StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I've been writing a summary for a novel, and there's a lot to it, including history of the world, characters, details of how the world works, etc. What I would like is to be able to write it on a program that I can create a table of contents at the top that I can click on and jump to the designated point to save time. And I would prefer it to be a free program, natch, but if its not too outrageous I would look at something I have to pay for. I don't have MS Word- I had it for awhile but I never explored it too much, so if that one has that feature its not an option. Thanks.

Try Open Office. Make a table of contents then use F5 to navigate to the header. It's free. I've been using it nearly a year now, pretty happy with it.

Open Office Website

Or just use notepad and write up a simple web layout with html links.

I used WikiPad to build up a pretty massive database for a RPG. It works well for the purpose you are proposing.

I second Wikipad. It was built for the kind of tasks described in OP. While a word processor like MS Word or OpenOffice works it is easier to use a custom built tool for the job.

If you want to do it without programs, you can have a page with the section titles at the start and then highlight the one you want and then press control-F and find will take you there.

In gamefaqs.com tutorials for video games they do something like that.

For example the table of contents at top of the text file would have something like this

Mission 5 = MIS05

and actual entry on how to complete mission 5 would begin like this.

Mission 5 [MIS05]

So to read chapter 1 you simply CTRL-F to find "MIS05".

It's clumsy but also quick and dirty.