Writing on microsoft word

Microsoft Word is a simple program that is used to create all kinds of documents. Whether you need a professional-looking document for work or just creating a school project, Microsoft Word is a perfect choice.

Although the majority of Microsoft Word tutorials and guides are geared towards productivity, not many of them cover the aspect of creative writing.

Microsoft Word is packed with a plethora of amazing features, and while most of those features make Word seem like the perfect program for business settings, it works equally great for creative writers.

1. Learn About Article Structure

If you do not know how to structure your article properly, everything will look like a mess. This can be a challenge for creative writers, especially with broad subjects.

However, there is a structure that you can easily follow. Always start with an announcement of the overall theme or topic.

Then proceed to the introduction of the topic, the presentation, and the conclusion. If you need help creating structured reports and documents in Word, you can check out this article.

2. Keyboard Shortcuts Are Useful

One of the first things you should learn is the keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word. You can improve your productivity a lot by using shortcuts, as this allows you to focus more on creative writing than formatting and other things.

3. Enhance Your Vocabulary

How often do you use Google to find synonyms of words that you want to use in your document? Well, did you know that Word has that feature already? All you have to do is select the word, right-click on it, and select Synonyms from the drop menu, as is shown below.

In addition, you should also learn more about the Researcher toolset. Most of us like to use Google when writing an article, whether you are trying to gather some information or make your document seem richer.

With the Researcher toolset, you can easily search up all kinds of information, and use filters to find higher quality content.

4. Text-to-Speech Is Quite Helpful

If you spent all day answering emails, creating presentations, and writing documents, you are probably tired. But if you aren’t feeling like typing, and you need to make some documents, you should check out the Dictation feature in Word.

This feature works effortlessly; you can talk to your computer and type what you are saying. This is an Office add-in for not only Microsoft Word but also PowerPoint and Outlook. You can learn more about this tool on Microsoft’s official website.

One thing you should keep in mind is that if you are using Dictation to write your documents, it is always a good idea to check what you wrote before submitting the document.

Dictation does not always work, as some of us might hope, which can also depend on your microphone. Checking your document will ensure that you correct all the avoidable mistakes.

On top of being able to use Dictation, you have the ability to review your article with Read Aloud option.

It does not matter how many times we re-read our articles, it is common to overlook some basic mistakes. With the Read Aloud option, you can hear what you typed out loud, thus catch mistakes a lot easier.

5. Check Your Grammar

While we are on the topic of avoidable mistakes, Microsoft Word does a great job checking your grammar. It always has. But, with the newest updates, you have a lot more options to check out.

All you have to do is click on File>Options and select Proofreading. You can see the pictures below.

From this many, you can select whatever you want. You can choose to have your document corrected as you type, check your grammar and style, or hide your spelling errors in case you are not writing in English.

There are advanced options as well, where you can add your own dictionary, correct mistakes you often make, etc.

6. Pay Attention to Your Word Count

The length of an article should depend on what you are writing about and your target audience. So what is the ideal length of an article? The longer the content, the more shares it will get. Studies have shown that posts that are over 3000 words long do well.

However, when your topic is not broad enough to cover 3000 words, it’s always better to write shorter, more direct articles instead. Luckily for you, Word will keep track of the number of words as you write them. You can also select a sentence/paragraph to see how many words it has.

7. Autosave Your Work

As writers, we all want to make sure that we have backups for our backups. One of the worst things that can happen is to lose hours of work in just a second, which you can avoid.

Microsoft Word allows you to set up the AutoRecover option, which will also autosave your document. This means that if your document suddenly closes, Microsoft Word will recover your document for any number of reasons.

8. Create Notes for Yourself

It does not matter if you are working with an editor or you are editing the document by yourself, creating comments is a good way to keep yourself up-to-date. Sometimes, we just have too many things to deal with, and it is easy to forget important things.

For example, if you are unsure about something that you wrote and would like to get back to it a bit later, writing comments to that section of the document will help you remember later.

Creative Writing Is Simple if You Know What You Are Doing

There are many simple guidelines you can follow in order to make your creative writing assignments easier. Of course, a lot of this will depend on the topic or theme that you are covering.

With that said, things, such as the Dictation option where you can talk to your computer and have everything typed out automatically, can always come in handy!

If you want to write a book, you’ll need book writing software that’s up to the task. Yes, you can invest in dedicated book writing programs. But you don’t have to: a great writing tool is likely already at your fingertips, if you know how to write a book using Microsoft Word.

There’s a lot of book writing software out there. Many of these programs claim to offer intuitive use, help with organization, and even say they’ll keep you from distraction. The options can be overwhelming.

There’s still one tried and true option if you’re not interested in all that (or can’t afford the fancier programs): Microsoft Word.

