My thanks to Scrivener for being this week's featured sponsor on Tools & Toys.

Writing a book or research paper is about more than hammering away at the keys until it's done. Research, shuffling index cards to find that elusive structure — most software is only fired up after much of the hard work is completed.

Enter Scrivener, a content-generation tool that lets you compose and structure long and difficult documents based on material from multiple sources. Adopted by novelists, screenwriters, journalists, lawyers and academics alike, the program allows users to split the editor and view documents, PDF files, multimedia and other research materials next to each other. A virtual corkboard and outliner help with structuring or providing an overview of the draft. Collate, read and edit related text without affecting its place in the whole using Scrivener’s Collections feature. Close out the world in Full Screen mode. And when you’re finished, export to e-readers or the most popular word processing programs for submission.

Available for Mac OS X and Windows at Literature and Latte.