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Andrew Nonymous Your Manuscript Should Have Your Address and Contact Details On The Title Page Only. If You Have An Agent, Your Agent's Address Can Be Included Beneath. 800 Words

Standard manuscript format for novels includes: 1) Contact details only on the title page. Chapters start on new pages with the chapter number. 2) Double spaced text with indented paragraphs and no extra spacing between lines or sentences. 3) Consistent formatting like margins and page headers throughout. 4) Scene breaks indicated with # and italics converted to underlines. Word counts can be inserted. 5) Formatting ensures easy reading for editors but is less crucial for initial agent submissions.

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Brigit Collins
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40 views

Andrew Nonymous Your Manuscript Should Have Your Address and Contact Details On The Title Page Only. If You Have An Agent, Your Agent's Address Can Be Included Beneath. 800 Words

Standard manuscript format for novels includes: 1) Contact details only on the title page. Chapters start on new pages with the chapter number. 2) Double spaced text with indented paragraphs and no extra spacing between lines or sentences. 3) Consistent formatting like margins and page headers throughout. 4) Scene breaks indicated with # and italics converted to underlines. Word counts can be inserted. 5) Formatting ensures easy reading for editors but is less crucial for initial agent submissions.

Uploaded by

Brigit Collins
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Andrew Nonymous Your manuscript should have your address and contact details on the title page only.

If you have an agent, Your agent's address can be included beneath.

800 words.

NOVEL STANDARD MANUSCRIPT FORMAT by A. Nonymous

Nonymous / NOVEL FORMAT / 1

CHAPTER ONE Folder names become chapter titles

Standard manuscript format is often required for novels so that work can easily be read by editors. It allows editors to estimate word count and determine roughly how many pages will be required to produce a book using the page size, style and font used by their house. This PDF file was generated using Scrivener's Compile feature and was created using the "Novel" project template. Manuscripts for full-length novels require a separate title page. The author's name, address, telephone number and e-mail address should be shown in the upper-left corner of the title page, single-spaced. The title of the story should appear in all-caps about half-way down the page. The author's name follows the title on the by-line as the author wants it to appear when published. A real name or pseudonym may be used and may include

published. A real name or pseudonym may be used and may include Nonymous / NOVEL FORMAT / 2 initials, actual given name or professional designation. All text should be double-spaced and left-justified with a ragged right margin. Paragraphs should be indented by about five spaces (half an inch) and not separated by an additional blank line. (It used to be traditional to separate each sentence with two spaces, but in these days of word processors this is now less common.) A 12-point font such as Courier, Times New Roman or Arial should be used throughout. In Scrivener, however, you can write using any font and formatting you choose--the "Formatting" pane of the Compile sheet can be used to change the formatting in the compiled document. In the "Novel" project template, the Compile settings will deal with changing the font and formatting to those required for standard manuscript format. Top, bottom, left and right margins should all be approximately one inch, not allowing for the page header. Each page except for the title page should include a header comprising the author's real surname, the title of the work (or a key word from the title) in capitals, and the page number. In Scrivener, all of this is handled in the "Page Settings" pane of the Compile sheet. # Scene breaks are indicated with the hash character. Do not simply add an extra line space as this can be missed by the typesetter. The "Separators" pane of Scrivener's Compile sheet can handle this for you if you are writing each scene as a

can handle this for you if you are writing each/ scene a Nonymous NOVEL as FORMAT / 3 separate text document. Indicate italics by underlining. In Scrivener, you can use italics and set them to be converted to underlines upon export or print by using "Convert italics to underlines" in the "Transformations" pane of the Compile sheet.

Nonymous / NOVEL FORMAT / 4

CHAPTER TWO Another chapter folder

Begin each new chapter on a new page like this with the chapter number about a third of the way down the page. In Scrivener, this can all be dealt with in the Compile settings. The "Separators" pane of the Compile sheet can be set to start a new page for each chapter folder, and the "Formatting" pane can be used to add page padding at the top of the new page and insert the chapter number (choose "Modify" to access these options). All of this has already been done for you in the "Novel" project template. Although it is often said that writers should not use the word-count features of their computers to determine the number of words in a manuscript, most publishers and editors will happily accept a word processor word count these days. In Scrivener, you can insert a word count of your manuscript by

Scrivener, you can insert a word count of your manuscript by Nonymous / NOVEL FORMAT / 5 using Edit > Insert > Manuscript Word Count (for a manuscript, you may wish to have the word count rounded to the nearest 100, in which case select Edit > Insert > Manuscript Word Count > Rounded To Nearest 100--this feature is used on the title page of this manuscript, in fact). Note that the actual word count will not be inserted, but a tag that will be substituted for the word count upon export. In reality, the formatting of a manuscript is often only really crucial when submitting directly to a publisher--first time novelists will usually submit to an agent first, and agents are often less picky about format and will point you in the right direction before submitting your work to a publisher. # Much of the information contained in this document is based on a description of novel manuscript format by Matt Carless for the BBC Writers' Room website: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom

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