Distractions. Today’s culture has plenty of them, and they seem to have caused an epidemic of short attention spans.
When writing, the easiest way to be distraction free is to close down the programs that distract you. That means close your email program, any social media pages open on your browser, and possibly even your browser. It also means shutting the bedroom/office door to keep out the pets and the family (if at all possible).
But you can only do so much to minimize the distractions of your writing program. You can hide rulers and menu bars.
Scrivener has what they call Full Screen Mode and Typewriter Scroll.
To enter full screen mode, press the F11 key on your keyboard, or go to View → Enter Full Screen. Once you enter full screen, everything is grayed out except your editing window.
You can adjust how much of the background you see via the slider bars at the bottom of the window. You’ll have to mouse over the area to bring up the menu bar.
The background fade is located at the far right. You can adjust how wide your editor window is with the paper width slider located to the left. Additionally, you can position your “paper” in the center, left, or right of your screen.
To exit full screen, hit the F11 key, Escape Key, or exit button at the far right in the menu.
The Typewriter Scroll is a wonderful little tool that keeps your text at roughly the center of your screen rather than at the bottom like it is in most word processor programs. This doesn’t really have anything to do with being distraction free, but it is a nice benefit to your eyes.
To turn on Typewriter scrolling, go to Format→Options→Typewriter Scrolling.
I recently created a Scrivener video course and turned on the typewriter mode to demonstrate how it works. Sheesh, I could kick myself for not having done it sooner. It’s so much nicer looking at the center of the screen instead of always at the bottom.
Typewriter scrolling stays on until you turn it off (the same way you turn it on).
Give these Scrivener distraction-free options a try. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you find you like them.
Has this convinced you to buy Scrivener? To purchase Scrivener for Windows or Scrivener for MacOS.