Writing with Word

[fredo]

This is a question for all you writers out there. Those of you that use Word, be it on a PC or an Apple, do you break the story into chapters, opening a new window each time, or do you let it run in the same window. I'm not a writer but I am interested in the style that writers use.
Thanks.

[Moderator]

Steve starts a new document about every 40 pages or so. It's more a safety measure in case the document gets corrupted so that the entire manuscript wouldn't be affected. He also prints off a hard copy at the end of each day so we have that as well. But no matter how you do it, back up, back up, back up!!

[aptpupil]

I have to admit that I use Word and just continue with a single document chapter after chapter. I do back up, but not as often as I should, so if I were to lose my Word document today, I'd probably wave goodbye to a big chunk of what I've written so far of my current novel.

Maybe I'll back up tonight, after reading Ms Mod's wise words. I find that if you heed her advice, it serves you well in life!

No thanks necessary, Marsha.

[Todash]

From experience writing large-ish technical docs, I would say if I were writing a book, I would definitely break it up, and 40 pages sounds about right. Once a document becomes very large, the memory it takes to open and work with it causes performance to be painfully slow. Also, the larger the document, the more chance (in my experience) for it to become corrupt and not open at all. Which, if it's hours and hours of your work, stinks.

[JohnDalglish]

Hi,

AWAS (What Aptpupil Said).

What I'm writing just now has eleven sections (or 'sexions!'), each one with about six chapters of approx twenty pages each, and I keep each sexion in a seperate file, although it could be as many as 140 or so pages.

One thing that I do is to send each individual chapter to friends for safekeeping on completion, and keep the master document backed up on a friend's system, so that backups are stored in several different physical places (and continents come to that!).

Long days and pleasant nights

[Bev Vincent]

I've never broken a book up into separate files. I keep the entire manuscript in one document and do frequent backups in numerous places. I've never had a file corrupt on me. I also print out regularly so there will at least be a hardcopy.

When I was working on my first book, I started out using a Master document with each chapter in its own file, but I found it very difficult to search for details through the entire manuscript so I ultimately converted it over to a single file.

[NathanStrickland]

One awfully annoying trend I've seen in large Word documents is for the spelling and grammar check to take a dump on you. You would think "Oh surely my knowledge of the English language is such that I won't have that many errors in my document", but when you take into account the little touches of flair that happen in fiction (such as proper names and grammatically incorrect colloquialisms), it adds up rather quickly, and it is annoying as all get-out to add every character's name to the program's spell-check library, especially if your character's names fluctuate in the first draft as much as mine do.

[Bryan James]

I have horrible writing habits. For shorts, I'll write the whole thing and tweak it later. If I like it a little, I'll email it to myself so I have an offsite copy. If I like it a lot, I'll burn it to a CD or DVD...which I always fail to label.

On the longer works, I jump around. I start with 1.0 at first. My next chapter might be 7.0, and then I go back and tie in 1.5, 1.8, and 3.0. I just connect the dots as best I can. I usually save each section under its own number in a master file and email myself (or burn) the master file every week.

I usually print a hard copy every 10 pages. Not for safety, but for tactile reading with a pen in hand. I criticize my writing into used toilet paper shreds!

It's only fair...I do the same thing with library books. The only difference is that I use a pencil on borrowed stuff.

~BJS

[Sms231]

I saw the topic and it got me thinking. After Mr. King finished the manuscript for a book, how well does the completed word document translate over to the layout package that the publisher uses to begin the creation of the finished product? I assume it's a lot of copying and pasting into the layout package (which I assume is either QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign). At least I hope it's that simple. I surely don't think the entire book is re-typed into the software - that's just madness LOL.

[JohnDalglish]

I saw the topic and it got me thinking. After Mr. King finished the manuscript for a book, how well does the completed word document translate over to the layout package that the publisher uses to begin the creation of the finished product? I assume it's a lot of copying and pasting into the layout package (which I assume is either QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign). At least I hope it's that simple. I surely don't think the entire book is re-typed into the software - that's just madness LOL.

Hi,

Both QuarkXPress and Pagemaker (don't know InDesign) can import WP files in full in various formats.

Long days and pleasant nights