Hi all,
Everyone here has been so helpful to me when I have an agent question, and I was browsing the SCBWI boards and noticed a question about good ways to get to individual chapters in a novel in Word docs. I am not a member, so I couldn't post this over there, but I thought maybe some people here might have the same question, and I can actually help with this one!
When you start a new chapter, select the "Chapter One" or the chapter title. Then right click and you will see a menu with choices. Select "Paragraph" and left click it. This will bring up the paragraph formatting box. At the top right of this box on the "Indents and Spacing" tab (should be the tab the box opens to by default) you will see "Outline Level" with a drop down box. Choose "Level One" for your chapter title. Then just go ahead and close and write. When ever you want to see all your chapters, go to the "View" menu at the top of the Word window, select "Document map" and you will see all chapters on the left side of your screen. To go to any chapter simply click on it in the left panel and you will skip right to it. You can also set lesser levels in your text--level two, level three, etc., and you can choose to view these in your document map. To choose what levels you want to view, right click anywhere in the document map pane. This way, you can view just level one (your chapter titles) or, for example, level one and level two. You could use level two for an important moment in a scene, for example, that you know you will need to reference for later writing.
I find this so much easier than saving chapters as separate documents, or bookmarking chapters. You can actually see the words in the document map, so if your chapters use names instead of numbers it is a great prompt (Now, where did that escape happen again? Oh yeah, in the chapter titled "The Escape." Same with lower levels.
Hope this tip helps somebody as much as you guys have helped me!
