How to Organize a Story In Microsoft Word with Styles and a Table of Contents: A Step-by-Step Tutorial for Writers

How well do you know the program you use to write?

Microsoft Word has been my go-to for nearly two decades, and my love grew tenfold when I learned how to use Styles and create a table of contents.

Knowing how to use these tools allows you to do things like:

• use whichever font you love best for drafting a story, then change it before sending it to your agent or a beta reader
• rearrange entire chapters or scenes
• organize reams of story research

When you're ready to follow this quick tutorial, you'll emerge on the other side with a document that's set up to hold whatever you can throw at it, one that can be traversed in a flash, and you can apply it in areas other than writing, as well! You'll be creating a document from scratch here, but once you understand each of the steps, you can apply the same principles to any documents already on the go for your stories.

This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge level of how to use Microsoft Word. You should know how to create a new document, the difference between "Save" and "Save As", and be able to find your way to the various tabs and their associated groups (e.g. the Font and Paragraph groups can be found in the Home tab).

Nearly everything we do in this tutorial can be found in the Home tab.

I'm currently using the latest version of Microsoft Word through Microsoft 365, but this tutorial doesn't dive into any advanced features, so the steps should be nearly identical or at least similar for many older versions of Microsoft Word, as well.

With all that being said, let's style some text and table some contents! 😉

5 Ways to Improve a High Stakes Character Arc

Writing a character arc with a high stakes goal is not for the faint of heart. Pushing characters to act in ways that are hopefully never a part of our own lives or nature takes a steadfast soul, an appetite for excitement and drama, or both.

This is especially the case in genre fiction, where we have characters facing extraterrestrial threats, cutthroat fights for a throne, and lives hanging in the balance as timers count down.

Be they protagonist or antagonist, hero or antihero, giving a character a high stakes goal and throwing a few obstacles in their way isn't enough for a memorable story. Instead, be strategic, intensify the character arc, and a good story will be elevated to greater heights.

Let's explore these strategies as illustrated by the actions of Margaret Beaufort, grandmother to Henry VIII and great-grandmother to Elizabeth I, as fictionalized in The White Queen TV series (based on several of Philippa Gregory's novels).

Before we continue, be warned this post contains significant spoilers for The White Queen and the Season 1 finale of The Spanish Princess, as well as a mild spoiler from Episode 5 of The White Princess.

A Peek Into How I Organized My Work-in-Progress

The last time I spoke about decluttering and organizing, I shared what inspired the process and said "your decluttering success story can be a story of coming home. Coming home to yourself, to your creativity, and to what makes you happiest."

What I haven't shared until now is exactly how I did it; how I transformed a mess of old notes and drafts, scattered this way and that, into an inspiring, organized system that sparks creativity.

5 Creative Truths I Needed to Discover: A Decluttering Story

In January of 2020, I started decluttering. Again.

This is something I've done since I was little. My copy of Organizing from the Inside Out for Teens (co-written by Julie Morgenstern and her daughter, Jessi Morgenstern-Colón) is one of the most ruffled and well-loved books on my shelf. I especially love her idea that it's not about following a "one size fits all" system but rather if your possessions are organized in a way that makes sense to you and supports how you live your life.

More recently, I heard about the KonMari Method and started incorporating some of her suggestions into my days, too, such as thanking the objects I pass on or recycle, and looking at things from the perspective of whether they spark joy.

With the organizing and decluttering process being a welcome part of my life rather than a despised one, I actually thought my possessions, digital and physical, were in decent shape, until a milestone birthday on the horizon got my wheels turning and an unlikely trio of movies changed my life.