Jan 07 2012
How to Make Chapters for a Novel Manuscript in Microsoft Word 2010
Instead of having a separate Word document for each of your chapters, I would highly recommend instead writing your manuscript as a single Word document with chapter breaks. Otherwise, changing even the smallest details will be a nightmare. (For example, if you want to change a character’s name, you’d probably have to Find-Replace every chapter). That’s a huge waste of time, particularly since most novel manuscripts undergo hundreds of changes. If your chapters are in a single document, you just have to Ctrl+F once.
Fortunately, Word makes it extremely easy to break your novel manuscript into easily navigable chapters. Once you’ve gotten the hang of how to add chapters in Word, this should take fewer than 10 seconds a chapter.
How to Break Your Novel Manuscript Into Chapters
Step 1: Open your navigation pane if it isn’t already. It’s in the View tab.
Step 2: Apply the style “Header 1″ to your chapter titles. It’s in the Home tab. Just highlight your chapter title and click on Heading 1 (or Heading 2, if you prefer).
Optional Step 3: When you’re ready to add a new chapter, I recommend doing a page break so that each chapter will always start on its own page. To insert a page break, you can either use the short cut Ctrl + Enter or click the Page Break button in the Insert tab.
Step 4: Apply Steps 2-3 to each of your chapter titles. After doing so, your navigation pane is a table of contents with a button that you can click to skip immediately to that chapter. It’s much easier than having a bajillion documents open at once or figuring out which folder you’ve saved Chapter 10 in or which version of Chapter 10 is the most recent.
How to Make a Header Read Differently For Each Chapter
Step 1: Make sure you have separate sections for each chapter. If you don’t already, read through the first part of this article.
Step 2: Begin editing the header. (Double-click the header or right-click and select “Edit Header”).
Step 3: Go into the Insert tab, click Quick Parts, and then click Field.
Step 4: Under “Field names,” select “StyleRef.” Under “Style name,” select whichever style you used for your chapter titles.
Ooo! Never knew you could do this. Thanks!
Are comic book editors particularly interested in stories which might have potential for many offshoot stories?
I can only speak for one person, Mr. Ulmos, but my feeling is “only if THIS script is good enough to stand on its own merits.” If you have some other story in mind that is more compelling, I would recommend submitting that rather than submitting a story that is less interesting but might conceivably be followed by an interesting story. Alternately, you can rewrite the first script until it is good enough to be published.
(PS: Novelists, I would make the same recommendation for you, too).
I use this for my chapters and it is incredibly easy. : D Keeps everything nice and simple, and you can just jump to different chapters whenever you need to, I love it.
And those chapter titles made me lol. xD
Aw, man! I only have 2007.
…Is there a way that I can update?
Well, you could buy a copy of Office 2010 for around $120 (assuming you’re a student).
Crystal, an alternative would be to bookmark the start of each chapter. I’m not sure exactly how to do it in Word (I use OpenOffice), but it’s available.
You can do the same thing in Word 2003/2007. It’s called the “Document Map” in these versions.
This can be done using 2007 as well. Instead of opening the Navigation Pane under the View Tab, choose Document Map. Works like a charm.
Thanks for the tip and making me see if it could be done with an earlier version. Now I can stay organized so much easier than I ever have before.
Ahh, that way is so much better than the way I do it. I’ll have to change it this afternoon. I have a fairly strange way of defining chapters. I type: “START OF ONE (line break)”, then start typing. At the end of the chapter, I write “END OF ONE”, (line break) START OF TWO”, and so on. I don’t have chapter names yet.
You could also use START OF ONE as the section title, instead of CHAPTER ONE: [CHAPTER TITLE]. As long as you understand your organizational system, it’s good enough for me.
The Document Map for Word 2007 is crap. I cant get it to work. I highlight the chapter titles, but alas, they don’t show up on the map.
Ha. It’s been so long since I’ve visited, I forgot I don’t use my last initial next to my name here.
This has been incredibly helpful! Just wish I had this information when writing my fist two books. You would never believe what I went through trying to create a table of contents. My books have lots of chapters, and I must have changed my table of contents ten times or more before I got it right. Thanks for making my life easier!
Working on 2nd book. Have purchased a few ‘writing programs’ only to discover they don’t automatically ‘update’ backups/changes to an online storage that I use–and require one to be a computer genius in order to do so.
*le’sigh*
Nice thing ’bout those programs is the navigation pane/tree to the left enabling super author *insert eye roll here* to jump from chapter to chapter, various scenes, etc.