I write most of my books in Microsoft Word, not to mention short stories. Here’s the rundown of how to write a book using Microsoft Word, and why that might be your best choice.

The Benefits of Microsoft Word for Book Writing

You most likely already have it. And so does everybody else. Word is the standard, accepted across platforms, and is easy to access for non-writers (your beta readers). It’s been around forever, so most people know how to use it.

There are book formatting templates. A ton of them. They have them for short story format and for manuscript format. Personally, I don’t use those templates, but they’re a nice baseline for beginners, or even old hats that just want to hurry up and write without setting up their document first.

It’s simple and uncluttered. There are a ton of apps and programs out there that will allow you to keep your plot structure notes close at hand, to rearrange your chapters with the click of a button, and to keep detailed character profiles right in the program. That’s all a little too much for me. I prefer handwritten notes and nothing else blocking my screen while I’m typing and Word gives me that.

It is worth noting that if all that sounds appealing to you, you can do those things in Word as well, it just won’t be as fancy as other programs.

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How to Navigate Your Book in Microsoft Word

When you have a 90,000-word manuscript, navigating becomes daunting. Luckily there are ways to do it in Word that make it easier if you know where to look.

Chapter Headings

Word doesn’t divide your book into chapters for you like some other programs. There will be no easy way to click and drag to rearrange chapters.

What I recommend is using headings. On Word’s Home page, there are already standard headings listed. Definitely mess with them and change their formatting to something simple.

No one needs giant blue words as their chapter headings. (You can set your simpler formatting as your default style as well, so you don’t have to change it every time.)

Make the title or number of each chapter a heading. Then you can easily bounce around to different chapters through the navigation pane (check the Navigation Pane box under the View menu).

Bookmarks

These basically work the same way as headings, but they’re for anywhere in your document. Have a specific scene you need to do more research on? You can bookmark it and jump back to it later.

Bookmark by going to the Insert menu and clicking Bookmark. Name your bookmark and voilà. You can delete them easily from the popup menu as well.

Find and Replace

CTRL+F brings up a simple search option to find words and phrases in your document. CTRL+H brings up the full gambit. From that dialogue box, you can search, replace certain words with others (i.e. Jennifer now becomes Julia all through the manuscript), and go to any page, section, heading, bookmark, etc. that you need to go to.

Microsoft Word is Great for Editing Your Book

Word has a ton of options for editing your story, including comments, tracking changes, and comparing documents. All of these are under the Review menu.

I use the comments feature to make notes to myself where I need to recheck facts or add description later. It’s easy to navigate through the comments with the search feature or the buttons under the Review menu. Don’t forget to remove them all before saving your document as a PDF or sending it off to an editor.

Tracking changes is awesome and a lot of editors (for short stories anyway) will use this feature to collaborate with you during the editing process. You can accept or reject changes or even revert back to the original.

Finally, make sure you have grammar and spellcheck on! Grammar check even allows you to check style issues (like how to use an ellipsis correctly) and passive voice. It’s invaluable.

Pro tip: To keep you on track while you’re writing, turn off some of the more fine-tuning features of grammar check. There’s nothing that will ruin your flow more than a bunch of underlining you feel like you need to take care of immediately. I recommend running the full check when you’re done (or at least done for the day).

Formatting Your Book in Microsoft Word

Make sure you’re familiar with standard manuscript format for novels and formatting short stories. Take a look at those links and follow their instructions. You don’t want to get rejected out of hand because you tried some weird formatting that’s hard to look at.

One of the biggest gripes I see from editors is writers using spaces to indent paragraphs. Don’t do this. It makes it super hard on them when they’re putting a book together. Instead, use the ruler in Word (under the View menu) or the paragraph settings (under the Home menu) to adjust your tabs. A half inch is standard.

Despite what most of us were taught in school, the standard is now one space after periods, not two. This is another sticking point with editors, so don’t do it. If you’re used to two, there’s a grammar check feature in Word you can turn on to highlight every time you use two spaces.

Finally, use the page break option to break for a new chapter, not enter or a million spaces. You can find the page break under the Insert menu.

Pro tip: When in doubt about your formatting, you can turn on the Show/Hide option under the Home menu (looks like a paragraph symbol) to see all your formatting symbols.

Now That You’ve Mastered Microsoft Word, Go Write Your Book

Don’t let choosing writing software stagnant your writing. Don’t overthink it. You don’t need to keep up with the Joneses with the latest writing technology that’s trotted out on tech forums and in writing chats.

The important thing about writing a book is actually writing it. No fancy book writing software is going to help you with that.

So get writing!

Ever used Word to write a book? Do you have any more tips for how to write a book using Word? Let me know in the comments!