Chapter headers, images, and decorations

• Choose a scene-break ornament
• Pictures in a chapter opening
• Set up your chapter headers

Choose a scene-break ornament

What this is for

Between two scenes in a chapter the book prints a scene break. Out of the box that's three spaced asterisks, which is perfectly respectable. Many authors would rather have a small drawing there—a flourish, a sprig, a star—and this page is how you choose one, how tall and wide it prints, and how much room it gets.

Where the setting lives

Open Chapter header setup—in the manuscript list on the left, hover the Chapters heading and click the small gear beside it—and look for Images. The first slot is Scene-break ornament. Whatever you set here prints at every scene break in the book, in the paperback and the ebook alike. A chapter that wants something different can have its own: open the chapter's … menu and choose Chapter images….

Screenshot: Chapter header setup open at Images, with the Scene-break ornament slot showing Choose… and None, and the Height, Width and Air settings beside it.

Picking a picture

Click Choose… and the picture chooser opens. Along the top are the places a picture can come from: this book's own uploads, its series', everything you keep for all your books—and Stock, the library of ornaments that comes with Write.

The stock library

Write ships with a few dozen ornaments you may use in any book, free of charge and without crediting anyone. They are sorted by genre—fantasy, romance, science fiction, cozy, mystery, horror, holiday and so on—and come in two weights:

• Bold ornaments are small illustrations, two or three lines tall: a dragon, a rose, a ringed planet, a teacup.
• Fine ornaments are thin typographic rules a line tall, with a small motif in the middle: a crescent moon, a key, a compass star.

Click a genre to narrow the shelf, or Bold / Fine, and click an ornament to choose it. If you have no pictures of your own yet, the chooser opens on Stock to begin with.

Screenshot: the picture chooser open on Stock, with the sources along the top, the genre list and Bold / Fine choice, and a shelf of ornaments.

Stock ornaments are drawn in one ink, which means they take on the colour of the page wherever they print: black in the paperback, white when a reader's app is in night mode, and white on the editor's dark page. You never need a second version.

Your own picture

Click Upload… at the bottom of the chooser to add one of your own—a PNG, JPEG or SVG under 25 MB. A PNG with a transparent background is the usual kind; an SVG prints sharp at any size. Once uploaded it's in your media library for any book you like. Below the slot, Write tells you whether the file is sharp enough for the size you've chosen; if it says a bigger file is needed, that's for the paperback, where 300 dots per inch is the standard.

Height, width and air

Three settings sit beside the picture, and every one is measured in lines of your book's own leading, so the page grid holds and the first line after a break always lands where it should.

• Height — how many lines tall the ornament is: 1, 2 or 3. Fine rules want 1; illustrations usually want 2.
• Width — how much of the measure (the width of the text) it may take: the full measure, two-thirds, half or a third. This matters most for the fine rules: a thin line a single line tall would otherwise stretch to the whole width of the page, which is more than most want. Half is a good place to start.
• Air — the lines of space above and below every break: one, or two for a heavier picture. This works with no picture at all, if you'd like the asterisks to have more room.

Below the slot, a small preview shows the picture, and a line of text says the size it will print on your page.

Taking it away

None beside the slot goes back to the asterisks. The picture stays in your library; nothing is deleted.

Seeing it in the editor

A break between two scenes only exists where the chapter is put together, so you'll see it in the Pages view and in the finished book rather than while you're writing one scene. If you want to see what an ornament looks like on the page as you work, put a break inside a scene for a moment, from the Paragraph style menu.

Pictures in a chapter opening

What this is for

A chapter's opening page can carry pictures: a glyph or banner over the title, a line between the title and the header rows, a flourish under the whole header before the prose begins, a background behind the first page, or a full-page plate facing the chapter. This page is about choosing them and sizing them. The same pictures print in the paperback and (apart from the background, which needs a page to sit behind) in the ebook.

Where the setting lives

Open Chapter header setup—in the manuscript list on the left, hover the Chapters heading and click the small gear beside it—and look for Images. What you set there is the book's: every chapter prints it. A chapter that wants its own—a different glyph for the interludes, say—gets it from its … menu, Chapter images…; once a chapter has its own set it ignores the book's, slot for slot, and the menu says (own) so you can tell.

The five places

• Above the title — a glyph or a banner over the chapter title.
• Between title and header — under the title, over the sub-header rows (the stellar date, the point of view).
• Below the header block — under everything, before the first line of prose.
• Chapter opening page background — behind the text of the first page, in print only. You can set how strongly it prints (less fades it toward the paper) and the colour the page's type takes over it, so black words don't vanish into a dark picture.
• Plate facing the opener — a full page on the left, with the chapter opening on the right. Tick Runs to the edge if it should bleed off the sheet; otherwise it stays inside the margins.

