I’m currently in revision mode for something new. Revising’s so important to me. It’s the last five per cent of polish that can add so much.
Ulysses has a great trick up its sleeve to make the job incredibly efficient and powerful. It’s all here…
Go to Typewriter Mode and choose highlighting. Once you do this you’ll be able to focus on your text by line, sentence or paragraph. I prefer paragraph. Those shortcuts mean that you can bounce between highlighted paragraph and normal text very quickly. You can also highlight the line your cursor is in as well if you like.
When I’m revising I stay in Dark Mode so you get a very simple screen like this. Just your words. Nothing else.
Ulysses is all about simplicity with power for me and this technique illustrates that very well.
One other great thing. This isn’t just confined to the Mac. If you use Ulysses on an iPad you can set up Dark Mode and paragraph highlighting too like this.
I used to obsess over final revises, usually exporting to PDF and marking up with a pen on screen. Which was never terribly efficient to be honest probably because my handwriting is terrible. Now I do some work on the Mac and a final, final read through on the iPad in portrait mode which is very like reading a book manuscript. With paragraph highlighting it’s easy to focus very closely on your text without any distractions. Any changes you make on the iPad will sync automatically back to the Mac before you even reach the desk. I’ve even made revision notes on my iPhone while out working when an idea hits.
David Hewson 