Scrivener feels too complicated. What is simpler?

Scrivener with most of it switched off

Scrivener looks complicated because it is several tools in one window, and it shows them all at once. Most of them are optional. A novel can be written in it using four things:

• The Binder, the list on the left. Inside the Draft folder (called Manuscript in some templates), make a folder per chapter and a text document per scene, or one document per chapter if you prefer.
• The Editor, where you type. Select a chapter folder and the editor shows its scenes run together as one text, which Scrivener calls Scrivenings.
• Dragging in the Binder to reorder scenes and chapters.
• Compile, under the File menu, used once at the end. Pick a built-in format and let it make the Word file or ebook.

The corkboard, the outliner, and most of compile's settings can wait until a need for them turns up. Snapshots are worth learning early, though; they take a minute and protect a scene before a rewrite.

Scrivener's makers built a good way in. In Scrivener 3, Help → Interactive Tutorial opens a practice project that teaches the program by using it, which is a far gentler start than the full manual. Literature & Latte's video tutorials cover the same ground for people who would rather watch. Starting from the Novel template, instead of a blank project, sets up the Draft folder and a sensible compile format for you.

What Tabularia does differently

Tabularia leaves out the compile step, which is where much of Scrivener's learning curve sits. You write on one continuous manuscript that is already laid out as the book, and chapters come from styling a line as a Chapter Heading and scenes from scene breaks. The Outline does the Binder's job of listing and reordering them. Where Scrivenings joins separate documents into one view, Tabularia starts joined and narrows the page to a single chapter or scene with the Working Scope.

It has concepts of its own. Drafts, timelines, and anchors each take a little learning, and like Scrivener's extras they can sit untouched until the day you want a second version of a chapter or a character's thread traced through the whole book. It runs in a browser. It is also in Public Beta, which matters if you need software that has been settled for years.

Bringing a Scrivener project across

You do not have to compile first. Point the folder import at the .scriv project, or hand it a zipped copy as a single file. The Draft folder comes in, in Binder order, with top-level items as chapters and the items inside them as scenes. Documents you excluded from compile are still brought in, and the import lists them so you can decide.

What stays behind is the Research and Trash folders, and Scrivener's own styles and project layout. The import takes each document's words and pictures but not its character formatting, so italics do not come across; mark again any you rely on. Keep the Scrivener project until you have read the new Outline against your Binder, as the guide advises.