Been playing around with backgrounds on Scrivener’s compose setting recently. To be honest I was wasting time: I figured any image around the page as I wrote would be distracting.

Initially my instincts were correct. The bright white of the page doesn’t sit well with any imagery along its borders, at least not to me.

I turned the page fade right up and got this:

Wow. Pretty. It was like I was writing a children’s picture book after it had been published.

But no way could you write like this for any length of time. Not unless you’re some kind of ocular masochist.

But…

I did find having a sci-fi landscape reminiscent of the book I’m writing before me very useful in keeping me ‘in the zone’ in terms of ‘seeing’ the world/mood and the story. If only I could see what I’m typing…

So I messed with the fade and got this:

Now this I really like. Heck, I think I prefer it to the bright white of a regular page. I found I could get into the (very rough) scene I was chonking out, really ‘see’ my imaginary world. What I’d thought a novelty feature seems to be actually quite handy (though your own mileage may vary).

So I’ll probably stick with it a while. I may change the background image to something less detailed, I may not. But I’m glad I wasted a few minutes mucking with Scrivener’s features.