How to Set up a Novel Template in Apple Pages

The court says I need to do something worthwhile for the community, and with NaNoWriMo quickly approaching I thought this would be a good time to share some of my hard earned writing know-how with the public. Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about writing, I figured I’d show you how to make a novel template that you can use when you decide to learn how to write from someone else.

Apple Pages ’08, part of the iWork ’08 software package, is a wonderful word-processor that, while not quite as robust as Microsoft Word, is faster, learner, more intuitive, and nicer looking than Microsoft’s flagship productivity app. I’ve been a bit critical of iWork ’08 in the past, but Pages is really great, and, I believe, is put together well enough to replace Microsoft Word for day-to-day writing.

Pages comes with a cornucopia of great templates for letters, resumes, brochures, posters, the works. It even comes with a template for writing a screenplay. Unfortunately, Pages doesn’t come with a novel template¹. If you’re going to use Pages to write a novel you’re going to have to set up your own template.

If you’ve never set up a book template in a word processor before then I’ll walk you through the process using Apple Pages. If you know how to set up a template in Microsoft Word and are interested in giving Pages a try then you can probably skim through this article.² If you just want the finished template file you can get it here.

Step 1: Make a New Document

Open up Apple Pages, and if the template chooser opens up then select the default Blank document.

We want to see the layout of the document we’re building, so select View->Show Layout, and View->Show Invisibles so that we can see where the paragraph marks are.

Step 2: Document Settings

The Document Inspector, with “Facing Pages” set.

If the Inspector is not already visible activate it by selecting View->Show Inspector. Under the Document icon (the first icon in the top row), select the “Document” tab. Click the “Facing Pages” option, which sets up the book margins for double sided printing. With this enabled the margins are mirrored, so the left margin on the left hand side of the book will be the same as the right margin on the right hand side of the book. You might want to change the inside margin to be larger than the outside (thereby giving you more room for binding), but I’ve chosen not to do that because I also want to use this template for PDF output, where different margins will look odd. Note that selecting “Facing Pages” changes how the document is displayed to match that the way the open book pages will be. Great!

While you’re there you should also select the “Hyphenate.”³

Step 3: Title Page Setup

Add a single carriage return (empty paragraph), then enter the title of your novel (don’t hit return at the end of the line yet).

Great, now we have a title, but it’s not formatted in any special way. We’re going to format the document up the right way: with Styles⁴. Open up the Styles Drawer by selecting View->Show Styles Drawer (or by clicking the first icon, the paragraph in the circle, in the toolbar).

Partial view of the Text Inspector, with settings for the Title style.

Choose “Title” from the Styles Drawer. It looks OK now, but we want it to be center justified and half-way down the page. You can do the former from the toolbar, but we can (and will) do both from the Inspector. Select the Text icon (forth) in the Inspector, and the “Text” tab. In the Colors and Alignment section setting the alignment to center. To move the title vertically adjust the “Before Paragraph” slider to about half-way (or where ever you want the title to show up). We started with an empty paragraph in order to use the “Before Paragraph” setting.

Also, set the “After Paragraph” to about the font size of the “Title” font style. This will be the space between the title and the byline.

Notice that the triangle next to “Title” in the Styles Drawer has turned red. This signifies that the style has been altered (because that’s what we just did). To make this change part of the style (which you want to do if this is a proper template) click on the red triangle and choose “Redefine Style From Selection.”

Now hit return and enter the byline (“A super-great novel by…”). Center the text, make it bold, and size 14pt. In the Style Drawer note this is in the “Body” style, and that the triangle is red denoting the change. Click the triangle, but this time select “Create New Paragraph Style From Selection…” A dialog opens, and name this style “Byline.”

The reason why you’re creating a new style is two fold:

1. It makes it really easy to change the way everything is formated, in a consistent way, later on.
2. We’re going to be screwing around with the “Body” style, which would affect this text if we don’t assign a new style to it.

Step 4: “Business”

Typically the back page of the title page is the book’s business: copyright information, publisher information, etc. Let’s put one of those in.

Create a new page by selecting Insert->Page Break. Carriage return down near the bottom of the page, align the text to the left, format it how you’d like, and insert the copyright information (and any other business you want). In the Styles Drawer create a new style (like you did above) and name it “Business.”

Hit return, but make sure you don’t go over the page into a new one.

