Writer Tips for MS Word (and to a Lesser Extent, Open Office)

There's lots of great novel-writing software out there, but chances are good you don't use it. Chances are, like everyone else in the industry, you use MS Word. But how do you use this thing -- designed for 10-page essays and well-outlined reports -- to keep track of 100,000 semi-organized words? How do you critique someone's novel so it won't be hard to find your notes or make use of them? Here's what I do. (Note: screenshots are from Office 2010, but all these features are available at least as far back as Office XP. Probably farther.)

DOCUMENT MAP
Also known as the Navigation Pane, this useful feature allows you to see all headings and sub-headings in your document at a glance. It appears on the left as an outline structure. You can click on any heading, and Word will automatically take you to that spot in your document. Also it will highlight the section where the cursor is at the moment, so you don't have to wonder which chapter you're in.

Unfortunately Word doesn't do this for you automatically. You have to tell it what your headings and sub-headings are. To do that, select a line of text, right-click, and choose "Paragraph...". Then look for a drop-box called Outline Level. In that box, "Body Text" is any text you do NOT want to show up in the Document Map. "Level 1" is for top-level headings, "Level 2" for sub-headings, and so on.

I use Level 1 for my chapter titles and Level 2 for each scene (enlarge the picture above to see what that looks like), but you can use it however you want. If you get tired of manually selecting outline levels, you can use Styles.

STYLES
In the toolbar on top, MS Word has a number of styles preset for you -- a list or drop-box with selections like 'Normal', 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2', etc. These are a quick and easy way to use consistent formatting throughout your document.

You probably won't want to use Word's default styles, but it's not hard to set up you're own. If you use them for the months (or years) it takes to write your novel, it's time well spent. Decide on a font, typeface (bold, italic, etc.), and an Outline Level, then save it as a new style. (I forget how it works in Office XP, but 2010 lets you select text, right-click, and choose "Save Selection as a New Quick Style...").

NOTES
This is my favorite feature of MS Word. Anywhere in the text, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-M (in Open Office, Ctrl-Alt-N) to add a note or comment in the margin.

I love it because it lets you type anything you want without screwing up the formatting or word count of the manuscript AND it's really easy to scroll through without missing a single note. (Open Office actually keeps track of Notes in the Navigation Pane, so it's even easier).

They're great for critiquing other people's manuscripts or just for making notes to yourself that you don't want to forget. In the screenshot, I've used it to record comments people made when Natalie workshopped my prologue. I also use it when I'm revising my own stuff and get stuck on something. Rather than sit there for an hour trying to think of a better phrase than "She ran", I'll add a note that I don't like it and come back to it later.

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SIDEBAR: OPEN OFFICE
A quick note on Open Office. It's open-source software designed to do everything MS Office can do, but for free. That's a major plus, and if you're low on cash or want to go legal, you should check it out.

But even though it costs over $200 less than Microsoft, I'm hesitant to recommend it. Some of the things that bothered me (they might not bother you, so pay attention):

• Open Office lost outline levels when opening or saving from Word Doc format.
• Bulleted lists and outlines didn't play nice when swapped between OO and Word.
• For the life of me, I could not get OO to save my manuscript in RTF without totally screwing up the formatting. (This one made me particularly mad as an agent asked for my full in RTF format).
• OO's thesaurus sucks.
• This has nothing to do with novels, but MS Office has a nice feature that allows you to compress all pictures in a document or PowerPoint slideshow (meaning it reduces the size and resolution to what is actually displayed), thus significantly reducing the size of your document. Open Office doesn't do this, and as far as I can tell has no plans to.
• Numerous minor, mostly-cosmetic annoyances (many to do with Notes and Track Changes) that I would normally put up with if they were the only problems.

Now back to our regularly scheduled post.

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TRACK CHANGES
Last one, then I'm out. You know how to use Track Changes, right? No? Man, it's the best way to do line edits. Turn the feature on (it's in Tools or Review or something) and then make any changes you want to your buddy's manuscript. Your changes will show up in a different color, making them easy to spot. Deletions will either be struckout or put in a Note on the side, so all the original text is still there. And of course you can add your own Notes to explain why you're making the change.

When your friend goes through the changes, they can cycle through each change individually, accepting or rejecting each one (so you don't have to manually make the changes if you don't want to). Optionally you can choose to accept or reject all changes at once.

So that's how I use Word. What program do you use for writing? If you use Word too, are there any features I neglected to mention that you find useful? (Maybe I don't know about them!).

