Field breaks? And general book-writing tips wanted

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kingsmind
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Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:16 am

Field breaks? And general book-writing tips wanted

Post by kingsmind »

Hi there. I'm currently writing a book. It's only at around 30 pages, but I'm constantly working on it. Anyway, I was wondering if there was way to make "field breaks," or fields that only applied to one page or a few pages. What I want to do is number the introduction section (so far 2 pages) with Roman numerals like in many published books, then use Arabic numerals (starting at 1) for the rest of the book. In addition, I want to use the chapter title on every other page of the chapter, and the name of the book on every other page (for the whole book), a format also used in books. I tried to search for a question like this, but I couldn't quite find a topic exactly like this.

As for the second part of my question, I was wondering if there were some tips on writing a book with Writer, as writing a book is no doubt different than writing an essay or article. I read about something called a "master document," and it seems like an important part of book-writing, but what exactly is this? Any other tips on professional writing with Writer would be appreciated. Thanks!
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RoryOF
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Re: Field breaks? And general book-writing tips wanted

Post by RoryOF »

Look at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... m.php?f=71 where you will find a tutorial on page numbering, and another on Chapters.

Don't worry about Master Documents unless your book is long and contains many figures and illustrations. Having perused the tutorials referred to above and got the hang of chapter headings, just carry on and WRITE. The finer points of layout are best left until the text is finished. No author that I know of wrote on a Linotype or other composing machine. Neither Dickens or Trollope had a typewriter - they wrote longhand. Trollope used write for three hours a day from 0500 - 0800, at the rate of 1000 words an hour. Once you have mastered Chapters tutorial the inbuilt styles will give you a reasonable semblance of a book; don't spend forever tweaking the look - that is not your job at this stage; get the text written, then tweak.
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