: What software do you use for writing and then structuring a book? I'm looking for good software for overseeing and rearranging the structure of a book. I have used Scrivener before, but found

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I'm actually at the point now where I want to take hundreds of scrappy scenes and bits and pieces and try to give my novel some structure. So the question you've asked is actually uppermost in my mind.

So I like Scrivener. I use it for all my drafting. But it doesn't quite cut it for the big-picture structure stuff, I'm finding.

When I tried to use Scrivener's 'corkboard' view, which lets you see all your little pieces of novel as pseudo-index cards on a pseudo corkboard, I found it impossible to manage because there were simply too many. Maybe if I had several enormous monitors rather than a single 15" laptop, it would work better. But it just didn't work for me.

What I'm finding works much better is not software at all, but the very thing Scrivener is trying to emulate: a large corkboard and a big stack of small index cards. I'm talking physical objects here - call me a Luddite. Rearranging and grouping the scenes is easier and more satisfying because I can see everything at once. If I run out of room I can just buy another corkboard - they're only about twenty bucks at Target.

Of course, there will be some additional work to apply what I come up with, structurally, onto my digital manuscript. But I think it's worthwhile. Convenience is overrated.

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My books I've simply used MS Word with style sheets. Write to PDF. Sure, sometimes you have to do some klunky fine-tuning. The only real issue I found with MS Word was keeping a consistent bottom margin, i.e. it's common for a page to come out a line or two shorter than others. I know some people consider it very important to have a perfectly consistent bottom margin. (Other than at the end of a chapter and a few such cases.) Personally I just accepted the problem in most cases.

For my Kindle book, I dumped it to a text file and used Eclipse programmer's editor to clean it up. Next time I'll probably use Notepad++.

But then, I'm a hammer and screwdriver kind of guy versus specialized power tools.

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For the first draft, I find Google Drive to be the best: I can access and edit my text from my Mac, iPad, and even iPhone.

When the draft is done, I export it to Open Office, where you can use writer2epub to export. Then Sigil for some final touches. Have fun.

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You found Scrivener clunky....

::swoons::

::recovers::

You might want to try Adobe InDesign, which will allow you to export directly to epub and PDF, at least. Very easy to lay out, edit, and expand.

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