*Technically not Scrivener, but a new writing app from Literature & Latte, the company behind Scrivener. This is kind of old news, because the post I’m quoting from is from October 25, 2023, but I only found out about this yesterday.
Not Scrivener then: something new. But not entirely new. I’d long been toying with the idea of an alternative, more minimal take on Scrivener. This was a chance to create an app pared back to hone in on the principles on which Scrivener was originally built:
Work on a long text by splitting it into smaller sections.
Use an integrated outline for an overview and easy restructuring.
View research alongside writing.
Export or print with the option of changing the document’s appearance.
Description of the new writing app
Unfortunately, it sounds like syncing will once again be tied to only a single service–iCloud–which is only marginally better than Scrivener using Dropbox, and not exactly a logical choice for the planned Windows version.
Still, it holds the promise of offering a lot of what I like in Ulysses (simple, text-focused, but allowing for organization), but in a cross-platform format and (hopefully) without a subscription attached. Ulysses is a good program, but I feel it’s gotten a bit directionless lately, adding somewhat dubious features to justify its sub. And it’s Mac (and iOS) only, which is not optimal for me, since I spend most of my time working in Windows.
I am cautiously hopeful about Scribbler1Not the actual name, probably. It’s allegedly coming out this year, which may seem improbable given previous release date projections, but they claim it’s been in the works for three years, and it is a simpler program, so…maybe!
UPDATE, June 1, 2023: Here's a link to the original post on Mastodon by Matt Birchler that started this. If you can't follow the link, he's updated his original post to confirm from a member of the Ulysses team that this was indeed a joke and is riffing off a previous newsletter in which Fehn had raised the ire of Musk fans by criticizing Musk:
Me just opening my newsletter for updates from my writing app:
Editing for visibility: I’m choosing to assume this is a joke that didn’t land. The Ulysses newsletter has gone off the rails recently though, so it’s all just weird.
Edit 2: got confirmation this is a joke. Apparently the Elon trolls came for Marcus recently, and this was a sarcastic response to them. Sounds like many readers didn’t have that context, and this read like a normal Elon Stan letting their freak flag fly ?
This is why you don't try to be funny in a company newsletter!
I begrudgingly use Ulysses. It’s a fine app–in some ways even a great app–but I was not pleased when it went to a subscription model and mused at the time that they would have trouble adding genuinely useful features to “justify” the sub. And I think that happened.
But this post isn’t about the subscription model Ulysses uses. It’s their choice to charge a sub, just as it’s my choice to pay for it. I grumble, but for now, I pay, as I’ve yet to find another program that does everything that Ulysses does in a way I like. What this post is about is the Ulysses newsletter the company sends out periodically to its customers. More specifically, it’s about the current newsletter May 2023), which I think is attempting some ill-advised humour that may result in them actually losing customers.
I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t love email, they tolerate it. And when it comes to newsletters, I’d also reckon a lot of people may sign up for one (no harm, no foul), but then unsubscribe when they realize the newsletter isn’t providing enough value. I have culled a lot of newsletters in the past year for this very reason!
The current newsletter, which was sent out today, is written by Ulysses GmbH & Co. founder and creative director, Marcus Fehn. He is German. Is this important? Maybe, if you think some of what I’m about to highlight can be explained by differences in language, culture and things getting lost in translation.
Hello, fabulous subscriber of our newsletter,
This is Marcus from Ulysses, and I’m about to tell you something newsworthy. But first I need to make a statement:
**I love Elon Musk**. Elon is one of my favorite people on Earth, on the Moon, and of course on Mars. He’s a great innovator, probably a fantastic lover and an overall nice guy. I wish I was as smart as him. Or just 1% as smart as him. I also love Twitter and what he has done with it. Twitter was great before Elon, and it’s much better now. It’s a haven for free speech, a civilized marketplace of ideas, and it should be the blueprint for all social media apps going forward. I also applaud it for teaching kids how to behave in public.
Marcus Fehn, Ulysses founder and creative director
There is some debate on Mastodon on whether the above is:
Very obviously a joke and meant to be funny (the haha kind of funny)
Meant to be sincere praise of Musk and Twitter
There is no debate, however, on this being a baffling and just plain odd way to start out a newsletter to customers of a subscription-based markdown writing app. If it’s a joke (and I think it is), it’s executed just clumsily enough to make people think it might be legit. You could argue that just makes it more like satire, which is like funny jokes for sophisticates. Or grumps. (I like satire.) But even as satire, this is a completely tone-deaf way to start a newsletter. As a Ulysses user, I don’t care what Fehn thinks about Musk or Twitter, unless it somehow impacts Ulysses. I get that Fehn may have opinions or just likes writing things, but starting a company-based newsletter with this is bad form all around. This is why blogs exist, Marcus!
