Many of my writer friends are new to technology and writing a novel manuscript feels, well, daunting. And so, I made a video about using Microsoft Word to create a manuscript. Hopefully it will take away some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
If you need help:
- navigating around your manuscript as it grows,
- formatting paragraphs,
- inserting chapter breaks,
- managing page numbering,
- generating and updating a Table of Contents,
- setting up front matter,
- formatting special text sections such as emails, text messages, and chats,
then invest about a half-hour with this video. Even better, invest a couple hours to launch a blank Microsoft Word document, use the video as a guide, and create your own shell manuscript template. Run the video for a few seconds, pause, try what it talks about with your manuscript shell, and then repeat.
Invest some time now, learn a few tricks, and then focus on creating your story while the formatting just works.
I realized after I published this video that I needed to tweak the margins with the Greg text message left and Greg text message right styles. Greg text message left needs a right margin about about 4 inches – so those look like a block on the left side. And it might make sense to move the left margin for Greg text message right about half-inch to the left. If you like the concept of setting up MS Word styles like these for showing text messages, fiddle with your margins as appropriate.
If you want a copy of the template I mentioned in the video, grab it from right here and use it to start your manuscript.
One final note. If you found this helpful, please leave a comment here or on Youtube, subscribe to my Youtube channel, and consider buying my books for yourself and for Christmas and birthday presents for everyone you know. Here is more info on my books.
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