Accomplishments

I feel a little weird just jumping back in with a post on writing, so here are some things I accomplished in the last two weeks:

1. I did not die. Surprisingly, no one else did either.
2. I discovered the most awesome Lando Calrissian ever:

3. My wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. We even got to go out!
4. I learned that no matter how many toys you have, Children A, B, C, and D will always fight over the one Child E has. (I already knew this, but I learned the theorem scales to any number of kids).
5. J. J. DeBenedictis enriched my life with this tiny, fully-functional cannon.
6. I discovered this guy's videos. They're kinda hilarious.
7. I had a weird/awesome dream about Dr. Horrible.
8. I learned how to say "Don't be bossy" in Thai. Repetition is key.
9. After a month's forced vacation (that only partially had to do with the new kids), I finally added 2,600 words to Cunning Folk.
10. I did not hear from a single agent.

There, I hope that's thorough. If it's not, we can do an informal question/answer session in the comments.

Hiatus

Those of you who follow me via other means may know we recently added to our family. That is, we added FOUR KIDS to our family.

Being as fatherhood is my primary job, and as these kids are far more important than writing, blogging, or even (dare I say it?) reading your blogs, I'm going to focus on them for a couple of weeks. So the blog will definitely be quiet. I probably won't be commenting on your blogs (though I'll try to read them when I can, honest), and my Twitter/Facebook updates will be focused on letting people know that I and the kids are still alive (so remember that a comment about Nathan eating trash bags means we're well and in good spirits).

Two weeks. I plan to be back on August 23rd, if only to say, "Hey, guys, I need another two weeks to love on these kids."

If you want to know how the kids are doing, what they look like, or how long it takes for five little boys to turn the rest of my hair gray, you can follow my other blog, Facebook, or Twitter (depending on your surfing preferences). I'll still be checking my e-mail too.

Otherwise I'll see you all in a couple of weeks.

Piracy Part 2: Culture Change

On Wednesday, I talked about how piracy isn't just a legal matter. It's an entire culture that believes digital media should be cheap or free, and that if it isn't, they have a right to pirate it.

How can you fight something like this? How do you fight a culture that looks at you like a freak just for obeying the law? I don't know how to change a whole culture, but I know it starts with the individual.

Do the right thing. It's hard to fight piracy if you pirate (though I guess there are levels of piracy, and you're welcome to fight at whatever level you're comfortable with, aye?). It can be super-hard to tell your friends you don't want to borrow their pirated DVDs (I know!), but doing so raises their awareness that maybe NOT everyone does it. It shows them some people still care (even if they think you're weird for caring).

Talk about piracy. Some people may have no idea what they're doing is illegal. Others figure that since "everybody" does it, it's okay. The more people talk about it, online or elsewhere, the more others will get that it's illegal. But while you're talking, remember...

Don't judge. This is probably the most important thing to remember. It's easy to care about piracy laws if you don't own anything pirated. But you have to understand that when you say, "Pirating is illegal," some people hear, "You're not a good person unless you throw away all your favorite stuff." Keep that in mind when you bring it up, and don't make it worse by hating on people who do it.

Know the law. There are a lot of myths about what is and is not legal, so it helps to do your homework. Loaning a book? Legal. Burning songs you own? Usually legal. Giving that burned CD to a friend? Probably not legal.

Support anti-piracy laws. One of the things that encouraged my wife's conviction was when the police cracked down on some of the illegal movie shops here in Chiang Mai. The law won't solve the problem, but it's easier to do the right thing if the authorities are doing something about it too.

I mean, I don't know how culture changes, but I figure this is a good start, yeah? What do you think? (By the way, there's no part 3, so if this mini-series was making you feel guilty don't worry. I'm done.)

Piracy Part 1: Free Culture

Piracy is a difficult topic for me. On one hand, I like free stuff and I'm a professional at justifications (we all are, really). On the other hand, the logical flaws in those justifications irk me no end. Plus, you know, my conscience.

Up until recently, we owned a fair amount of pirated stuff -- movies, music, software... Not because we are evil people, but because we live in a free culture. I can buy a DVD of any movie or TV show for $3, not in a back alley, but at a kiosk in the mall. To find legal software here, I have to walk past four illegal shops just for the privilege of paying 30x the price.

As we got rid of our illegal stuff, I realized the fight against piracy is not just about enforcing the law. Legislation and enforcement is part of it, sure, but free culture is powered more than anything by belief.

