So, the first page of each chapter is a Right Page and all the following pages in the chapter are Default page style. Then I modified the Right Page page style to make sure that a Right Page is followed by a Default style page. Under the Text Flow tab, I told OpenOffice to insert a Page break before the Chapter Title using the Right Page page style. In order to accomplish this, I modified the Chapter Titles paragraph style. You’ve probably noticed that chapters always begin on the right side page. It’s tedious, but I repeated the same process for each chapter. Since I wanted to eventually do something with the first character of each chapter, I modified the Drop Caps character style.Īfter I changed the font size, I selected the first character of the first chapter and applied the Drop Caps character style to it. Rather than apply the new style to each scene break, I applied it to the first one and then copied it and pasted it over all of the others. I created a paragraph style using ‘Text body’ as a parent, unlinked it, and set the alignment to center. My scene breaks consisted of four asterisks separated by spaces, and centered. Be sure the chapter title text is on its own line. Select a chapter title and double-click on ‘ChapterTitle’ in the styles list to apply it. Once the new paragraph style was defined, I applied it to the chapter titles in the text. Under the Alignment tab, I changed the alignment to center. I set the font larger and changed the Typeface to differentiate the titles from the body text. I also set the spacing below the title.Īt this point we’re just establishing control over the format, not trying make things look pretty. To begin with, I dropped the chapter titles down 1.5 inches on the page. Be sure to unlink the new style from the parent so that changes to the parent don’t mess up the chapter titles. Since I didn’t have an existing style similar to what I wanted, I used the ‘Text body’ paragraph style as a parent. I created a new paragraph style called ‘ChapterTitle’ for my chapter titles. I hate this step because it removes all of the styling I did before sending the document off to agents. Once again, don’t change the format using the toolbar. Since I use the ‘Text body’ paragraph style for my body text, I selected the entire document and applied the ‘Text body’ paragraph style by double-clicking on ‘Text body’ in the list of paragraph styles. I also changed the text spacing to 1.5 lines for the time being. The paragraph indent is under the Indents & Spacing tab. You can bring up the Styles and Formatting by selecting it in the Format menu or by pressing F11. I checked the ‘Text body’ paragraph style to make sure the paragraph indent was set to a reasonable initial value. My first step, then was to re-assert a generic paragraph formatting everywhere. I use paragraph styles in my documents, but sometimes editing results in blocks of text that are ‘confused’ about their style. What remained was the standard 12-point Times Roman, letter size, one inch margins, double-spaced document that we all use when we send a manuscript to an agent. So my first step was to insure that I didn’t have any tabs, double spaces, extra hard returns, or other debris in my file. The first step, always, is make a backup and put it somewhere you can’t mess it up.Įditing always seems to inject typographic and formatting errors. Since I was already familiar with OpenOffice and unable to afford Adobe InDesign, I decided to invest some time to see if using OpenOffice was feasible.
Although I’ve got a great publisher for the e-book edition of Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite, I decided to self-publish the paperback.
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