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Novel and Short Story Writer's Marketby Writer's Digest |
The Scene Bookby Sandra Scofield |
Twilight Director's Notebookby Catherine Hardwicke |
How Not to Write a Novelby Howard Mittelmark |
| Friday February 10, 2012 | 
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Articles on the Writing Craft Preparing for Publication Manuscript Format
| Manuscript Format |
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| By Apryl Duncan | ||||||||
Truth is, there isn't one universal standard. While editors may have their own individual preferences, your manuscript's not going to be thrown into the slush pile just because your margins are 1/4 inch more than someone expected. However, there is a basic formula publishers usually follow. Use these guidelines to prepare your manuscript: Don't get fancy by using letterhead, but do use a 20 lb. bond paper. Always use plain white paper but don't be tempted to use typing paper or any other type of erasable paper. Make sure your margins are one-inch all the way around. Don't muddy up your manuscript with anything less than one. Your words will become cluttered and even tedious to a busy editor's eyes. Your entire manuscript should be double-spaced. If you've single-spaced your writing in a word processing program, you can easily change your manuscript from single- to double-spaced. Select the entire text of your manuscript and then change the line spacing. All of your highlighted text will automatically be converted into a double-spaced format. Be sure to consult the help section in your word processing program for proper instruction. Don't break your paragraphs up by hitting the ENTER key a couple of extra times. New paragraphs should be indicated by indents. You can use the TAB function in your word processing program to set these indents. When you're done with a paragraph, hit ENTER once, indent and begin your new paragraph. Don't mix and match fonts within your manuscript. Choose an easy to read font like Arial or Times New Roman
A 12-point font size is the best for manuscripts. This size keeps most letters from being cramped together. Type your name, address, phone, fax and Email (single-spaced) in the upper left-hand corner of your first page. Your approximate word count should be typed in the upper right-hand corner. Center the title of your short story halfway down the page in a larger font (14- or 16-point font size). You can even use bold if you like. After you've typed your title, skip two lines - still centered - type your name in a smaller font than that of your title. Take off your centering function, skip two lines after your name and begin your short story on the same page. You must include a cover page with your manuscript. Make sure all of the following information is centered on the page. Halfway down the page, type the title of your book. Skip two lines and type your name or pseudonym. Skip another two lines and type your real name, address, phone, fax and Email. Skip about three lines and type the approximate word count. The first page of each chapter should begin halfway down the page with the title or number of the chapter placed before your text. The remaining pages of each chapter can take up the full page. Each page only requires a running header (see below). You don't need to list your complete contact information on every page. Short stories and books all require running headers. They should be placed in the upper left hand corner of every page. A running header simply contains three items:
* If the title of your project is too long, then you can choose a keyword from that title to identify your work. Let's look at Michael Connelly's A Darkness More Than Night as an example of a running header. If we truncated his long title, we might use the word "Darkness" to describe his novel. The running header on page 143 of his manuscript would read: Connelly/Darkness/143 If you're preparing your book's manuscript, then you'll want all of your page numbers to be in order. Don't number your pages according to the chapter. For instance, you wouldn't use 4-9 to indicate Chapter 4, Page 9 on your manuscript. If this is the 85th page, then it's the 85th page of your entire manuscript. Don't label each chapter's page numbers at all. |
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Some people find it's not writing a novel or short story that's the hard part. It's finding the proper manuscript format. 
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