Here are the specific rules to formatting a manuscript you should adhere to before shipping your work off to potential agents and publishers: 1. Two lines below this, write your author name.Ĭentered at the bottom of the title page, list the category and the genre of your book. In the center of the title page, write your book title in ALL CAPS. In the top right-hand corner of the title page, list your word count to the nearest thousand. In the top left-hand corner of the title page, list your legal name and your contact details (including email address and phone number).
#Manuscript writing guide professional#
Give it a file name that sounds professional and is easy to search for.ĭouble-space your writing.HeaderEach page should have a header with your surname, the book title, and the page number in ALL CAPS. Include your name and relevant contact information on the upper left -hand side of the page, single-spaced. Other readable fonts like Courier and Arial fonts might also be acceptable, but this depends on the submission guidelines of the publisher. Use 12 point Times New Roman for the entire manuscript. Set the margins for your manuscript to 1 inch, or 2.5cm on all four sides.Īlign your writing the left, and leave the right-hand side ragged. General Story Manuscript Formatting Guidelines The rules are there to make all manuscripts equally legible, so that the editor can quickly read many of them in a day.
Apart from looking amateurish and as if you're not taking your work seriously, a story manuscript that doesn’t follow industry-standard formatting rules makes it harder for the editor to read. Story manuscript formatting and the way in which your work is presented makes a big difference to the way literary agents and publishers receive your work. While they are looking for good writing above all, this should not render the formatting of your manuscript as secondary, because getting a publisher or agent to read your work can already be a gargantuan task on its own and the first impression needs to count. You want to look like a professional writer who knows their way around story-writing and is truly keen on getting their work published. And that’s not the kind of impression you want to give to the person reading and judging your writing. When an editor receives a manuscript that’s formatted in a haphazard, or unprofessional manner, it could give off the impression that you had not been conscientious about your work. On your end, all you have to do is to make sure it is well-formatted.
This makes it absolutely crucial that their first impression of your writing and manuscript is a good one, given it's the only one you might only get. Why are Story Manuscripts and it's Formatting Important?Įditors, just as publishing agents and labels, are busy. While there’s no standard or universal manuscript format that writers need to abide by strictly, and no specific novel template that you have to follow, the only rule of manuscript presentation is that manuscript should look like a clean, professional, and readable document. By following the ones stated above you will make sure that your manuscript looks clean, is easy to read, and won't get rejected because of sloppy formatting. It is recommended that you refer to submission guidelines for each publication or publisher that you wish to submit to, as they can and do differ. In short, the manuscript is the unpublished version of what would eventually become a book, while a book is published. Manuscripts become actual books only once it’s been typeset and bound and becomes an actual hard copy, or once it’s been formatted and packaged up as an ebook. A manuscript is the text of your novel, or work of non-fiction, before that text has been turned into the finished book. The word “manuscript” is used to refer to any unpublished work.
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