Step 5: Sections and Chapters

Finally, this is where the magic happens. The trick to word processor templates is sections. Sections are parts of the document that have their own header and footer information. If you understand how sections work then you can build incredibly complex documents in any word processor. Luckily our novel will have a simple structure, making it easier to learn how to set up sections.

Start by creating a new section: select Insert->Section Break from the menu bar.

Note that it looks like a new page has been created, except the page break and the section break graphics are different.

Page break (top), Section break (bottom)

In the Inspector choose the second icon (Layout) and then “Section” tab. Under “Configuration” select the “First page is different” and “Left and right pages are different” checkboxes, and deselect the “Use previous headers & footers” checkbox.

Wait, what did we just do?

The Layout Inspector, with the section settings for the chapters.

The first page of this section will have it’s own unique header and footer setup, and after that the headers and footers on alternating pages will be different as well. Also, this section will not follow the header and footer setup of any previous sections (this is important).

So let’s set these babies up!

First, at the top insert an empty paragraph, and then “Chapter #” (yes, put the number sign in). We could create a new style for the chapter heading, but I think it’s easier to just use what’s already there: “Heading.” Center it, adjust the vertical alignment, play with the font, size, and color however you wish, and then redefine the style (like we did before). When you’ve done that hit return to go to a new line.

Then insert two (2) page breaks. You should end up with both a new right and left side page. Now to set up our headers and footers.

If you haven’t figured it out, the header is the box at outlined at the top of the page, and the footer is the box at the bottom. Go to the first new page you made, the one on the left hand side, and click on the header box. Enter “Chapter #”, then hit Tab, and enter the title of your book.

Notice that when you hit Tab it moved the caret all the way to the other side of the box, and wrote the text right aligned. You’re probably interested in where these settings are coming from. In the Inspector choose the Text icon, then the “Tabs” tab. The box that says “Tab Stops” is what is controlling the tabbing. For the purposes of education, let’s screw with these settings…

The Text Inspector, with settings for tab stops.

Inside the “Tab Stops” box click on the “6.5 in” entry, then hit the minus sign at the bottom of the box to delete it. You’ll notice in the header you set the Title just jumped to where you would normally expect a tab stop to be. That’s OK. Click the plus sign in the Inspector to create a new tab stop, which should be “0.5 in.” Double click on this new entry to edit it, and type in “3.25,” then hit return or enter. Notice that the title text jumps to the middle of the header, but it’s not quite centered. With the “3.25 in” entry selected, choose the “Center” radio button in the Inspector. Great, now it’s centered, but we’re not done: click the plus button again to enter another tab stop. Edit the new one to be “6.5 in” with “Right” alignment. Now go back, to the header and right before your book’s title hit the Tab key. It should now look like it did before all this mucking around, but with an additional tab stop (if the title got pushed to a new line double check that you set the alignment to “Right”). Why did we bother? Click in the middle of the header box and now you can enter your name.

Now you have a header that’s setup to be the chapter number on the outside of the page, the author’s name in the middle, and the title of the book on the inside. Nice.

The footer will be much simpler than that. Click on the footer box, then set the text alignment to center. From the menu bar select Insert->Page Number, and the page number will magically appear. Hurray!

Recall that we set up this section with different left and right pages, so now we have to set up the right side page. The easiest thing to do is click the header/footer of the left side page, select all, copy, and paste into the right side header/footer (do not “Paste and Match Style”).

Wait, but if we’re just copying and pasting why did we have the sides set to be different? Excellent question. Recall how I said we set up the left side header: chapter number on the outside, title on the inside. On the right hand side, because the pages are mirrored, the chapter number in now on the inside, and the title is on the outside. We don’t want that. So just switch the text (either cut and paste, or just rewrite it). Now the pages should be mirrored.

One final footer: go to the first page of the chapter — the one that should say “Chapter #” on it, and set up the footer with the page number, but leave the header empty. Since its the first page of the chapter it should be clean.

Step 6: Section Starts

There’s one more trick to sections you need to know: you can set section to always start on a specific side of the book, regardless of what side the previous page was on. We’re going to do this…

Go to the Inspector and choose the Layout icon. At the very bottom of the “Section” tab is the drop down box, “Section starts on:” The default value is “Any page,” which means Pages doesn’t do anything special. Change it to “Right Page.”

