it doesn't appear within a second or two, select "Find" with your left mouse button to open the drop-down menu manually.

There will be a list of options. The two we will discuss are...

Find things in Scrivener files individually

Find... (keyboard short-cut is Ctrl+F) You can use this to locate within individual files in your project to find and replace something. This makes it easy to replace something in one file of the project without altering the rest of the project simultaneously.

Full project find and replace

Project Replace... (No short-cut available) Use this to locate all instances of "Regauldo" and "Dramorphus" to replace with a name of Reggie's choosing. Reggie will be so much happier if he doesn't have to listen to Barmagupp tease him about his name... It's a nice feature since you can organize everything in Scrivener and you won't worry about missing details in project notes or anything that you hate going back over again.

Well, that's that, then. I hope you enjoyed this small little tutorial and that it becomes very useful to you in the future! And now that I have done something productive, I can crawl into my bed and watch ridiculously addictive foreign dramas and avoid being productive on my Camp Nano project. (Honestly! Yi-Ru is falling for Shi De and Shi De loves her, but she inadvertently lied to him about having cancer because her family told her she had cancer just so she would go on vacation! Meanwhile, Yun's a writer and her number 1 fan is a stalker who wants her to love him back, but her stalker's ex-fiancee is getting married after only 6 months separated and...hehehehe... I swear, I could stop watching any time... it's not a problem...)

If you liked this blog, please let me know. If you have a different Scrivener feature you would like me to do a tutorial for, please comment or message me on Facebook. Somewhere on my blog there should be a link that will take you to my Facebook page. If I was incorrect on anything, please let me know!

Or even just comment and tell me about a writing experience or share this with a friend. Either way, I hope you enjoyed it!

Using Scrivener - Why To Use Scrivener + Starting A Manuscript

Welcome to my first tutorial on Using Scrivener for writing! What I should really be doing is writing my novel since I have currently 174 and 1/2 days left to complete the first draft (A self-set due date, but nevertheless still due). However, I've a propensity toward procrastination... therefore, Copy Cat Conspiracy is going to wait. Besides that... it's had more than a dozen years to write itself... a few more hours waiting won't kill it!

So we begin with a question: Why use Scrivener? Isn't GoogleDocs, or Microsoft Word, good enough? And that's a very good question! Those writing programs are good enough, so if you don't like Scrivener for some reason (I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't) then stick to what you like. But you're here to find out why you would want to use Scrivener.

Below is a screen capture of my blog post story "Something Strange" which some of you may have read before. 

Screen capture of Scrivener program - click picture to see larger version!

If you will notice on the left in the Binder column you can see everything about your novel all located in one easy to find place. With Google Drive, or Microsoft Office, you can certainly have character sheets, setting notes, research information, and your story. But do you want that all in one document? Not usually, so you have multiple files all over the place. I did, anyway. I didn't like having to scour a document for this character sheet, or that setting note. Furthermore, I'm huge about word counts. I hate research materials being part of my collective word count.

Scrivener solves organization problems the way peanut butter solves plain bread. You can have everything in one place, and the program will only count the words in your manuscript as being part of your manuscript.

What can Scrivener do? Well, you're just full of great questions today! Scrivener can do...

• Outlining
• Has a corkboard for ideas and notes and such (Clearly I haven't gotten into using it yet - but it's there!)
• Makes non-fiction writing easier and has tools for it
• Scriptwriting (Because why not write the next Hollywood blockbuster in your spare time?)
• Word counter for the manuscript, as well as a session word counter which eliminates the need for doing math quite as much
• a project statistics option for when you want to see the overall statistics of the project - for instance, how many paperback pages your novel would be in comparison to how many printout pages
• The ability to create your front matter details
• COMPILE BUTTON... Yes, it deserves all caps. Why? Because it's a handy tool when you want to put your novel together for printing or whatnot. You can choose what to include in compiling, and what format to compile your book for. 

And that's just the tip of the quill, as they say. Okay, no one really says that (probably), but they should!

But Scrivener is so... intimidating! Yes, at first it can be intimidating. I mean, how many programs come with how-to-use interactive tutorial lessons to get you started? How many programs encourage you to go online and read or watch tutorial articles and videos? How many programs will surprise you with new features even after six months of using it?

You shouldn't be intimidated, though.

So, let's presume you've figured out how to download Scrivener (Go here to Literature and Latte to download Scrivener for Mac or Windows). You've installed it and open it up.

Scrivener New Project box - click for
larger image

The first thing you want to do is the Interactive Tutorial. I know you're going to be saying to yourselves, "No, I've used Word before, so clearly I can manage a new project without help, thank you very much!"

It's a bit more complicated than just opening a document, at least if you're anything like me. I ignored the interactive tutorial to start out with and a few minutes later in my panic at how to work this program I was googling how to get the tutorial up... Then again, sometimes on my best days I feel like my best option is to lob the computer out of the window and buy a typewriter. So let's just have you go through the tutorial. It will give you some basics to get you started out. The tutorial is nice because it walks you through actually performing actions so that you learn it. You won't just be sitting there banging your head on your keyboard because you have to read about how to do something.

Click File, then select New Project...
Click on the picture for
larger image

After you've done that, it's time to begin a manuscript. (The tutorial should have gone over this with you to show you how to do a new document, but just in case...) 

In the document, click File...
At the top of the list, there will be New Project... Click that. It will bring that New Project box back up where you can select the kind of document you want to make. You can do a blank document, but I like to select one of the pre-made novel options and just delete sections I don't want. This way I have to do less work.

If you already have a project, you can select Open... or you can open the Recent Projects list by hovering your cursor over that. It will bring up a list of the last ten or so projects you've worked on.

Once you've selected the kind of new project document you want to go with, you must choose a name for it. Scrivener won't let you open a new project without naming it, because it wants to be able to save it right away. It's a good thing, too! I once lost a lot of work because I was so engrossed in what I wanted to write that I started a new document in MS Word and didn't save it, and the power went out. I was a teenager and knew nothing about the temp files. My mum managed to find the document though. Anyway...

There you go! You've started your first Scrivener manuscript.

In conclusion, Scrivener is awesome, I am very biased toward it, and that is why you should get it. In reality, I recommend Scrivener for its incredible usefulness toward all styles of writing. Plus there's a free trial... That makes it even better! Give it a shot. You've lost nothing if you don't like it, and if you do like it, the program is far cheaper than MS Word.

To view Scrivener's Blog, go Here
To find them on Facebook, go here

Facebook is useful because Scrivener is always sharing tutorial articles and videos.

Do you agree with this blog post? Have you used Scrivener? Do you have anything you would add to this? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned... I might write another post about doing more than just opening a document manuscript. :P