Tracking Your Writing Projects

Like most writers, I have tons of ideas for potential projects. For a while, I arrogantly tried to keep them organized in my head – but realized I was losing a lot of gold thanks to an aging mind.

So I went looking for something to organize my projects. The most obvious way was via an Excel spreadsheet – I’ve read about more than one writer who used Excel to order their different scripts. Unfortunately, my grasp of Excel isn’t what it should be and I – frankly – needed something simpler.

I first used DevonNote for a couple of years, but the lack of database stability and access drove to to look elsewhere. And my search was a short one: I found a *very* worthy competitor. Scrivener gets tons and tons of love and respect from almost all professional writing disciplines. For the purposes of this discussion, the only thing we really care about it how it handles screenwriting.

It’s literally a database tracking all of my projects in one place – I have different master lists (Current TV, Current Film, Completed TV, etc.) with the project titles and loglines linking to the actual treatment. All within the same program (see image at head of article – that’s my screen in Scrivener). There’s a built-in text editor, so I just work on my treatments inside the program. The only time I leave Scrivener is when I’m headed to Final Draft to pound out the actual script.

My only complaint was the lack of integration with my iPhone (which I *always* have with me). But that’s more of a wish than a need – I can use other apps on my iPhone to stay productive (Writeroom…I’m looking at you).

So how does Scrivener match up against DevonNotes? The short answer is: beautifully. Not only is there a built-in screenwriting program, but it also has crazy-robust outlining features. In particular, it allows you to use a cork-board to look at scenes (or beats or storylines or whatever) and move them around – just like in FD. Frankly, in a much better GUI than FD. And it’s about 25% the cost of FD.

So – whatever flavor of app you choose – tracking projects is both crucial and rewarding. It’s something every writer should be doing.

Scrivener’s website