Writing a novel can be daunting. Novels are big. Really big! If you’ve never written one before, it can be easy to lose track of all the information you keep in your head, or worse, saved in multiple locations, both virtual and physical. Here Valerie Fuqua shares how she keeps her stories in order.
The trick? Hate to say it, but it’s organization and structure. I’m a chaotic author, so I never liked either of those things. I love my freedom! But when it came to writing my first novel, which then morphed into a series, I found that I just couldn’t wing it anymore. Especially given the fact that my memory and concentration had been completely destroyed by Covid-19. I just couldn’t keep things in my head like I always did!
Valerie Fuqua
So, I came up with resources for myself. I learned that using the Table of Contents function in MS Word to organize your novel can be very effective. I offloaded as much information as I could, putting it into my MS Word file and then tagging it with a heading so I’d be able to see at a glance it was there. I lost things so easily and quickly. I still do.
My resources developed gradually over time, chaotically and with little direction, as is my norm. But although they grew randomly, I still managed to put them into the file in a nice, organized manner. It started with my book ideas. I just started writing out titles that were coming to me. It was fast and furious. It was also unusual because I rarely knew titles until I’d written the story, but this series is different from all my other projects.
These are screenshots of how I keep my stories in order. I feel it’s a bit too revealing of my work in progress to include actual titles, so I’ve created fictional examples. The books, The First Journey, The Second Coming and Three’s Company are in order.
For books I have no title to, I just give it a placeholder name. Right now, I have one book labeled ‘Keldar, into the desert’ because I know almost nothing about the story and can’t even title it. It’s following my usual process of ‘discover as I write’.
Each book title gets resources specific to that book, as well as the body of the story itself. You can give it as many or as few resources as you want to, and in any order that works for you. These resources exist to help YOU and therefore are only as organized and complete as you prefer. I find that I like my resources in generally the same order for each book, but I did put a couple things in a different order and some books have multiple casting lists, based on species or location.
Because mine is also a series, there are also resources for all the books to use. I put those past the last of the books, which will make it easier for me to locate those resources quickly and easily later when I’ve got 20+ books actually written. Right now, only five have anything written and only one has a full draft.
This is Moonbeam, a main character in the novel Valerie is editing now.
Shared resources
Some examples of shared resources are: bits of info that may be foreshadowing plots I don’t know about yet; legends, memories, random scenes that don’t fit and bedtime stories without a book to sit in yet; research; a glossary of terms I made up for that world; miscellaneous info on various locations, features and hierarchies in the world the stories are set in as well as an approximate time-frame for each book and the space in between the books, just in case I want to add an extra book in between things or need to know how old someone aged during that time. I brought a family with young kids back in book two. Book one of my series had a long journey between the meetings, so this helps with continuity!
There are many things you can discover are needed along the way when writing a novel and especially a novel series. It can be difficult to juggle all of these things in separate files and/or stacks of papers. I find it much easier to have most everything consolidated in the same file so that I can have one thing open and find all of it by using MS Word’s Table of Contents function.
How to set up handy headings
I know that not everyone has MS Word, but other programs may have similar features. Google docs allows you to create multiple tabs which can perform a similar function. For those without MS Word, hopefully this can give you some ideas on how to organize your novel and its resources. For those with MS Word, I’m giving step-by-step instructions on how to make this amazing feature work for you!
To set up your MS Word navigation in the Table of Contents, you’ll use the section I’ve highlighted at the top of your MS Word file.
You can activate the navigation window multiple ways. I know of two: Ctrl+F is one of the easiest because they combined it with the find feature Word always had.
You can also find it in View, selecting the ‘navigation pane’ as shown above. When you want to create a clickable title, you just highlight the line or leave your cursor on the line and click the heading type you want.
The first one is the most major heading, the last one is the most minor heading. Shown below is the line I’d like to change into a heading. I’ve also highlighted the heading button to click.
The next level is going to be heading two. You can create those right away, or as you go. Feel free to create your resources however you feel like doing it. The creative process is very individualized and can easily be adjusted to work for you.
Below you can see what it looks like and how it appears in the navigation pane. These are clickable links that allow you to jump straight to another section of your document instantaneously. When your document gets very full of writing, it can be much easier to navigate this way than with normal scrolling.
The next level will be heading 3. If you accidentally put one of these in the wrong spot, it’s okay. Just highlight the whole section that’s in the wrong spot, cut and paste into the right spot. It’ll move in your navigation pane automatically. I feel uncomfortable using cut, so I use copy instead and then have to go back and delete the first version because of a mishap I had once before. Only part of the section appeared when I pasted. Using copy, I can verify it all showed up, delete the original and not worry I lost something.
You do not have to use every heading level. Sometimes heading 3 defaults to a large, bold font. I hate how it looks. Plus, not blue and it rankles my OCD. So in those files, I’ll just skip over to heading 4 next instead. It’s totally fine. It’ll indent your heading a little more in the navigation pane, but if you don’t care, Word doesn’t care.
Using this heading method to keep track of your story and the resources it generates can be invaluable for those of us attempting very complex projects that require a lot of research and extra projects in order to pull off successfully. Play around with different ideas and see what will work for you!▼
Out Now
Indie author/artist Valerie Fuqua is a regular and much valued contributor to Bashful Blagger. Her how-to articles are consistently among the most popular reads on the blog. Check them out!
How to do book marketing for beginners
How to cut the cost of self-publishing
How to do self-editing
Follow Valerie Fuqua, Author on Facebook.
Besides writing for Bashful Blagger, Valerie is also a successful published writer of short stories. Clarendon House published her third story “The Lady In White” on March 30, 2025 in available for purchase from Clarendon and Amazon.
“An unexpected visitor shows up at a young man’s home. His family is throwing their annual Christmas party, and he couldn’t be more bored! But this new visitor takes his mind off everything. There’s just something about her! As the night wears on, the mystery of her deepens. Can he find out her secret before she disappears from his life forever?”▼
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