How to Format Letters, Poems and Text Messages in a Novel

Letters, poems and text messages read best when they look different from the prose around them, and consistently so every time they appear. In Deckle you turn a paragraph into one of these blocks from the editor's block style menu, and the book's styling sets how every one of them looks in print and in the ebook.

What You'll Need

• A chapter with the letter, poem or message exchange typed in, or ready to type.

Step-by-Step

1. Put the caret in the paragraph you want to set apart.
2. Open the block style menu on the editor toolbar. It shows the current style, usually "Normal text".
3. Pick the kind of block:
   • Written Note for a letter, a diary entry or a note a character leaves.
   • Verse for a poem or song lyrics.
   • Conversation for text messages or a chat.
   • Blockquote for quoted material, with Attribution for the credit line under it.
   • Inset Block for anything else that needs setting apart: a sign, a headline, a document.
4. Type verse the way poems are laid out. In a Verse block, Enter starts a new line in the same stanza, Enter twice starts a new stanza, and a third Enter on the empty stanza takes you back to prose.
5. Type a text exchange message by message. In a Conversation, each message has a name above it ("Add name") and a Received or Sent switch, which puts it on the left or the right the way a phone does. Enter at the end of a message starts the next one on the same side; Enter on an empty message leaves the conversation.
6. Style them once for the whole book. In Styles → Advanced → Special blocks, each block type has its own font, size, alignment, italic, bold and small caps, and spacing. Change the Written Note style and every letter in the book follows, which is the point of using blocks instead of formatting each one by hand. See choosing a typeface for picking a second face that sits well beside your body text.

Common Mistakes

• Formatting each letter by hand. Italicising and indenting every letter individually drifts: by chapter twenty they no longer match. A block type keeps them identical and lets you restyle them all at once.
• Using line breaks in prose for a poem. A poem typed as ordinary paragraphs picks up first-line indents and prose spacing. Verse keeps its lines and stanza breaks.
• Overdoing the contrast. A different typeface, italic and a coloured background all at once reads as a design exercise. One or two differences from the body text are usually enough. Check it in the device preview, on a phone as well as in print.