Manuscript Preparation

As hard as this is to believe, a tattered bar napkin written in crayon with hand-drawn illustrations DOES NOT actually impress editors that you are a twisted genius with no use for society's conventions.

It makes you look like an idiot. Worse, like an amateur.

Truth be told, most editors are looking for every conceivable reason to avoid reading your entire manuscript, and manuscript preparation errors are the easiest to identify. Someone who hasn't taken the time to research the proper style and format for manuscripts is probably not a good editorial gamble.

Does this mean that your manuscript has to be perfect to be even considered? No. But you want to appear as professional as possible. "Appearing professional" means following rules established by editors to aid them in reviewing (and even eventually publishing) your manuscript. Those standards are not an arbitrary gauntlet meant to weed out amateurs--they just work out that way.

At magazines that receive hundreds of manuscripts a week, yours needs every advantage it can get. Don't give an editor any reason to doubt your skill or professionalism just from the presentation of your manuscript. Give your work a chance.

The primary rule of manuscript preparation:

Don't do anything that could conceivably annoy the editor.

Refer to the following guidelines when preparing manuscripts:

• Use a 12-point Courier font.
• Use one-inch margins on every single-sided page.
• Use fresh toner or ink to produce a letter-quality manuscript.
• Do not bind the document with anything other than paper clips.
• On the first page, display a heading in the upper left corner of the first page. Then, include with the title of the work and your byline in the center of the page.
• Display your name, title, and page number in the upper right corner of every page but the first.
• Follow the requirements of your market from their guidelines.
• Don't mark the end of a manuscript.

Use a 12-point Courier font.

Yes, it looks like something you typed on Hemingway's typewriter with a bottle of whiskey by your feet.

It also happens to be almost universally accepted as readable by the editors who review manuscripts. It has the advantage of being monospaced (equally spaced between the letters) for diminishing eye strain, and serif (with little nubs on the letters) to be easy to read.

As tempting as it is in our WYSIWYG world to create fancy manuscripts in PageMaker with complex fonts and typesetting, your editor wants a simple manuscript that looks like all of the other manuscripts.

Writers who strive to make their manuscripts different and attention-catching provoke an editor's suspicion: "Is this person trying to hide mediocre writing with amazing presentation?"

It doesn't work. Keep your manuscripts simple.

Use one-inch margins on every single-sided page.

Yes, the rain forest is disappearing at an alarming rate. Yes, those additional pages in your manuscript fell trees, waste energy, and add to postal costs.

Editors need that inch of space for their comments and notes, especially if they accept it.

Don't print on both sides of the paper, either. An editor has a lot of slush to work through before he or she can stagger to the bar after work, and flipping through your story isn't going to help.

Assuage your guilt about wasting that paper by planting trees or using recycled paper, but continue to keep those one-inch margins.

Don't try to pull a fast one by using thinner paper, either. An editor isn't interested in fumbling with onionskin paper (even if it does give you a feeling of power to use Bible paper).

The ugly truth is that trees must die for your art. Get over it.

Use fresh toner or ink to produce a letter-quality manuscript.

This isn't always an issue anymore now that printers in general produce higher-quality text, but you should still use the high-quality mode to produce text that is clean and readable.

For those of you limping by with primitive printers from yesteryear, upgrade. Write it off your taxes if you ever make a dime from this writing racket.

Dot matrix printers (if any still exist and function) are not acceptable. Neither is your grandpa's old Telex machine he used to send sports stories about the Babe to the Chicago Tribune in the 20s.

Use common sense. If you have to squint to read it, your editor won't bother.

Do not bind the document with anything other than paper clips.

Emily Dickinson may have tied her poems into neat bundles with ribbons, but she lived close to a hat factory in Amherst and was probably crazy from the fumes.

Use paper clips and only paper clips to bind your manuscript.

Don't wrap it in one of those fancy plastic report binders from your junior high school report about the Moon.

Don't staple it so it has to be flipped and rotated to be read.

Don't bind it at Kinko's so it looks like a budget presentation at a corporate function.

Just use paper clips. Your editor can remove the clip and flip through the pages flat on his or her desk.

"What if the pages get separated?" See the next topic.

Display a heading in the upper left corner of the first page. Then, include with the title of the work and your byline in the center of the page.

This helps your editor contact you to accept the story. In some cases, they use it in contracts.

Don't include the rights offered, your social security number, or other information unless specifically instructed to do so by the writers' guidelines for the market.

There is some debate about whether including one's professional affiliation is necessary or helpful: "HWA Member." I'm not convinced it is. Worse, I'm not sure I want it to be. If my story isn't effective despite my status as a member of a professional organization, I don't want a magazine to publish it.

Start your work four lines below the byline.

Follow the example below.

Display your name, title, and page number in the upper right corner of every page but the first.

This helps your editor reassemble your manuscript if he or she knocks it off the desk in disgust, slips on it on the way back from a drinking lunch, or accidentally uses it to line the litter box.

Editors sometimes page through a manuscript flat on the desk flipping pages. If the order is fouled, this helps fix it.

Follow the example below.

Follow the requirements of your market from their guidelines.

Do your homework. Refer to the guidelines for your market for their specific needs in manuscript presentation. Sometimes online markets require certain file formats. Sometimes other markets require additional heading information.

Obey your market guidelines as though they are the dictates of a vindictive god.

Don't mark the end of a manuscript.

Chances are you've written a work well enough that the editor can figure out that the ending really does correspond to the end of the physical manuscript and that none of the pages are lost.

Since your story is not being sent one line at a time over the Marconi wireless, there is no need for the old -30- marker used for newspaper stories or for THE END like an old 30s Selznick picture. Just stop writing and your editor will figure it out.

If he or she can't, you've done something wrong.