Computer tip: Make writing time more productive with bookmarks

This is a repeat of a post from the beginnings of Flogging the Quill, back in November. I thought it might be helpful to folks who weren't dropping by at the time, and I've gottem emails from writers who like this a lot. I use this technique all the time.

First, keep the entire book manuscript in one electronic file. I know writers who use a separate file for each chapter of their novel on their computer. Each of my novels is in one file—the whole thing. It would drive me nuts to have to open up, let’s say, a file for chapter 9 in order to check on information I needed for chapter 22—for example, maybe I need to make sure where I stashed a clue that now needs to be discovered.

A file-per-chapter writer friend didn’t see how I could do it. The key is using bookmarks to navigate quickly and easily around a complete novel manuscript.

With the Microsoft Word and WordPerfect Bookmark tool, wherever you are in a manuscript you can insert a bookmark and easily come back to it from any other place in the manuscript. One obvious use is when you’re somewhere deep in your book, rewriting, and it’s time to hang up your brain for the night, your eyes having become loose in their sockets. Just insert a bookmark (I usually use the word “here”), save the file, and shut down. Next day, you’re at the exact spot you left off with a couple of keystrokes.

Here’s how to do it in Word: click Insert in your top toolbar; click Bookmark; type in a letter or word in the Bookmark name box, then click the Add button. For some reason, you can’t use words separated by spaces—which leads me to sometimes insert bookmarks such as “describebarn” or “describe-barn” so I’ll know what it’s about. In WordPerfect, you click Tools, then Bookmark, then Create, which lets you type in a name and say OK.

When you next open your document, to go to a bookmark you type control+g (PC) or, for MACs, apple+g, select Bookmark in the dialogue box that pops up, select the bookmark you want (there’s a little arrow button to show a list of all bookmarks), click okay and you’re there.

Other uses: you’re really struggling with a passage or maybe just chugging through the narrative, laying track, and you know it’ll need more thought. You can bookmark it and move on, knowing you can return with ease. Using bookmarks, I will revisit material that needs honing a number of times until I’m satisfied with it. With a bookmark, it’s easy to go back and keep at it; without a bookmark, I suspect it would get far fewer visits and less thought.

Here’s another one: deep into the umpteenth rewrite of a novel, it came to me that I needed to add a key visual and emotional element to a character’s scenes in several places in the story. When I did, I inserted bookmarks at each scene (Jake1, Jake2, Jake3, etc.). Later, I jumped easily from one spot to another to make sure I had kept things consistent yet varied and had done all I needed to make the new material blend with the old. Because my first drafts tend to be on the lean side, bookmarking those additional bits of narrative enabled me to visit them after they’d cooled a little to see if they needed more work.

Because you can give each bookmark a different handle, another handy use is the ability to check back to important passages. This is especially useful for continuity checks. Let’s say that early in the novel you created a detailed description of a room, and the things in that room are important to your story, and they come up again. Put a bookmark there (“the-murder” or “crimescene” or some such) and it’s easy to refer back and keep later references to that place accurate. This could be darned handy for clues in a mystery novel.

How about bookmarking the first page of each chapter to hop to one instantly? If you know you had Heather shoot the green bunny in chapter 4 but can’t quite remember the sequence of events when you’re referring to the shooting in chapter 16, it’s easy to check.

Marking a passage for later use or change is another bookmark use. In one of my novels, I planned to move the description I’d written for a character to an earlier chapter during the rewrite. I bookmarked that passage so that, when I got to the new description point in the rewrite, I could jump there, cut the description from its page, then jump back to where I was (because I inserted a “here” bookmark before I left that point) and paste it in. No hunting, no searching for keyword strings, etc.

I’m sure you’ll find, or already have, many creative uses for bookmarks. In fact, if you have some, how about sharing them—or other computer tips—with me. I’ll pass ‘em on.

For what it's worth,

RR

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© 2005 Ray Rhamey

 

Comments

[Margaret Fisk]

Good point. I actually use bookmarks on my Palm. I used DocsToGo to do my first edit pass on the Palm. This has the advantage of forcing me to read it almost entirely as a book because adding whole sections is less convenient. The bookmarks though are a godsend for keeping track of where I am.

[Dee Stewart]

Hadn't thought about using bookmarks before. I would insert a comment where I needed to come back. Thanks. I will pass this on.