Jennifer now becomes Julia all through the manuscript), and go to any page, section, heading, bookmark, etc. From that dialogue box, you can search, replace certain words with others (i.e.

Find and ReplaceĬTRL+F brings up a simple search option to find words and phrases in your document. You can delete them easily from the popup menu as well. Have a specific scene you need to do more research on? You can bookmark it and jump back to it later.īookmark by going to the Insert menu and clicking Bookmark. These basically work the same way as headings, but they’re for anywhere in your document.

Then you can easily bounce around to different chapters through the navigation pane (check the Navigation Pane box under the View menu). Make the title or number of each chapter a heading. (You can set your simpler formatting as your default style as well, so you don’t have to change it every time.) No one needs giant blue words as their chapter headings. Definitely mess with them and change their formatting to something simple. On Word’s Home page, there are already standard headings listed. There will be no easy way to click and drag to rearrange chapters. Word doesn’t divide your book into chapters for you like some other programs.

Luckily there are ways to do it in Word that make it easier if you know where to look. When you have a 90,000-word manuscript, navigating becomes daunting. Get The Write Structure » How to Navigate Your Book in Microsoft Word In it, we’ll teach you how to apply timeless story structure principles to write a great book. If you have an idea but you need help with the structure, check out our new book The Write Structure. The second step is figuring out the structure of your book. Hey writer: the first step to writing a book is coming up with a great idea. It is worth noting that if all that sounds appealing to you, you can do those things in Word as well, it just won’t be as fancy as other programs. I prefer handwritten notes and nothing else blocking my screen while I’m typing and Word gives me that. There are a ton of apps and programs out there that will allow you to keep your plot structure notes close at hand, to rearrange your chapters with the click of a button, and to keep detailed character profiles right in the program. Personally, I don’t use those templates, but they’re a nice baseline for beginners, or even old hats that just want to hurry up and write without setting up their document first. They have them for short story format and for manuscript format. It’s been around forever, so most people know how to use it. Word is the standard, accepted across platforms, and is easy to access for non-writers (your beta readers). The Benefits of Microsoft Word for Book Writing Want to learn how to write a book from start to finish? Check out How to Write a Novel: The Complete Guide, or for you nonfiction writers, How to Write a Book: The Complete Guide.

Microsoft word templates for books