How to Write a Book in Microsoft Word [Tutorial]

microsoft word was designed for all types of  writing because of this there's a lot of different   settings that are useful and a lot that are not  useful therefore in this tutorial i'm going to   show you exactly what settings and things you  should do so as to get the most out of using   word when writing your book plus i'm going to show  you a couple of tips and tricks in the industry   but before we begin if you would like to learn  more about book writing publishing and bookmarking   be sure to hit that subscribe button as  well as the little bell icon to the right   so as to get notified when my next video comes  out and with that let's begin okay so when it   comes to writing a book on microsoft word there  are really two phases designing your manuscript   and formatting that into a book the process and  settings you use between these two different   phases is wildly different so in this video i'm  going to show you how to best prepare your word   document for writing your book and when you're  done working with your editor and everyone else   and you're ready to turn it into a book be sure  to check out my next video which will show you   all the settings and things you need to do to turn  that word document into a formatted book all right   with that let's go ahead and jump in to setting up  your word document for developing your manuscript   when you first open up microsoft word you will  want to make sure that all of your settings are   set to the basic default settings for an optimal  writing experience later on we'll cover exactly   what formatting will look like in order to  make sure your book is ready for publishing   but for now let's start with going through how  to write the different sections of a book in word   now if you notice that my word looks a little  different than yours no worries depending   on what version you have you may find that the  location of a few steps are not the same however   to locate what version you have just go to word  about word and you can see your version number   right here you then may have to do a little  google search with your version to find the   exact location of some things discussed under  the layout tab we have our margin set to normal   orientation set to portrait and size at a typical  us letter page size next let's go over character   styles and set our font to one that is easy  to read the most common font for a manuscript   is times new roman and a font size of 12. after  that we're ready to start working on our book now   the first page is going to be the title page here  you will need to include your first and last name   making sure to use your actual name and not a pen  name if you are using a pen name we will discuss   where to include that later on on the right side  of your page you will need to include your word   count by going to review and selecting word count  once you are completely finished with your book   you can add the exact number here next lines are  going to be your address city state and zip code   your email address is going to be the email you  share with your editor or publishing company going   to the middle of your page you will need to center  your text and in all capital letters type out your   manuscript's name two lines below that type by  your author name and if you are writing under a   pen name you can add writing as and then the pen  name ensuring that your cursor is located right   after your name go up to insert and select page  break selecting that adds another page and your   title page is complete next we're going to add  headers and footers by going to your insert tab   and selecting either a header or footer we will  be creating a header with the left side including   your last name and title of the manuscript and  on the right side our page number to add the   page number go to page number and select write  alignment and choose whether you want to start   page on the first page or after your title page  to change the format of page numbers select format   and choose from more customizable options now when  it comes to a book there are a lot of other pages   that come after your title page like the copyright  page the table of contents however we don't need   to worry about this yet that's something you do  when you go to format it into a book and that's   something we'll cover later for now let's go ahead  and move into styling our chapter headings on a   new page about a third of the way down we're going  to write out chapter one and go to our home tab   to find our styles pane yours may look a little  different than mine and that is okay because we'll   mainly just be focusing on using heading one and  sometimes you can also choose to use heading two   making sure we have our chapter 1 highlighted we  want to select heading 1 and then center align our   text two lines below that we can write out our  chapter title if we so choose after that if you   would like to change up the size or font you can  feel free to mess around with this to your liking   and just make sure to keep the format to heading  1. you can also apply those new font settings to   your heading 1 so as future chapters will look  the same as well doing this and using header 1   is going to make creating your table of content as  well as your formatting that much easier down the   road that's why i suggest just go ahead and doing  that extra step now another tip when writing is if   you find that you want to include a seam break at  any point adding three stars and center aligning   them is the most commonly understood way this is  called an ornamental break okay so now that we   have our book fully written out as well as broken  into proper chapters like we just discussed next i   want to look at some of the tools and things that  authors should use inside of microsoft word so as   you get a better experience with the process first  is the different writing views the most common   writing view is focus view this is because it's  the least distracting you can toggle it in and   out of this mode down in the lower right corner  as you can see there are no more tools bars or   pans all around and you can easily focus on just  your writing you can also switch between seeing   one page or two pages side by side when writing  i personally like to keep it on two page view   because i get a better feel on how it would be in  a physical book setting another great feature word   has is the navigation pane this can be located  here under the view tab as you can see we can   easily scroll through all of our pages and easily  click on any of the pages to go directly to it   the next part of the pane does require that you  have a little bit of formatting involved but   that is exactly why we already created our chapter  headings the way we did because word sees this and   automatically applies it in the navigation pane  this is going to show us all of our headings and   subheadings and we can quickly navigate through  them just by clicking the review tab is awesome   if you're writing by yourself an editor or a  formatter if you or someone else working on the   manuscript makes any comments or changes they will  show up here as long as you have track changes on   which you can toggle on and off under the review  tab this is great for protecting your work while   also letting others make suggestions and changes  that you can go through one thing to keep in mind   when sending your document over to different  editors is you might want to set a password so   that not just anyone can open and make changes to  do this make sure you are in the review tab and   select protect document here you can set passwords  and have your document set to be comments only   or read only although that step isn't exactly  necessary it is one of the things i like to use   especially when working with multiple people so  definitely keep that in mind the next feature in   the navigation pane is going to be your find and  replace feature this feature allows you to search   for specific words or phrases and replace them in  all in bulk if necessary this can be very handy   if you have character name change halfway  through and need to replace it and finally   there's the grammar and spelling editor which  you can access here okay so there you have it   with this setup and layout that we just discussed  you should be able to get a lot more out of word   when writing your book but like i said word wasn't  designed for writing books it was designed for all   types of writing and there's a lot of software out  there like atticus that was designed specially for   writing long form things like novels and books it  includes things like proper front matter and back   matter as well as formatting rules writing rules  goal trackers habit trackers and everything else   that an author would want when trying to write a  book also atticus allows you to write offline and   online which gives you the best of both worlds and  protecting your work and allowing you to work from   anywhere alright so there you have it guys we now  have a better way of using word to write our books   i hope you enjoy this video and with that i'm  dave chesson of kindlepreneur signing off cheers

Channel: Kindlepreneur

Views: 97,298

Keywords: Kindlepreneur, Writing a book tutorial, writing a book with word, how to write a book with word, how to write with word, writing a manuscript with word, how to write a manuscript with word, word manuscript, steps to writing, how to write, how to write a manuscript, how to use word, how to write a book with microsoft word

Id: aOS1CNs5ttc

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022