A Skelderheim Book Series
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Return To ShopBy now you should have at least one Chapter cut down into clean, ordered stacks. This page is where you decide what to do with them.
There is no single right way to bind these pages. The “best” option depends on how often you plan to read the Journal entries, whether you want to rearrange or share them, and how close you want the finished thing to feel to a book.
I will walk through three main choices:
You can mix and match. A lot of people end up using binders for work-in-progress Chapters and something nicer for the ones they want to keep.
If you want something you can throw in a bag, open and close a hundred times, and constantly rearrange, start here.
A three ring binder is the most forgiving way to keep Journal entries on your side of the page:
Each Chapter is written to stand on its own. As long as you know the main Charles Mandrake storyline, you can open a binder to any entry and read it like a side trail off the main path.
Binders also make it easy to share. You can unclip a single Chapter, slide it into its own small binder or folder, and hand it to someone without taking apart the rest of your collection. The librarian in In the Scholar’s Ward says, “A good story should never be kept to one’s self“. A three ring binder makes it simple to prove him right.
Full US Letter pages slide straight into standard binders. If you chose the Full US Letter version of the Chapters when you printed, you can:
Half Letter pages can live in binders too, as long as you match the size:
Once you have a binder and a punch:
You can keep one large binder for everything, or split by range:
Tabs or dividers help if you want to group by arc or location instead.
A binder is a good fit if:
It is not the most elegant option, but it is the one that will put up with the most use.
If you want your Chapters to look more like finished books than school notes, a discbound system is the next step.
Discbound notebooks use a row of discs instead of rings. The pages have special slots punched along the edge, so you can pop them off and on without opening anything.
Once your pages are punched and on the discs:
Both Half Letter and Full US Letter pages work:
You will need a discbound punch that matches the disc system you pick (Tul, Arc, Levenger, and so on).
To set up a Chapter:
You can dedicate one discbound notebook to each set of ten Chapters, or keep a single “working” volume where the latest Chapter always lives in front.
A discbound system fits if:
It takes a little more setup at the beginning, but the result feels closer to a book you made on purpose.
If you want a single Chapter to feel like a small, self-contained book, you can turn it into a stapled booklet.
For this, a long reach stapler (sometimes called a booklet stapler) makes life easier. It can reach the middle of the page instead of only the edge.
Stapled booklets work best with Half Letter pages. Once you have a cut and ordered stack:
With a long reach stapler:
With a regular stapler, you can:
Stapled Chapters are best for shorter entries. If a stack feels too thick to staple without bending, that is your cue to use a binder or discs instead.
Stapled booklets are a good choice if:
They are not as flexible as binders or discs, but they feel satisfying in the hand.
You do not have to pick one method forever. A lot of people end up with a mix that looks something like this:
You can move pages between systems as you figure out what you like. The important part is that the Journal entries on your side turn into something you can flip through, lend out, and shelve.
Quick questions to ask yourself before you go back to the printer:
There are no wrong answers. Choose the method that matches how you actually read. The next time a new Journal entry appears, you will already know exactly where the printed pages belong.
