ConnectedText vs. Scrivener

Posted by Hugh
Mar 6, 2012 at 05:12 PM

Steve, you haven’t asked for suggestions on this, and so it may be invidious to contribute, but anyway if it’s helpful here’s mine.

I’d use Word for this job. Currently there are no better tools for final editing of prose than its Comments and Track Changes features, in my view. (That’s not just my view, but also the view of several other writers of my acquaintance.) I’d probably “chunk” the 100 pages up with Scrivener, get the overall structure right and then export in rtf to handle the re-write in Word. To avoid the dreaded Word crash risk (although that’s probably now much-diminished or non-existent) I’d tackle only a few sections at a time. Finally I’d probably re-export in rtf to Scrivener to re-combine. (This all assumes there are few or no illustrations, or they could be added as a very late step.) Word in either its Mac or Windows manifestations would do, but I think the Windows version would be better in certain respects. (See David Hewson’s blog for his reasons.) That’s what I use Parallels on my Mac Mini for.

Final thought: of course this discussion may be an indication that the writing world is waiting for an editing/polishing app (as opposed to a drafting app) that isn’t Word. I’m sure Scrivener will achieve that if it can. Trouble is, so Keith Blount says, Track Changes or anything that approximates to it is darned long-winded to code.