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, by the small icon beside the book's title.
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.