I sort of lucked into a free account at with Scrivener Coach because of a previous post of mine extolling some of Scrivener's minor virtues.  I was supposed to evaluate it.  Unfortunately, time became a rare commodity for a while and I had to move it to the back burner.  I'm still not finished with the course, but I'm confident that I've done enough of it (about half) to give a fair assessment.

First off, let me say that if you are writing and not using Scrivener, you really need to re-examine your life.  It really did take something dramatic to shake me from using Lotus Word Pro, and now I can't imagine going back.  Scrivener is the first word processor that looks like it might have been created by writers, or at least by software engineers who bothered to talk to writers.

I am both a writer and a software engineer, so I was fairly certain that I could pick it up quickly, and for the most part I did.  Even so, there are some pretty powerful features that I missed, and may not have found for a long time if it hadn't been for Scrivener Coach.  Here's the thing about Scrivener.  It's so incredibly powerful and flexible that it can easily be overwhelming for people used to regular word processors.  If you want a to-do list, or character profiles, or various collections of research material, they's all there.  And more.  The problem is it is not always so obvious how to do it all.  A to-do list, for example, isn't a built-in feature, but you can make one.  If you're not a software engineer, you might have some trouble putting all the pieces together so you can get the most out of Scrivener.  That is where Scrivener Coach can help.

So, my assessment?  In a word, it's good.

But having made the claim that I'm a writer, just "good" seems a little like Newspeak.  Therefore, allow me to elaborate on the adjective.

1. Granularity: Lessons are brief and targeted

The core of the lessons are built around videos, some as short as a minute and others as long as a whopping six minutes.  Most are in the two-to-three minute range.  Important here is that there are none of those overwhelming 30-minute marathons where you are expected to swallow a dumpster load of material in one sitting like you are in a graduate quantum mechanics class.  (I know; I've taken a graduate quantum mechanics class!)  They come in convenient bite-sized chucks.  One concept, one lesson.  This lets the student pace progress at his own rate, two, three, or five in a setting, or just one, without having to find an inconvenient place to break until next time.  Keeping each unit targeted to a specific concept helps keep the message clear.

As with most such online lessons, Scrivener Coach lets you mark units as completed and keeps tabs on what is done and what lies ahead.  But it is no cruel taskmaster.  You are always free to go back and review earlier lessons or jump ahead to something you just have to know right now.

2. Clarity

It's fair to say that the lessons are much more understandable than if I had written them.  The only times when something wasn't perfectly clear was when I let my mind wander and wasn't actually paying attention.

3. Pacing

It's just right.  In preparing any online lesson such as this, you don't have the audience in front of you, and as the audience is an important feedback tool to judge how you are doing, it takes a bit more effort to do it right when to don't have said audience to look at.  It's easy to go too fast and leave the student lost and having to stop and go over things again because he missed it, or go too slow and leave the student bored and having to stop and go over things again because he fell asleep.  I have never experienced either problem with Scrivener Coach.  It feeds me the information at just the right speed, and probably the right speed for anyone who is familiar with any word processor and just needs to know how this one works.

4. Video and text

Lessons are presented both ways.  The videos are the focus, presented at the top of each page.  But if you've ever watched this sort of training video before (I've watched dozens of 3ds Max tutorials) you know that it's sometimes hard to see what is going on.  Nothing personal; that's just a consequence of trying to fit an entire computer screen into the size of a YouTube video.

Scrivener Coach solves this problem by repeating all the critical information in text and still shots below the video.  If you couldn't quite make out that menu because it was ten-by-fifteen millimeters on you screen, just check it out in one of the still images.

Oddly, the lessons "Saving as PDF" and "Printing Your Project to Paper" had no videos.  This was not the end of the world, since the text lessons were still there, but it was a bit disconcerting.  Maybe it's a work in progress, and maybe it's because I don't have access to the "real" version and that has since been completed.  See below for more information.

4. Complete Coverage

I don't think Scrivener Coach misses anything.  It certainly doesn't miss anything that I know about. But to explain that further, I need to move on to the next point.

5. It's a Good Value

First off, Scrivener itself is a good value.  It is one of the two pieces of software I've purchased in my lifetime where I felt I received much more than I had paid for.  The other was some version of Corel Graphics Suite from many years ago.  Only $40 for Scrivener?  You have to be kidding me?  That's a full-scale application for the price of a zip utility!  It's worth so much more.

How this fits into the "Complete Coverage" topic is that you can buy Scrivener Coach at three levels, termed Basic, Master, and Ninja, for $47, $67, and $97, respectively.  The version I have access to, I think, is a pre-release version somewhere between Master and Ninja , probably because I got in through the back door.  That said, the version I have doesn't miss anything that I know about.  I'm in the "Scrivener for Bloggers" module, and looking forward to the "Ninja Tips and Tricks" module.

If you choose to go with Scrivener Coach, I'd encourage you to skip the Basic version and go for at least the Master.  "$67," you say.  "That's more than Scrivener!"  Well, that's only because Scrivener is so cheap to begin with.  Look at it this way.  If it saves you a single day on the learning curve at minimum wage, it's just about paid for itself.  And my gut feeling is that for the typical writer, who hasn't spent 40 years writing software, it would be well worth the trade.

6. Not much room for improvement

We all know that nothing is perfect.  At least if something is, I haven't found it yet.  But to talk much about Scrivener Coach's shortcomings pretty much reduces one to nit-picking.  It hasn't many faults.  And bear in mind that the little I have to say here may simply be because I haven't been looking at the finished product.  Or so I think.

One must know that Scrivener comes in both Mac and PC versions, and that the Mac version is a good generation ahead.  One of the first lessons points out this fact and advises the viewer that some of the features and cool options aren't available yet for the PC.  Still, it would help a little if this were brought up again, from time to time as a reminder, so the student doesn't keep going back and trying things only to discover that they don't work.

Well, come to think of it, that might be it.  I can't even whine about the instructor's voice.

The two other items I might have commented on, the confusion between scrivenercoach.com and learnscrivenerfast.com and glitches getting logged in, and the missing videos from those two lessons, I really believe are a consequence of my "back door" pass and probably won't even exist for most people.

Scrivener Coach in Summary

So that's it.  I like Scrivener Coach.  I would even like it if I'd had to pay for it.  I've lived in a professional world where your company hands out $1500 for a training seminar.  You devote a day to it, then go back home with a printout of some PowerPoint slides, wondering why you wasted the day.

Not so Scrivener Coach.  For a twentieth the cost, you get days of training that actually pay off.  And it's fun.  I've enjoyed every lesson, which sure beats sitting in a room with 300 other bored people trying to down enough coffee so you don't start snoring.  I won't say Scrivener Coach is for everyone, but those whom it is for shouldn't be disappointed.