While contest judges will give you absolutes, the
reality is, there are no absolutes when it comes to
formatting a manuscript. Nothing but common sense
and consistency matters.
Here’s what I’ve used since I started submitting,
and it’s not gotten me rejected once, only the
writing did that. Here’s my formula for how I format
my submissions, and I've even included sample
documents below for you to open in Word and use as a
master copy for your own manuscripts and synopses.
First Page of A Chapter
Text can start around 2.5 to 3 inches down from the
top of page, the left, right and bottom margins
should be 1 inch.
All Other Manuscript Pages
Pages are one-inch margins on both sides, top and
bottom. Pages are double spaced with indented
paragraphs and dialogue.
Fonts
Font can be either Courier 12pt or Times New Roman (TNR)
12pt. In the past, houses preferred Courier, but TNR
has pretty much replaced Courier as a standard. Do
NOT allow someone to tell you that you'll be
rejected if you submit a manuscript in anything else
but Courier. Absolutely not true.
The reason Courier has been used for so long is that
publishers always had a pretty good idea how many
actual pages the book would have because in Courier
there are about 250 words per page. When a writer
uses TNR, the number of words per pages averages
about 285. With the advent of technology, Courier is
no longer really needed to determine the number of
pages in a book. Computer word count works well in
that regard.
Word Count
This will depend on the house, but it will either be
250/285 words per page or the computer word count.
To figure out how many words you have when you're
not using computer word count, calculate 250 words
per page if you're using Courier font and
approximately 285 words per page using TNR font. The
first page of each new chapter is still calculated
as 250/285 words even though there's white space
because it's still a page the publisher has to
print, white space or not.
Manuscript and Synopsis Format
When you submit a manuscript you need to include a
cover sheet with the following information:
Centered
Title
By "Your Name"
Lower Left or Right Hand Corner of the page
Your REAL Name
Your Mailing Address
Your Telephone Number
Your eMail Address
For the manuscript you should include a header on
all but the first page of the manuscript. The
information should be name / book title / word count
and on the far right the page number.
Click on the links below to download documents you
can use as master copies for your document setup.
For the
synopsis, there's no one way to send it because
different publishers and agents want different
things. For a synopsis that has no restrictions, try
Synopsis Format 1. It makes it easier to read and
the editor/agent can make notes to you or
themselves. If you can only send 2-3 pages, use
Synopsis Format 2 and cut the outline until it's
bleeding off the page. A synopsis is simply a
reference for the editor/agent to see that the
writer has a game plan for the book. They don't
expect the book to turn out just like the synopsis.
NONE of my books have turned out the way the
synopsis described.
An important
note here. These two example Synopses are
NOTHING like the actual book,
Assassin's Honor
that will
be published June 2010. The ending isn't even
remotely the same. The point of a synopsis is to
give the editor/agent comfort that you have some
idea of where the story is going. When I sold
the Sicari series, and my editor called to talk
about the books before she made an offer, I
hadn't looked or thought about the series in
more than six months, I had to flub my way
through our phone conversation when it came to
talking about the world still in development.I
had ideas, but nothing fleshed out into a
coherent idea. Even now there are still nuances
that I'm painting from all the colors on the
palettes of the world. I think that's where the
fun is. The synopsis for
Assassin's Heart
was NOTHING like the final book either
(September 2010 release). It turned out far, far
better than I could have dreamed possible.
So don't get too
hung up on formats. It's the story that matters,
not the format it gets submitted to the
agent/editor. As long as it's legible, they
aren't going to care, they just want a good
story. TRUST me on this.
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