Sometimes we just want to keep writing, so a setting detail or simple character action shouldn’t slow us down unnecessarily. Enter novel notes. We can quickly insert a relevant note and move on with writing (or editing).
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Quickly insert a simple novel note
In a writing sprint or a Pomodoro sequence (if you like them), we often just want to keep writing or editing. A setting detail or simple character action (often stumps me during dialog) shouldn’t slow us down unnecessarily. It's easy to stop and want to correct a detail, but our minds can freeze like stubborn neurological mules.
Enter novel notes.
I’ll often insert a quick note where I’m writing. Sometimes the note indicates the paragraph just needs some extra editing or setting/era-based rewording. I might need to research a historical fact about what the characters are doing or a tool they're using. In other cases, the setting details may need tweaking to achieve something more elegant later in the editing process.
The macro below allows us to quickly insert a standard (to your own workflow) note and move on with writing or editing. A few sibling articles will extend the ideas with more options since a lot of variation exists for preferences based on the placement, wording, context, or style of your different note types.
Create the empty macro
A previous post covers creating an empty macro like the one shown below using the Word interface. The result will look something like:
The single quote tells VBA the rest of the text on that line is a comment meant for human readers. We start our macro steps on the empty line.
What is the Selection?
The Selection is VBAs representation of what you see and manipulate on the screen. It can include selected content or just be the insertion point (i.e., the blinking I-bar waiting for text) since that is essentially an empty selection. It includes many actions (called "methods") and data (called "properties") that allow us to manipulate the selection and/or any related document content. A separate article goes into more detail about the Selection.
What is a Range?
A Range is basically a span of text in the document with a defined Start and End position. Technically, they are a data type called an "object" in VBA as an internal representation of a document range. Practically speaking, we can treat them much like an invisible selection or insertion point. We can move or change its extent using various methods, delete or modify the document text, format content, etc. See a separate article on our brief introduction to Ranges for more information about them.
Use a Range variable in this macro
Generally speaking, the current macro is most productive if it just inserts the note without interrupting our workflow. More specifically, we want to avoid moving the insertion point or changing the initial selection, so we can just keep writing or editing.
We could just use the Selection for the whole macro, but a logical quirk pops up that needs extra explanation. Using a Range variable is probably the easiest way to make our changes without disturbing our workflow.
What are the manual steps?
What steps would we use to add a new novel note paragraph manually?
- Move to the end of the previous paragraph (mouse is slow)
- Tap Return to insert a new paragraph
- Type the note text (repetitive and boring)
- Change the note paragraph style (optional and repetitive, blehh)
- Move back to the original editing location (waste of time)
Of course, some slight variations are possible, but most will be about the same number of steps. A standard Word keyboard shortcut exists to move up a paragraph (Control+Up in Windows or Command+Up arrow on a Mac), so that helps a little, but it’s still a lot of steps especially if we insert such notes often. The note style is optional, of course, but it helps separate notes from novel text. We can also use different styles for types of notes like just basic editing, a research related note, setting comments, etc.
We definitely can't call the steps above fast, but why not make it a keystroke and just keep working. Then we can relax about forgetting the detail or not remembering it during an edit. When a note task is finished, a supporting macro makes deleting the note quick and painless, literally just Control+Shift+Delete in Word for Windows or Command+Shift+Delete on my MacBook.
Note variations
A sibling version inserts the note inline with the novel text (not my preferred approach). Another includes any selected text or a nearby word with the note, so we can have improve the context when we get back to it perhaps month(s) later (good for research notes).
Taking it up a level, multiple different note types will likely evolve as you work where each performs basically the same task just with different words or styles. To ease the repetition at the cost of making it more technical, several member articles implement functions that we can easily use for each desired note variation.
Insert a note in a new paragraph
Rather than just implement the manual steps above like a VBA automaton, we'll take advantage of more VBA-like thinking.
Store the note text
We can define a fixed note text as a plain “string” of characters. This is not strictly necessary, but it helps make our macro easier to read and modify for other notes we might wish to create.
The note text needs to be in double quotes, so VBA knows it's plain text. We used an equals = sign to store the note text value in the variable. VBA automatically determines the variable's data type based on what we're storing in it.
Set the current paragraph Range
Given the intended note placement, it's convenient to define a working Range corresponding to the whole original paragraph. We need the range of the whole first paragraph, so we'll start by referring to the Paragraphs collection of the Selection.
We want the first paragraph of the collection using the First property.
A Paragraph is its own data type in VBA. We're storing the paragraph range, so we need to access the range of content it spans using the Range property.
Now we can assign this paragraph range to our range variable.
We must Set the Range since it contains other information than just a value. This works even if the starting selection doesn’t include the whole paragraph or if the selection spans multiple paragraphs (following paragraphs are ignored).
This is an example of using Ranges to make writing your macros easier. This range variable is independent of the initial selection. We can manipulate it without directly changing the selection unless we use it to specifically delete or modify text in that region.
Insert the new paragraph
In the current macro, we're inserting the note into a separate paragraph to improve clarity, so we need to add the new paragraph using the InsertParagraphBefore method.
A separate macro article inserts inline novel notes if you prefer that approach.
Insert the note text
Finally insert the actual note text using the InsertBefore method.
Both of these insert commands extend the MyParagraphRange backward to include the newly added characters.
Change the note paragraph style
Applying a different paragraph style will better distinguish the note apart from the novel text. Of course, the style needs to be added to the document or the Normal.dot template.
Collapse the paragraph Range
Since MyParagraphRange now spans both the original and the newly added note paragraph, we first use the Collapse method on the range, so the style only applies to the note paragraph.
This command effectively "moves" the range to the new paragraph rather than spanning parts of both of them. The working range is now empty meaning it's Start and End positions are the same (counted based on the number of characters from the beginning of the document).
Set the new paragraph style
We set the paragraph style using the Style property of the Range.
We just used a literal style name as text and let VBA do all the work under the hood. This property is general enough that we could also assign a Style object that we've saved in a different variable, but we usually just need a valid style name.
Does the style exist?
Of course, the Scene Note style must be accessible in the document. Unfortunately, it will cause an error if not, so just be sure the note style is included in your work in progress.
Ideally we would check whether the style exists first before trying to apply it to a paragraph, but detecting whether a given style is valid is more complicated than it should be, so that is a lesson for another day. If you can't wait, a separate article covers style validations, but it is a little technical and using it requires an extra conditional statement.
Finish the macro
Now, put the commands together to quickly insert our novel note into the document.
This one is simple, but it definitely helps me remember details during editing while still allowing me to move on with my writing at the moment. Defining the note at the top of the macro allows me to easily change the note text. I have several variants of this macro assigned to different keyboard shortcuts.
Granted, we don't want to leave "everything" for the editing phase, but my priority in the first draft is to get the story on the page. Some details just have to wait.
A few sibling articles extend this idea. One variation includes any selected text (or the nearby word) which I find useful for research-oriented notes (e.g., a historical phrase I can't quite remember at the time or the name of a specific tool). Of course, many other possibilities exists with preferences based on the placement, wording, context, and/or style of the different notes.
Improvements
In addition to implementing other note types, we could improve a few more things.
Screen updates
This macro makes multiple changes to the document, so it is a good candidate to disable screen updates while running. On the other hand, the simple changes are probably so fast we would never notice the difference.
Undo record
Since this macro makes multiple small changes, it is a good candidate for undo records, but they are excluded from this version because then can cause problems if not properly implemented.
Function version
I have several flavors of notes with different text and note paragraph styles. It's a shame to copy the entire macros over and repeat everything, so these macros are begging to be included in a function. Alas, that is outside the scope of this article.