How do you fight it when your friend tells you about this awesome game that you just have to play with them. "Oh, I can't afford it," you say. "That's okay," they reply, "I made you a copy. Here."

Or you're homeschooling your kids, but curriculum costs more than you make in a month. "Don't worry," your friend says, "I'll copy my books for you at Kinko's."

Or say you love the TV show Babylon 5, but the entire box set is almost $300. What do you do when your friend gives you the whole set as a gift, knowing (because of the distorted disc labels and DVD jackets with Chinese on them) that he paid less than $50 for it?

That's what free culture looks like. When we got rid of our pirated stuff, we heard a lot of comments like, "I wish I could do that," or "You're just throwing it away!" or "I don't know how you can live like that in Thailand." (And these were from the missionary community).

When people believe that digital media is cheap to make, that corporations are extorting us, that everybody pirates and nobody gets hurt -- at that point it doesn't matter what the law is. People will look at you funny, even resent you, when you pay full price for stuff. In many ways, we're there already. I've got more to say, but that will have to wait until Friday.

In the meantime, I'm curious, what is piracy like in your own community? Is it something people look down on, or is it considered normal? Does anyone do it? Does everyone do it?

Networking for the Unpublished Loser

I hate networking. I hate small talk, I hate getting business cards I'll never use, and I hate feeling like I have to "connect" with people just so I can use them to further my career.

Thing is, that's the exact opposite of what networking is.

Networking is making friends. It's connecting with people and learning what they do. It's being yourself with others who are being themselves too.

Networking is following a contest winner because you really enjoyed their entry. Commenting on their blog because they're also into zombies and ninjas and pirates. Entering contests they run and discovering that you like each others' stories enough to swap critiques.

Networking is following an author whose book you enjoy. Friending them on Facebook. Discovering that you went to the same college and share a mutual friend. It's just talking.

Networking is following an agent's assistant on Twitter because they're funny. It's replying to their tweets in a (hopefully) funny, professional manner that gets them interested in your tweets. It's caring about their lives, even when things don't go well or they cease to work for an agent.

Sometimes I get a new critique partner out of networking. Sometimes I get someone willing to spread the word about a contest or a short story I got published. But whether or not they choose to be helpful to me, I always get a friend.

And sometimes I befriend someone who goes on to get an agent or a book deal, someone who--theoretically--could give me that Holy Grail of the unpublished: a referral. But here's the thing: if I did all this networking just to get a referral, I'd never get this far. People can smell Self Serving, and it stinks. Even now, I would think long and hard before asking for such a thing, simply because the friendships are more important to me than the (supposedly) quick path to getting published.

And that's the point. Networking isn't about using people. It's about finding friends. And the thing about friends is, when you really need them, they're there for you.

So that's my advice today. Be kind. Be funny. Be clever. But mostly, be a friend. Maybe that friendship will be useful to you some day, maybe not.

Hopefully, by then it won't matter.

"You Write Science Fiction? Oh, That's... Nice."

I'm always hesitant to tell people that I write. "Oh, cool! Like what?" they say.

I try to look them in the eye and smile, as if I'm not ashamed of what I'm going to say next. "Science fiction and fantasy. That kind of stuff."

The conversation then diverges to one of two places. On most people, you can see their face drop as they struggle to remember any SF/F they read in the last 10-50 years. They can't think of anything, but they don't want to offend me so they default to the polite, "Oh. That's nice."

Ah, but the OTHER reaction! The folks who light up and say, "Really? Like what?" And I get to tell them about my story and they actually think it's cool. Or they ask where my inspiration comes from, and we get to talk about things like Firefly and anime. Or they tell me about all their favorite SF/F books, and I get to tell them about mine.

It's worth the risk to find these people. It's worth having some folks glaze over my shelves of Card, Gaiman, and Pratchett for that one person who doesn't walk away scratching his head, who pulls down Neverwhere and says, "I love this book. Have you read Sandman?"

Now for all those people who aren't geeks but who like me anyway, I gotta say thank you. I know how hard it can be when something like Star Wars slips through my filter, and I'm halfway through a rant about George Lucas before I realize you're just smiling and nodding. You are awesome for talking to me again after that.

And for the rest of you geeks, I don't know why something as materialistic as comic books and movies should make us feel closer, but it does. Or maybe it just helps us to let our guards down so we can get to know the person behind the first impression. I don't know, but I'm always glad to find fellow geeks out there.