The last few of weeks have seen the release of Scrivener for iOS, by Literature and Latte, and a long-awaited update to Ulysses by The Soulmen.
Long ago, when I barely had the money to spend on a meal out, I made the decision to spend the little extra I had on Scrivener for Mac. It changed my life. Well, it at least improved it significantly.
I was a college student used to the Microsoft Word shuffle. Every time I wrote, the challenges of formatting and arranging the paper took an inordinate amount of time. Scrivener allowed me to plan and write efficiently: my undergraduate thesis on environmentalism in American literature, my first novel which allowed me to earn my master’s degree, the draft for my second novel, and the short stories and articles that composed my websites.
The fundamental elements of Scrivener, then and now, are key for many people writing long-form works (novels, dissertations, films) and collections. A Scrivener project is a unified directory containing chapters or sections, notes, and additional resources such as images, PDFs, web pages, and other files. It has a beautiful focus view, keywords, writing targets, and much more.
But the standout feature for me with Scrivener is the ability to view the same documents in writing, outline, and cork board/notecard view. No note-taking or outline app that I’ve tried is as powerful in this way. It allows you to quickly switch between writing, viewing the structure, and arranging sections. The outline view even includes the notes, keywords, and targets that you’ve attached to chapters. Changes in one view (moving a scene in the corkboard view) are reflected in the other views (the move is reflected in the outline view).
The iOS version of Scrivener brings these features to iPhones and iPads. Now, you can work with your Scrivener projects across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. But don’t expect to do so in the way you are used to with other Apple-ecosystem cross-platform apps: there is no iCloud and there is no automatic sync. Windows and Linux compatibility, the complex nature of the Scrivener project file format, and iCloud’s standard behavior (auto-saving amongst other things) makes Scrivener and iCloud a poor fit for each other (read more about it in this blog post from the Scrivener team). To work across multiple devices, Scrivener relies on manual syncing through Dropbox. And while this would have been a godsend when their iOS development was first mentioned years ago, it seems anachronistic now. I am constantly working across different devices, so I’m not sure that the merge conflicts saved by using Dropbox would outweigh those caused by requiring a manual sync process.
That’s not the only drawback to Scrivener’s complexity. While I have tended to use Scrivener as a text editor and not a word processor, there is still some of the complexity of font selection and formatting there. Scrivener can display and export text in some pretty amazing ways (e.g. combined drafts in ePUB, PDF, .doc, and more), but those take either finding the right template or fiddling with settings for quite some time. The user interface is a bit busy, and the settings are still a bit confusing, more akin to Word for Windows than contemporary iOS apps.
A few years ago, after moving to an iPad for much of my fiction writing, and trying out WriteRoom and Byword for their cross-platform ease, I decided to stop waiting for Scrivener for iOS and try Ulysses. Ulysses had just added its own iPad app, and it was just what I was looking for in my writing at the time (mostly short stories and blog posts). Since then, The Soulmen have extended the iOS version to the iPhone.
Cross-device compatibility in Ulysses is amazing. And the syncing just works over iCloud (or Dropbox if that’s your choice) unless I’m editing a document on two devices at the same time (a mistake I’ve only made a couple of times). Updated text is auto-saved and quickly makes its way to all devices. If you tried Ulysses in the early days of multiple device support and found it slow, you may want to try again—it’s made great strides.
Ulysses is text editor with the option of using Markdown or Textile formatting (a way to show styles for text, notes, and links using regular characters like asterisks and parentheses), which makes it easier for me to focus on the writing and not the layout or presentation. Whereas Scrivener gives you a project view by default, the basic use of Ulysses is a screen with text, and optionally some statistics and a list of texts to choose from. While Ulysses saves each sheet of writing as a file, you don’t name files or view them in a “finder”. Each sheet is shown as a preview of its title and the first few lines of text.
Coming from Scrivener, Ulysses can seem downright spare. There’s not a comparable outline view or note card view. You can approximate an outline in how you group sheets, but it’s not nearly as powerful for the purpose of outlining. There are keywords, goals, and attachments, but they’re available per sheet and not per projects (update: goals are available to groups1). Speaking of, you can group sheets into folders and sub-folders, but there isn’t a comparable idea of a project in Ulysses. Luckily, you can still see the content of sheets grouped within a directory or using a keyword or tag and edit them together in the editing pane. You can also combine or split sheets easily.
Scrivener does offer some output options for html, ePub, PDFs, and doc files, but they are not the stars of the show. I would be even less likely to create an ePub version of a book from Ulysses than Scrivener (Calibre has been my favorite choice for creating e-books in ePub and MOBI). The newest version adds output to WordPress websites (both .com and self-hosted). Publishing to WordPress is a killer feature for me, especially on iOS where publishing to WordPress has been complicated and frustrating. The allows me to skip a large manual process and focus on the writing.
Ulysses is about writing quickly and without distraction. Where Scrivener is like a software development environment but for writers instead of programmers, Ulysses is like a souped-up typewriter, especially when combined with an external keyboard.
Many writers swear by Scrivener, and for good reasons. Keeping planning, notes, goals, and writing together can save mental energy otherwise spent on managing resources. Scrivener for iOS also has a nice, clean look that I hope Literature and Latte ports to their Mac version (and maybe adapt for Windows and Linux).
For me, however, I like the simpler environment that Ulysses provides, as well as the flexibility to work on whichever device feels best for the task or that I have on me at the moment without worrying that I don’t have the last additions or edits.
With iPad multitasking, I’m also not concerned about putting an outline from OmniOutliner or a mind map from MindNode off to the side when needed (both apps also sync across Mac and iOS automatically). I’ve found having multiple simple tools to not be as much of a struggle in iOS.
I wouldn’t recommend keeping projects in Scrivener and Ulysses for the long term, but I would recommend trying both of them out and seeing which fits your writing style best. Cross-platform compatibility and syncing make it easy to write in the most convenient and effective way at any given time. It also makes it easier to adopt iOS as a primary writing platform2.
With these releases, long-form writing tools on iOS have grown up. Scrivener and Ulysses for iOS have caught up if not surpassed their desktop counterparts.
- https://twitter.com/ulyssesapp/status/766597088914399232↩
- MindNode, Ulysses and GoodNotes for iOS, the iPad Pro, Pencil, and an external keyboard have allowed me to create a paperless writing process that I can carry with me almost everywhere. It’s powerful to be able to generate ideas, write, and edit at almost anywhere and at any time. ↩