Top “Truth” Number Five: Manuscript Format Matters
When I began thinking about submitting a short story for publication, I was shocked at how many writing magazines and other writers emphasized correct format (typed, double-spaced, Courier, 12 point, 1 inch margins, no staples, bindings, etc.). Some of the formatting “rules” made sense — after all, who wants to read five hundred hand written pages with scratch outs and write overs? But why was it so important to use Courier rather than Times New Roman? Why did the first page of a story or a chapter have to begin so far down the page?
Then, after I’d absorbed the format and begun using it (under the “when in Rome” principle), I was shocked to discover how many aspiring writers did not. It was as if they hadn’t bothered to check out the guidelines before sending in a manuscript (proper manuscript form was demonstrated in every writing magazine, in the Writer’s Market front matter, in writing workshops, etc). I began to understand why editors and agents spent so much time covering what was and was not proper format. Many, many people thought those rules didn’t apply to them.
Fortunately, times have changed, and we have computers, not typewriters (you cannot imagine the heartrending sight of a typo in the middle of a pristinely typed page, which meant careful application of White-Out and precise re-positioning of the paper to retype the word correctly). We can email manuscripts now, saving trees and printers, and typo-induced heart attacks.
Yet format requirements still exist, and writers still flout them at their own peril. I know this first hand, because I teach writing. So I’ll try to put you in the shoes of an agent who has asked for a manuscript based on a stellar query letter. The manuscript is one of ten she has requested and now must load into her e-reader and read on the train ride home. The first seven are formatted close to what she has asked for (double spaced, readable 12 point font, 1 inch margins, no fancy headers or clever art embedded, paragraphs with the first line indented five spaces, no extra space between paragraphs, etc.). Great, she loads them in and moved on to number eight, which is single spaced. She sighs, does a select all in her word processing program, and changes single spacing to double spacing. No big deal, a slight annoyance at the fact the writer can’t follow directions, but it doesn’t take long to select all and make one change. Manuscript number nine is more problematic. The manuscript is space and a half with a tiny font size — except for the occasional emphasized words that are in a larger font and various bright shades of red green and purple. Again a sigh and a trip through select all to change the font to the agent’s favorite readable font, size and color, and to switch space and a half to double space. Four changes, but all able to be done with a select all command. Now comes manuscript number ten. There’s clipart in it. And graphic headers full of color and with shadow and embossing effects. Very pretty. It will take more than one run through select all to fix this and make it readable. If the agent really wants to read this story idea, because it sounds brilliant, she may choose to take the fifteen to twenty minutes to clean up the manuscript so that she can download it to her e-reader. If.
Though the techniques and some of the formatting guidelines have changed in the years I’ve been writing, the same basic advice applies — format the manuscript simply and cleanly, with no special effects, colors, large fonts, etc. The writing is what matters. The story is what matters. If you feel the need to tart it up with special effects, then you are not ready to be submitting the book yet.
SPECIAL PLEA: In my ten years as a writing instructor, I have waded through manuscripts that an agent would have rejected after the first paragraph, strictly on format problems. I have experienced, first hand, the disorientation that comes with trying to read for sense a page with wandering margins, irregular spacing between words and punctuation, punctuation marks sprinkled like confetti instead of used with purpose, and puzzling gaps of white space in the middle of sentences or paragraphs. Don’t do this. Just don’t. People who read for a living (teachers, agents, editors), have eyes trained for a certain format. Anything that strays too far from that (with the exception of poetry, of course) snaps us out of the story. As a teacher, I have a duty to my student to force myself all the way through. Agents don’t have an obligation (or need) to read through something that is clearly done by an uninformed newbie. There are some (rare) days, I envy them that luxury.
Next up — Top “Truth” Number Six: Follow the Market
Top “Truth” Number One
Top “Truth” Number Two
Top “Truth” Number Three
Top “Truth” Number Four
