From Rick: From time to time I receive questions about scenes and scene breaks. We’ve all heard the term “scene” used, but we don’t often hear it defined. Here’s one concise definition I found online: “A scene is a section
Read moreFrom Rick: It occurred to me after doing Part 3 that I didn’t show you how to use your new template. It’s pretty easy, actually, but there are a couple of cautions to be aware of. This will be a
Read moreFrom Rick: With this post I will finish up this series. So far, we have set up our NORMAL style and SCENE BREAK style. A typical novel normally won’t need more than a half-dozen styles. You’ll probably want ones for
Read moreFrom Rick: In Part 1 we created a new template to use for formatting your novel. In Part 2 we’re going to start to set up several Styles for the main body and things like title, chapters, scene breaks, and
Read moreFrom Rick: In the past I’ve talked about basic manuscript cleanups, creating a clean source file for your manuscript, and formatting. I’ve also mentioned using Styles in MS Word to help with formatting, but I left that topic to your
Read moreFrom Rick: MS Word comes set with some really stupid defaults, at least for writers. While thy may seem good for the average person and for business, many of these defaults are counterproductive for writers, especially if you’re planning on
Read moreFrom Rick: In Part-2 of this series, I promised a Part-3 to deal with how to create a clean source file. As often happens, other projects that were already running behind prevented me from tackling this third part of the
Read moreFrom Rick: In part 1 I talked about keeping backups, perhaps the single best solution to many of the computer problems a writer can face. Not only will this help you recover from computer hardware disasters, but it can help
Read moreFrom Rick: In MANUSCRIPT CLEANUP-PART 1 I showed you how to clean up the most basic garbage in your manuscript file: extra spaces, errant tabs, and accidental linefeeds instead of paragraph returns. What you might find it interesting how many
Read moreFrom Rick: Back in 2013, I did a three-part series on formatting your manuscript. You can look these up under the topic FORMATTING in the categories on the left of the blog. I covered a lot of material in some
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