The rest of the newsletter continues in a jokey manner, with Fehn talking about 20 years of Ulysses and “20 years of hate mail, but that’s a different story” and that he’s visiting San Francisco and will be “the one in the bullet-proof vest, just in case.” I think he’s just trying hard (too hard?) to be funny, and a lot of it comes off flat or weird. The newsletter does exude with his personality, but that again is debatable on whether it’s a plus or minus.
For me, the whole thing is weird and off-putting, and it’s made me once again start looking for alternatives to Ulysses, preferably something that works on both Windows and Macs. And isn’t Scrivener. 😛
When it comes to writing fiction (and specifically fiction), there are two things I like that both Scrivener and Ulysses offer that, perhaps surprisingly, very few other writing apps do. One is nice to have, the other I consider more essential.
A list of scenes that can be re-ordered. Both programs show a list of scenes to the left of the main writing window, acting as containers for scenes/chapters. You can move them around in any order that you want. I rarely move scenes around, but having them visually laid out next to the main editing window helps me get a visual overview of a novel, a case where technology really does offer something you can’t easily replicate going old school with pen and paper (or typewriter).
Indents on paragraphs. This might seem trivial, but hear me out! When I write blog posts like this one, I hit Enter (or Return, for Mac purists) and a new paragraph begins. This can work in fiction, too, though you’ll never see a book printed this way (it would add many more pages and drive up costs on paper books, for one). In paper books and their digital brethren, the first line of each paragraph is indented to distinguish it from the one before. If you use a typical markdown editor, hitting Enter will only start a new line, it won’t add a blank line (WordPress does not use Markdown and is coded to add the blank line automatically). You need to hit Enter twice for that. In fiction, you can have a lot of short paragraphs, such as when there is a back-and-forth dialog between characters. This means you are constantly having to hit Enter twice to properly separate paragraphs and avoid getting what looks like a wall of text. Ulysses cheats by using a modified version of Markdown that allows indents on the first line of a paragraph. Scrivener avoids this entirely by adopting a Word-like WYSIWYG approach.
I could, for example, use Obsidian, a free Markdown editor I am using for notes, to write a novel. There’s even a community plugin called Longform made just for this purpose. But there’s no support for indents, so I’d be doing the double Enter thing, and in my experience it breaks flow just enough to be consistently annoying. Maybe I’ll try again as an experiment on a short story or something, because there are aspects of both Scrivener and Ulysses I don’t like, so finding an alternative to both would be nice.
And for the extra-curious, here are some of the things I don’t like about each:
Scrivener:
Does not handle cloud saves well at all
Cumbersome, ugly and unconventional interface (yes, even on the Mac)
Ulysses:
No Windows version
Requires subscription (I think it’s a great example of how a subscription is great for developers while being a poor value for the user)
Again, both of these things may seem relatively small, but together they add a lot to make the experience of writing fiction a better one for me. And I really can’t think of other writing apps that offer both, which is kind of weird!
A Windows version of Ulysses or its functional equivalent. It would need to be fully cross-platform and have no subscription.
There is actually a suspiciously Ulysses-like program on the Microsoft Store called Inspire Writer from a publisher I’ve never heard of. I mean, it basically has everything I like about Ulysses–again, suspiciously so. Whether they were just “inspired” by the app, reverse-engineered it or just plain decided to copy its features and UI, it makes me feel a little skeevy even considering it. And it makes me lament that there are no other writing apps for Windows that are like Ulysses. iA Writer is a pretty good markdown editor, but it doesn’t work well for long form (novel) writing, and most other markdown editors are the same–excellent for writing blog posts and short pieces, but not much else.
Odds of this happening: Pretty much zero. The company behind the app is one of those weirdly proud Mac-only (except now also iOS and iPadOS-only) developers. Also a Windows version would totally have a subscription, anyway.
Wish No. 2
Scrivener fully supporting cloud saves and syncing.
Scrivener was never designed to work with cloud services like Dropbox or OneDrive, due to the way it saves (by default every two seconds!) and the way it handles files (each project is not just a simple document, but rather a collection of files that effectively appear as one to the user). They cobbled in Dropbox support when the iOS version was released, but the official word from their support is to stick to using Scrivener locally and use cloud storage only to keep backups of your work.
It’s good advice, because it’s pretty easy to mangle your Scrivener files if you keep one document open (in error) on Computer A then go to open it on Computer B. Trust me, I know!
Odds of this happening: Very close to zero. I think we’d have to see a complete rewrite of the application, or a different “cloud-only” version of it, and neither seems remotely likely at this time.