After a couple of hours searching, screaming, wading through Microsoft Help, I stumbled across your How To Make Chapters…
My new hero! *swoons*
i’ve been using the navigation pane to create chapter headings and move among chapters easily and have a couple of questions about what i seem to be doing wrong…
1. there’s an up-aimed arrow in the center of a bar above my chapter 1 bar that i don’t necessarily want there… can i get rid of it?
2. some of my chapter heading bars in the pane have a little arrow to the left and the chapter under that is indented, as if it’s a sub-heading… [i hit 'page break' before every one of them, but only some are 'indented': 1; 3; 5; 6... 2 & 4 are full size and have arrow at left]…how do i get rid of that arrow and have all chapters showing on a ‘full’ bar?
3. how do i keep the new chapters from appearing that way?
Hello, Maia. Could you email the manuscript (or at least the affected chapters of the manuscript) to me at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com? I’d like to look at the formatting. Thanks.
Trying to get my head around word 2010 so that I can write my book. I have spent hours ploughing through impossible advice from microsoft then found this wonderful site. Thank-you so much – so easy. I dont suppose you could advise on getting a header title for each page that mirrors the name of the chapter it is on?
Here, Frances.
Thank you so much for the VERY understandable, plain English instructions on this! I’m hoping you can help me with a problem I am about to pull my hair out over! I am trying to get page numbers (in my footer) to be on ALL pages (even the first page of each Chapter). But I do NOT want the “header” to appear on the first page of each Chapter because it looks ridiculous to have:
Chapter 1 (header)
CHAPTER 1
text….
I have each chapter as a separate “Section”. I have set “Different First Page” in my headers/footers. If I add a page number on the first page, it automatically pulls the header back in and it’s driving me nuts!!!
Please help!! I have a time crunch on this project and it is ridiculous that I have spent 2 days straight just trying to get this “should be easy” formatting to work!!
Hello, Jacki. If you have 5-10 minutes, open up the header on the first page of your Chapter 1, click the Page Layout menu button, and then click the arrow under Page Setup.
Do this on the first page of every section/chapter. It will take about 30 seconds per chapter. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks, very much appreciated..
Wow this is awesome. This will be very helpful when I write my Nanowrimo novel. Thanks!
I’m not getting it. How do i take each separate chapter and merge it into one document?
Claudia, if you currently have a separate document for each chapter, I would recommend copy-pasting them into a single document and then organizing that document into chapters as described above.
Help!
Formatting is draining my super powers.I require a different header on every page,i.e.Crisis-boy1,Crisis-boy2 etc.especially when it comes to chapters starting exactly 3.5 inches from top of page.I can’t separate header from chapter heading.Cursor always jumps past 3.5 mark.Can’t get round this on word 2010.I am familiar with typewriters,this is killing me!
Yours,Crisis-boy.
Crisis-Boy, I’m having trouble visualizing what you’re asking for, but maybe I can break this into easier-to-solve issues.
1) You want a different header on each page (e.g. Crisis Boy 1, Crisis Boy 2, etc). Go into the Insert tab and then click Page Number to get the page-number effect you’re looking for.
2) It sounds like you want the pages which start new chapters (ONLY the pages which start new chapters) to have a 3.5 inch margin from the top. I’d recommend going onto those pages, going into the Page Layout tab, clicking Margins, and then clicking Custom Margins, setting your top margin as 3.5 inches, and then choosing the setting Apply to: This point onwards. Then go to the next page and do the same thing on each of the next pages, but setting it back to a normal setting from this point onwards. Once you’ve gotten the hang of this, it should take less than 30 seconds per chapter. Let me know if there are any issues.
Whoooo!Hooooo!Thanks Superhero Nation.My problem is solved,Crisis-boy will now spread the word about your site.Back to fighting tiny crises all over London.USA!USA!
Whoooo!Hooooo!OH!Your previous help worked—–BUT!—–I now have headings on all pages declaring Crisis-boy1 on every header instead of Page1-Crisis-boy1,Page2-Crisis-boy2 etc.Can I stop Crisis-boy1 appearing on every page in every header?My super powers are waning again.
Click on the Design tab, then click on the other things highlighted in the following screenshot:
Now repeat Step 1 again and type your title next to the page number. You should have a different page number displaying on each page:
Crisis-boy is taking a break from aiding society but will try your suggestion soon.Over and out!
If you’ve got a writing problem,then maybe you should contact the Superhero Nation team!Even Crisis-boy needs help fighting manuscript formatting gobbledegook occasionally.They rush to a flummoxed writers aid at a touch of a keyboard.Thanks Nation of heroes,for ensuring that the world continues to be a literate haven.
Crisis-boy logging off!