![]() ![]() Publishing professionals are used to working with manuscripts in industry standard formula and it’s sort of baked into their brain, meaning they have a sense of how long chapters and entire books are with this formatting in mind. Once more for emphasis: Don’t try to make your manuscript look like a physical book. It’s become a convention but it’s not a standard to italicize a character’s first person thoughts within a third person narrative, such as: “ Why do I find this all so complicated, he thought.” (There was quite a Twitter beef about this a few weeks back). Italicizing a character’s inner monologue in a third person narrative.don’t use some hard to read cursive font for a handwritten letter). If you change the font, don’t get too crazy, and err on the side of legibility (e.g. There aren’t hard and fast rules here, but I would recommend extra spaces around the alternative text and italicizing or changing the font to denote that it’s a break from the narrative voice. Denoting alternate text like text messages, handwritten letters, signage.I just include one extra space before the chapter title and one extra space after. Some people don’t include extra spacing for chapter breaks, some include quite a lot of extra padding. Here are some areas where people tend to vary a bit more: I would advocate including three asterisks or some other symbol denoting the break so it’s clear it’s not a mistake and for situations when it falls near the end of a page and the break might be easily missable. If you have a section break within a chapter, at minimum include an extra space between the paragraphs denoting the break. Also, I would still number chapters even if you decide to use chapter titles so that the people giving you feedback can easily reference the chapter #. And use the page break function in your word processing program, not returns, so future additions or subtractions don’t turn your manuscript into a hot mess. Page breaks after the end of a chapter.Optional but not a bad idea: include your last name or the book title in the header or footer case an agent prints out your manuscript and gets trapped in a wind storm. The best way to drive a publishing professional insane is to send them a manuscript where the pages aren’t numbered or, even worse, where the pages start over with every chapter. Best: Setting an automatic indent for new paragraphs (this saves your future interior designer a step). Double-check this because some programs default to 1.25″ or 1.5″. And absolutely do not get crazy with facing pages or trying to make your manuscript look like a book. Do not add any extra spacing before or after paragraphs. This means, very simply, double spacing without any other changes. It used to be Times New Roman or Courier, but in my experience Courier has gotten a little old school. If you’re submitting to literary agents it’s helpful to have a cover page that includes the title, your name, your contact information (phone number and email are fine but include your physical address if you want to), and the word count. Instead, there are a mix of “must haves” and “some people do these things.” There isn’t an ironclad industry standard format for manuscripts that’s as exacting as, say, a Chicago Manual of Style. Proper formatting is by far the easiest thing you can do to make your book project appear as professional as possible to literary agents and the various professionals you will work with throughout the publication process. ![]()
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