Thursday, September 8, 2011

Formatting Obsessed!


Okay, I love formatting! I admit it! Whenever I receive a manuscript or piece of text from another writer, divided into chapters and scenes, I get an urge to format it! I wasn’t always a formatting geek—it came about quite by accident. When I write, I do it in clumps of text, without regard for chapters or scenes. Later on, I go back and add my page breaks and scene changes. Problem was, I constantly adjusted them, splitting and combining chapters and scenes, and then had to go back and renumber everything. What a pain.

Then I discovered how to make my chapters number themselves, and even improved the way I could navigate through my own manuscript. Humor me here...if you’ll notice in the snapshot of my screen, the Document Map panel on the left shows all my chapters and scenes for easy reference. And the Formatting Pane on the right shows only the formatting I have in use. From there, I can adjust everything in my manuscript. If you want to play around, do so on a duplicate or new document. (Be aware, though, that this is for MS Windows, 03 edition. I don’t know anything about the 07 version or Macs—sorry.) And you may want to be sure you have the Formatting toolbar displayed: View>Toolbars>Formatting. I will explain using the menu bar across the top.


From the menu bar click View>Document Map. A pane opens on the left side.
Now, Format>Styles and Formatting—which opens a pane on the right. At the bottom, choose Formatting in use. Keep that open.

Place cursor where you want your chapter heading. Format>Bullets and Numbering>Outlined Numbered tab>Chapter 1>Okay.

Chapter 1 will show up on your document, likely at your left margin (it will also appear in the Document Map)—probably Arial font, or whatever your default font is. If this is for a manuscript, highlight the words Chapter 1. If a font button is not on your toolbar, Go to Format>Font>Times New Roman. Font size: Regular. Size:12. Now, Center it, either from the toolbar, or Format>Paragraph>Alignment: Center.

Now, highlight Chapter 1 on your document. In the Formatting pane, Chapter 1 Heading 1 + Centered will be ‘highlighted’. Each time you start a new chapter after a page break, click on that and the next chapter in sequence will appear. If you combine chapters or split them, the sequence will be synchronized automatically.

If anyone knows a simpler way to do all that, please share!

Tomorrow, I will show you how to make each scene a heading under the chapter.

Any questions so far? Anything you want me to mess around with?

17 comments:

  1. This is just way too serious for me, and you know it. However I like the concept. It would make my life so much easier. But not today.

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  2. Anne! You have come a long way in just a few weeks! One day, you too shall have chapter and scene headers in your Document Map--mark my words!

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  3. Ah, order from chaos. I just love it, too! It's so much fun to discover deeper levels in the software we use every day, isn't it. Taking the time to share it was really a nice thing for you to do.

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  4. Sharon, it kind of highlights my psychological profile, lol! So little I can control in real life, and so some of these entities I work with every day are great outlets for stabilizing my universe! It's nuts, I know, but so very gratifying...:) I hope it might be useful to someone else.

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  5. I think there might be a simpler way, but I haven't delved into Scrivener enough to know for sure. Though, of course, having to purchase/try out/misappropriate Scrivener first would make things a little more complicated, so perhaps you should just stick with Word and the method you've detailed above. I'd never thought to format my novel in that way, but I may have to try it.

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  6. Format??,, Ohhh,, Formate,,, ye'uh,,, i thought you were talking about "floormat". I have been outside in my truck working on my "floornat". I gotta pay better atten-shun. :)

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  7. Oh Nate! What I would do to get a hold of Scrivner--just think of the hours I could spend putting my universe in order! (Of course, that would mean I'd have to get a Mac first--it's on my to-wish-for list.)


    Glenn,,,have you had your coffee yet?,,,

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  8. Something to keep in mind is the final format of your document. For example, I use the Open Office Suite (because it was free to download and works rather well.) It has an application to convert to epub format for uploading to (in my case) Barnes and Noble Pubit.

    I have found some of the formatting I do in Open Office is negated in the translation. Bold chapter titles, for example. They aren't bold in the epub document. Not a problem, really. Most of the epub works I have read are similarly reformatted.

    Essentially, not all of the formatting will serve the end product if you must transmogrify your document for publication.

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  9. Michael, I have Open Office on my computer also. I've used it in the past when trying to convert a document into PDF when MS Word was misbehaving (It works fine, now). It's a good program! And bonus that it's free!

    The formatting I use here is for my own navigating ease. I haven't gotten to the point of formatting for ePublishing--I may or may not need to, but it's tempting to try it out just for the fun of it!

    I haven't researched any of that yet. I'm wondering if PDF is format that can be used, where all our little niceties like bold headers, cool scene-change fonts and the like can be preserved.

    Meanwhile, I shall "transmogrify" for my own amusement! ...and I know where to go if I have questions! :)

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  10. If I ever get my current story all out on paper, I'm going to need someone very technical to teach me how to format it! Thanks for the tips!

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  11. Seriously, Liza--if you ever need any help with that (in addition to the extreme formatting I've explained here, lol), feel free to e-mail me!

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  12. Thanks for joining the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Look forward to your post next month.

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  13. Alex, I'm actually kinda looking forward to it! And I have a whole month to think of something supportive to say--goodness knows I've been through the mill...yeah, that's right...I know stuff, lol...and I can share...:)

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  14. Cool I just learnt something new for my formatting... thanks for sharing... I tend to use minimal formatting, until I have to sent it off:)

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  15. Tania, I used to be a minimalist. Then I found a new way to procrasitnate when I should have been working out a scene, lol. :)

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  16. Here upon Anne's warm recommendation :).

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  17. Hi She Writes (And Comments), Thanks for stoppy by! :)

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