Guides/Feature Workflows

Text Messages, Callouts, and Written Notes

Genre-staple content blocks that render beautifully in every format

Three blocks, one idea ↓Text message threads ↓Callout boxes ↓Written notes ↓How each format renders ↓Tips ↓

Three blocks, one idea

Some passages aren't prose. A text-message exchange in a thriller, a tip box in a how-to book, a handwritten note slid under a door — each needs a visual treatment of its own, and each should survive the trip to print, ebook, and Word intact.

Bookshaper ships three special content blocks: Text Message Thread, Callout Box, and Written Note. Insert any of them from the right-click Insert menu, or with Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + M, C, or W respectively. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter to step out of a block and continue with normal prose.

Text message threads

A thread is a stack of chat bubbles — sent messages on the right, received on the left. Enter starts the next message; a floating toolbar above the thread flips a bubble's side and sets an optional sender name and timestamp.

The look is a style choice, not baked into your content: the Text Message Thread style target offers iOS, Android, and generic skins, plus a toggle for showing timestamps. Change the skin once and every conversation in the book follows.

Callout boxes

The nonfiction staple: a bordered, tinted box that sets tips, warnings, and sidebars apart from body text. Give a box an optional title from its floating toolbar; the Callout Box style target controls border color, border weight, corner radius, and background tint for every box in the book.

Written notes

For letters, notes, and signs inside your story: an inset block whose typography you control from the Written Note style target. Pair it with one of the bundled script faces — Great Vibes or Allura — for a handwritten look, or keep it typewritten with a mono face for telegrams and case files.

How each format renders

Print PDF
Bubbles render as rounded, tinted blocks aligned per side; callouts as bordered boxes that flow across page breaks; notes as inset passages in your chosen face — all set by the typesetting engine.
EPUB
Faithful CSS styling in every reader, including the skin palettes, callout chrome, and note inset. Timestamps and sender labels are real text, so screen readers announce them.
DOCX
Bubbles become shaded, indented paragraphs; callouts become bordered single-cell tables (Word's native callout construct); notes become inset styled paragraphs. Word has no rounded corners, so boxes render square there.

Tips

Keep bubbles short
Real texts are terse. Short bubbles also wrap gracefully at narrow trims and large ebook font sizes.
One skin per book
The skin is book-wide by design — switching mid-book reads as an error, not a style choice.
Mind print costs with tints
Large tinted callouts and dark bubbles use ink. If you're printing black-and-white via KDP, check how your chosen colors convert to grayscale in the print preview.

Related guides

Preserved Lines

Author-controlled line breaks that survive every export

Printing and Saving PDFs

Print any analysis or planning view — or save it as a PDF — as a clean document

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