I have not worked with Mail Merge fields before and everything I find requires you to select a data source prior to be able to insert merge fields. All I want to do is place fields on the word document and not merge it down until its consumed by the code. I essentially am creating document templates. How is this done in word?
I would follow this Microsoft article. If you don't have the data source available, I would simply create a dummy Excel/Access/data source with the fields that you will have. Word prefers to know what fields are available and you can change the source once your template document is built.