For each slot, Choose… opens the picture chooser—your uploads, your series', everything you keep for all your books, and the Stock library of ornaments that comes with Write (see Choose a scene-break ornament for the shelf). None empties the slot; the picture stays in your library.

Screenshot: Chapter header setup open at Images, showing the five slots—Above the title, Between title and header, Below the header block, Chapter opening page background, Plate facing the opener—each with Choose… and None.

Height, width and air

The three line pictures take the same measurements, all in lines of your book's leading so the first line of prose stays on the grid:

• Height — how many lines tall, 1 to 12. A thin rule wants 1 or 2; a banner over the title might want 6.
• Width — how much of the measure the picture may take: the full width of the text, two-thirds, half or a third. A long thin rule usually wants less than the whole line.
• Air — lines of space around the picture, none, one or two. For the picture above the title the air goes below it, between the picture and the title (there's already room above, where the title drops down the page). For the other two slots it goes on both sides.

The line under each slot tells you the size that prints and whether the file is sharp enough for it; a stock ornament or an SVG always is.

A picture in place of the title

Some books have artwork for each chapter's name, and the words of the title shouldn't print as well. Set the artwork as the picture Above the title (for one chapter, from its … menu, Chapter images…), then tick Hide the chapter title.

On the page, the chapter then opens like a chapter with no title: the picture, then the chapter number if your book prints numbers, then the header rows. The title isn't lost. It still names the chapter in the manuscript list and the outline, it's listed in the contents (with its page number), and in the ebook it's the picture's description, so a reader using a screen reader hears it.

In the editor, the title still shows on the opening page, faded and marked title not printed, so you can read it and change it.

Screenshot: the Chapter images window, with a picture chosen Above the title and Hide the chapter title ticked; beside it, the Pages view of that chapter's opening with the artwork and no title.

One-ink pictures follow the page

A stock ornament is drawn in a single ink and takes the colour of the page wherever it prints—black in the paperback, white when a reader's app is in night mode or the editor's page is dark. If you draw your own as an SVG painted in currentColor, it gets the same treatment.

Seeing it

The opening page in the editor shows the pictures in place as you set them, and the Pages view shows the chapter as the book prints it.

Set up your chapter headers

What this is for

The top of every chapter—how its number reads, what word goes before it, whether the title sits beside the number or under it, and the small rows beneath the title (a date, a place, whose point of view)—is set once for the whole book, in Chapter header setup. This page walks through that dialog. It's reached from the manuscript list on the left: hover the Chapters heading (or Parts & chapters, if your book has parts) and click the small gear that appears beside it.

Screenshot: the Chapter header setup dialog, showing the Sub-header fields and Chapter numbers sections, with the As it prints panel on the right showing a sample chapter heading.

Sub-header fields

These are the rows that print under a chapter's title, in the order they're listed. Science fiction tends to want a stellar date and a location; multi-viewpoint books want the point-of-view character; many books want none at all.

• Add a field by typing its label in New field and clicking Add. The field appears on every chapter, empty, for you to fill in from each chapter's opener as you go.
• Each field prints either with its label—STELLAR DATE: 4123.4—or as the value alone, the way a POV field wants just the name. The toggle beside the field decides.
• Move up and Move down change the print order. Remove stops the field printing; whatever you typed into it is kept, in case it comes back.
• A chapter that doesn't want one of the rows can drop it from its own opener without affecting the others.

Chapter numbers

• Reads as — arabic (1, 2, 3), words (One, Two, Three), roman (I, II, III), or no number at all.
• Word before it — blank for the bare number, or Chapter, or anything else your book calls them.
• Sits — before the title with a dot (1 · The Ring), or on its own line over the title, the way a part page does (Chapter One over The Ring). A chapter with no title prints the number line alone.

The hint under the heading shows what a sample chapter will read as with your settings, so you can see the effect before you save.

Chapters number themselves in the order they sit in the manuscript. A chapter you've left unnumbered—a prologue, an interlude—stays unnumbered and is skipped in the count. Renumber chapters is there for the times you've given chapters numbers by hand and want them put straight.

Parts

If your book is divided into parts, turn them on here. Each part prints on a page of its own with its number line over its title, and the manuscript list groups the chapters under it. Choose what a part is called (Part, Act, Book…) and how its number reads; chapter numbers run on across parts rather than starting over.

Images

The pictures a chapter opening can carry—the scene-break ornament, the glyphs and banners around the title, a background, a facing plate. Those have pages of their own: Choose a scene-break ornament and Pictures in a chapter opening.

Messages

How the book's text-message exchanges are drawn unless one says otherwise, the colour each person's messages take, and your own line under their headers. See Put a text-message exchange in a scene, in the Writing book.

As it prints

The panel on the right shows a sample chapter heading set at your page size, and a list of the chapters with which fields each one carries. Apply to all gives every chapter the full set of fields if some have dropped one.

Nothing here changes your words; it only changes how the heading of every chapter is set, and you can come back and change it again at any time.