Now this section will always start on the right side, which is how it looks now.

Step 7: The Body Style

Under the chapter heading you made should be a paragraph of text in the style “Body.” If not, add a paragraph. In the Inspector choose the Text icon, and then the “Tabs” tab. At the top set the “First Line” to 0.5 in, which will make your first lines auto-indent (this is better than indenting yourself, especially if you decide to change your mind later on). Now change the formating to a nice serif font like Times (or whatever you want you novel to be written in), and redefine the “Body” style to save the changes. Great, now you’ll have consistently formatted paragraphs, which you can reformat easily in the future.

Step 8: Capturing Pages For the Template

Apple Pages has an excellent template building feature called “Capture Pages.” With the caret in our newly created chapter section go to Format->Advanced->Capture Pages… in the menu bar. A dialog pops up. In the “Name” box enter “Chapter,” and in the “Include” drop down make sure “First page only” is selected, then hit OK.

Now delete the chapter you made so that you’re left with only the Title and Business pages (trust me).

Step 9: Play time!

What was that last step all about? I’ll show you…

Go to Insert->Sections in the menu bar. A submenu opens, at the bottom of which is the “Chapter” section you just captured. Select it, and it will insert the first page of your chapter into the book. For fun, insert two page breaks, and see that your headers and footers are formatted just the way you set them up. You have a stock chapter setup ready for you for each chapter of the book.

Now make sure the caret is on the last page you made, and insert a new chapter section there. Notice the completely blank page on the left hand side? That’s the “Section starts on: Right” at work. When printed, all your chapter’s will begin on the right side, for pleasurable consistency.

A Word About Problems

OK, remember how I said Microsoft Word is more robust? Well, it is. Notice that while the newest chapter you created properly iterates the page count, it doesn’t do anything about the chapter number. This is why I had you put an “#” instead of a number. With each new chapter you’re going to have to set the chapter number on the first page, and in the first right and left header you have. After that the headers will keep the modified text, until the next chapter you add (because we set the section to not use the previous headers). This isn’t a major issue, but it’s something to be aware of.

This isn’t, btw, a problem with Microsoft Word, because MS Word has more auto-text options (how you do this chapter business in Word is extremely elegant). Still, that doesn’t make up for how bloated it is, or how friggin’ late the new version of Mac Office is. Seriously, Photoshop beat you guys to the Intel native. Photoshop!

That’s really the only problem I think is worth noting.

Optional: Placeholders

One thing we can do to diminish this problem is to modify the template to include placeholder text. You can define placeholder text by selecting some text, then going to Format->Advanced->Define as Placeholder Text. Do this to the title and chapter headings where they are, and when you save the template and use it’ll be a bit easier to edit (not by much, though).

Note that if you’re going to do this you need to re-capture the chapter section.

Honestly if you’re just going to step up the document to run with it then don’t worry about it.

Step 10: Saving the Template

Easy: File->Save as Template….

From there you can create a new document from your template from the template chooser.

Advanced Page Numbering?

I really don’t feel comfortable not mentioning one final bit about sections: sections allow you to do advanced page numbering. By advanced I mean, where the numbering changes. In the Layout Inspector under the “Section” tab is where you can set the where the numbering for that section starts. If you right click on the page number you’ve added you can change the number type (roman, arabic, etc). Have fun.

Congratulations! If you were able to understand anything I just wrote you should have a novel template on hand and ready to go. More importantly, you should have the know-how to design your own template. Teach a man to fish, so to speak. With an understanding of sectioning you should be able to effortlessly add a page for dedications, an author biography, a table of contents, or a forward by your cat.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to use this information to write a spectacular novel of your own. In 30 days. Good luck with that.

* Please let me know if you find any mistakes with this tutorial. I mean, I put those there on purpose, I just want to see if you’re sharp enough to find them. Because I’m sneaky.

1. I have my theory about that, but I’ll keep it to myself for now.↩
2. The process is really the same, it’s just a matter of knowing where to find the settings, which in the case of Pages is pretty easy to find on your own.↩
3. If you’re going to right justify the text, which is standard protocol for a novel, you need to enable auto-hyphenation so you don’t end up with ridiculous whitespace in the middle of your sentences.↩
4. Doing formatting properly with Styles is as good as writing this in LaTeX. Well, almost as good.↩