I get asked writing questions all the time. Here is one I get asked often by those who want to start their first novel.
I am about to start my first book and was wondering if you had any advice to share on what software to use or best system for starting a new book?
I don’t use any specific software to write a book. I only use a normal word-processing program. I have used Microsoft Word before. Now, because I have a Mac, I use Open Office.
When submitting a manuscript it’s important not to make it too fancy. A publisher will strip away all the extras like italics, bold print, and fancy fonts. Any fancy formatting is just a waste of time. I’ve submitted 40+ manuscripts to more than a dozen different publishers, and here are the basics: <click to tweet>
- Times New Roman
- 12 point font
- Double Space
- Indented
- 1-inch margins
In fiction, I use italics for direct thoughts. I also use bold print for chapter headers and subheadings in non-fiction.
Some people write their manuscripts with each chapter as a separate file, and then they compile it into one document before submission. I sometimes do this for non-fiction books where each chapter has a unique theme, but for my novels I simply write the whole thing in one file. I then save it as a final document, with the complete book’s name when I’m done before submission.
When I submit my manuscript to my publisher I save it—and submit it—as a Word document. It is the preferred submission for publishing companies.
Other articles for writers by me:
Marketing 101
Switching Hats Between Fiction and Non-fiction
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I’m a Mac user too, but was a teacher for years, so I discovered that Microsoft makes Office for Mac, which has Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Entourage and a few other things bundled. Fully compatible w Word and a lot less buggy than Open Office, which I have to use on my work computer (Pc) bc our work platform isn’t Mac compatible but I didn’t have Office for that computer. Just wanted to mention it. I actually like Office for Mac better than the one for Windows! It’s prettier:)
Laurel, Thank you for letting us know! That’s great information!
Thanks for the info, Tricia. I use Word and find it does the trick pretty well. I’m learning to hate headers, though!
Yes, I don’t use headers.
I have to for my proposal. The agency wants my name, title and page numbers in a header. What a pain headers are! But I finally figured it out. Then I had to re-figure it out when I copied the first three chapters over into the end of the proposal… Oh the joys of working with technology!
Thanks for the insight into your process!, Tricia. I primarily use simple word processing as well (Word for Mac) but I’ve been playing around off and on with Scrivener when I have a really big project with lots of research. You can make it work kind of a like a virtual index card system and it can be really helpful when you’re trying to corral lots of ideas and info. They let you try it free for a while to see if it suits your way of working – might be worth checking out for some people … (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/)
I’ve heard many wonderful things about Scrivener. I might try it some time!
Thank you so much for writing about this. I am always curious what I need to do to get started.
You don’t need much. Just start typing!
If you have Microsoft Office, OneNote makes a good writing program as well. Not as wonderful for ‘fun’ fonts, and fancy setups, but for keeping stuff together, yet neatly separated, its a great way to do it. It saves automatically. You can have one file for the whole project, including research, separate chapters, etc. Can even put in photos, though, personally, I don’t care for how it handles images, but then, I don’t use them a lot anyway. But yeah, it can be great for sorting larger projects without having files all over the place.
Now, if we could just find something to make writing on an Android tablet a bit more convenient. . .
So true!
I will soon begin my first book.
If you are writing your first novel, then yes, I would recommend Word. You don’t need the distraction of trying to learn a new program while you’re learning to write.
But if you are an experienced author looking to optimize the process, then I recommend Scrivener all the way! And yes, you can compile to Word for your editor.
So what you’re saying is that you write everything in Word and submit to a publisher then? How do you know how many pages the book will be? These are probably stupid questions but I’m really starting from scratch. Thanks for any advice.