This is the eleventh and final installment in the “HOW I WRITE” series I’m participating in every Wednesday with several writers, where we all discuss how we approach writing a book. Every writer has a different process and this project gives us a chance to share and compare ours. Click on the “How I Write” image to find a list of the participating writers and links to their blogs.
Last week we talked about Resources to help hone the writing craft. It’s on open topic for this week, and I chose: Using the Document Map in Microsoft Word.
As I mentioned last month while discussing how I write the first draft , when drafting (and revising) a manuscript, I take the outline I created in my spreadsheet and transfer it into a Word document in the format of a book with chapter and scene titles. But because I already generally have the entire story laid out, every once in a while I sometimes flesh out scenes out of order. I use Word’s Document Map feature to help me jump from scene to scene and chapter to chapter easily.
How to use the Document Map in MS Word
Step 1: Give your chapters titles that can help you identify what’s in it, instead of just numbers. For example, instead of calling it “Chapter 5″, call it “Chapter 5: The First Kiss”. If you give your scene breaks titles too, like “***Dreaming About Eric” instead of just “***”, you will make it even easier to navigate your manuscript. You can always change the names of the chapters and scenes to get rid of the descriptive titles once you have finished the manuscript and no longer need them.
Step 2: Make all of your chapter and scene break titles style type Heading 1. (Highlight the title and select Heading 1 from the Styles menu)
Step 3: Turn on the Document Map feature. In Word 2007 or earlier, click View > Document Map. In Word 2010 or later, go to View > Navigation Pane and select the first tab underthe search box (it’ll say “Browse the headings in your document” when you mouse over it).
Benefits of the Document Map
- Provides you with a list of all of your headers a sidebar
- By making your chapter and scene titles headers, you’ll have a clickable outline of your manuscript
- Jump to a specific chapter or scene in your manuscript by clicking on the header in the document map
- It shows you where you are in the manuscript by highlighting the header in the document map of the corresponding section your cursor is in
I hope that helps you get started using the Document Map feature in Word! If you have any questions, feel free to leave it here in the comments.
Don’t forget to visit other participating blogs to see other writers’ open topic for today. Thanks for joining me in the How I Write series – it’s been fun!
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Your posts have been so helpful. I appreciate how concrete they are. I currently use scrivener, but I can see how this organizing tool can be really helpful and now I know about it. Thanks.
Thanks Tina! I've heard lots about scrivener, I'd love to try it someday.
I think I'm going to have to try this. Especially after I move my draft from yWriter to Word during the revision process. Thanks for the mini-tutorial!!
Yes, I recommend trying it. I like yWriter a lot, but stopped using it once I discovered the Document Map. I hope this helped!
I am a huge fan of the Document Map. I saw an article on it a while back and went through and setup chapter and scene styles like you mention, that associated with the top two levels of the outlining function. Another trick you can do is setup your styles to be in succession of each other. So Word automatically knows when you select the chapter style, a scene style comes next. And when you select a scene style, a paragraph style follows. Document map, mixed with automatic styling has significantly sped up my first drafts.
Great post as usual!
Hi Steven -
Great tip, Steven!! I think I've been taking style templates for granted, but I agree – they definitely help make draft-writing easier.
I've never used Document Map even though I use Word extensively…it sounds like a good idea.
I currently write my chapters in seperate documents because I find it easier. I plan to put them all together in manuscript form when they're all done.
I'm pretty OCD about how I write so once I get set in my ways it's hard for me to try new things.
I used to do separate documents for my chapters, too, and I liked doing that. But I admit, it got really messy for me when I finished the draft of a novel and it was 35 chapters long. That book is actually what drove me to explore my other options.
If you do try the Document Map feature, please let me know. I'd be curious to hear what you think of it.
Wow! Another awesome idea. Thank you! This sure beats scanning back and forth trying to find that one particular scene I want to re-write because I've gotten a scathingly brilliant idea that has made me forget what chapter I want to rewrite.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Awesome series!
Glad you enjoyed it, babe.
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