Comments on: The Working Table Of Contents AKA Outline

By: jorgekafkazar

jorgekafkazar — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:08:25 +0000

I’ll give it a shot. I was trying to rush the project through and didn’t spend enough time forecasting where it would go. The research really isn’t finished, I keep discovering, so it’s hard to plan ahead. I found another really, really important lead on a .gov site late last night. I may take a fresh sheet and do the full outline gizmo and then do the cut-n-paste into the new doc.

Also found out this week that the client is going to give me the project. She may provide an MD co-author for me, too. Anything could happen. Including the Sheriff getting shot in the bum… with a hypodermic.

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:08:48 +0000

lol, that one has been on the site for awhile now… actually it might not be too late to use headings as a way to develop a table of contents… maybe

By: jorgekafkazar

jorgekafkazar — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:39:37 +0000

NOW, you tell us, Anne! I’m already in the middle of a 30+ page medical chemistry report that just grew. The research is finally finished, ha-ha, and the report is about as disorganized as anything I’ve ever done. Too late to use Word outlining. I think it’ll be the ol’ bullet list approach. Either that, or I’ll turn it into a novella: “It was a dark and stormy night, and Sheriff Tyree’s rheumatism was killing him….”

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:44:36 +0000

Elizabeth – let us know if it helps. I don’t outline well and a toc as a list, even with some bullet points under a chapter title, seems to work for me.

By: Elizabeth West

Elizabeth West — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:41:46 +0000

I’m going to try this for my next book. I know what happens, but I’m very disorganized at this point. If I fill in a descriptive table of contents, that might help me more than outlining or trying to do synopsis exercises.

Thanks!
Elizabeth West´s last blog ..Fans

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:45:35 +0000

Hi Jonathan, I love our differences. Word’s out liner makes me crazy and I love creating a toc using built in styles… I actually use that feature to keep track of where I am in a docment… I rebuild the contents often during writing a book… every time often when I add a subhead.

By: Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:45:25 +0000

Another tip:

If you use Microsoft Word, get to know and love the Outline feature. You can drag and drop headings to move them around, or even use your keyboard to quickly promote or demote headings.

The best part: once you’ve started filling in the content, you can still use the outliner to easily rearrange your document. And at the very end, creating a table of contents from the built-in styles is a snap.

Jonathan