With apps catering to fiction writers, the workflow is straightforward: collect ideas and information, sketch characters and plot, write the novel, format it according to publishers’ guidelines, print, and mail it off.

Nonfiction writing is an entirely different animal. Complex formatting styles, references, and bibliographies all seem to fall into the domain of Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer. But there’s really no need to give up the project approach, research folders, and split-screen editing in Scrivener. With new document templates for Chicago, APA, and MLA styles, the app has become a great tool to tackle complex nonfiction projects. Scrivener 2.0 supports footnotes and endnotes, and for many, those built-in options will be sufficient. But if you need parenthetical references or a large bibliography, check out Zotero (free, zotero.org), a complex bibliography manager that lives inside Firefox.

Zotero keeps track of all your sources, and makes your bibliography for you.

Adding new sources to Zotero is a snap. Depending on the information on a webpage -- a book at Amazon, a NY Times article, an online library record -- Zotero adds a small icon to Firefox’s address bar. One click, and the relevant bibliographic information is added to the database.

To include those sources in your manuscript, Zotero offers cite-as-you-write functionality for OpenOffice Writer and Word -- but not for Scrivener. Fortunately, we’ve found an easy workaround. Simply insert the name of the author and other pertinent information as a placeholder, like {Mikell, 1989, 114-116}. When you’re done, export your paper to RTF format and run Zotero’s RTF scan. The cryptic references will automatically be replaced with proper citations and automatically collected in a bibliography formatted according to your preferences. Conduct a final check in your word processor of choice to double-check the formatting, and your paper is ready!