Simple E-Book Formatting in Word.

Having completed the first draft of 'On the Nature of the Gods,' I'm taking the time to format the thing before beginning the actual rewriting process. Since I'm not submitting it anywhere, there is no reason to have it in standard manuscript format, and this also gives me two or three days where I really don't have to think.

I don't have to write, or wrestle with plot points and resolutions. It is a kind of nit-picking, yet mindless occupation, almost a repetitive assembly-line process in some ways.




I have the pilcrows turned on, as well as spelling and grammar check, and I have added a couple more lines to the thing today. But it is kind of relaxing.

This is the second novel I have written without using an initial chapter title when producing more material. Essentially, I ended up with a hundred and eleven pages with chapter breaks and no chapter numbers, or titles. This seems to work okay for me. This book looks like about twenty-two chapters. This is kind of an esoteric, esthetic consideration, but if we are artists, then we should have one of two things: a respect for academic convention, or some kind of theory which justifies non-compliance with same...but basically, this just looks about right to me.

The book is 61,000 words at this stage, and that works out to maybe 2,800 words on average for a chapter.

A quick glance at the photos shows a very simple e-book layout and format. I am using 0.25" indents, and single spaces at 1.0, trailing space is set to zero. (Top photo.)