Tag: how to write a novel

How to Format Your Manuscript

  By

Times New Roman. 12 pt font. Double spaced. You’ve got all that covered. But what else do you have to do to get your manuscript in shape for submission? Here’s some handy info I stole from a used copy of Writer’s Market (any edition of which I highly recommend; mine’s a 2004).

Cover page

In the upper left-hand corner, list your real name, street address, phone number, and email address (remember to use a professional-looking email addy based on your name) – this is the only part that should be single-spaced.

 In the upper right-hand corner, put the word count rounded to the nearest 500.

 One-third of the way down the page, center the book title in all caps. Double space, “by,” double-space again and type your name (or pseudonym).

Chapters

Start each chapter on a new page, one-third of the way down the page. Write the number of the chapter, a colon, and the chapter title (if applicable) in all caps, centered. Double space and begin the chapter.

Header

Create a header with your last name, page number, and shortened version of book title (unless it’s already short), all separated by dashes, and all caps. (For directions on this, type “insert header” into the search in MS Word Help.) 

Spaces

Double space everything. Indent the first line of every paragraph. Do NOT include an extra line between each paragraph, and do NOT include an extra space between sentences. Align text to the left; do NOT justify. Your margins are fine at whatever Word automatically sets them (usually between 1 and 1.5 inches).

Favor Chicago over AP Style

Generally, fiction favors Chicago style and journalism favors AP style. So use em dashes—like this—instead of en dashes – like this. And don’t forget your serial commas when listing three, four, or more of anything. When in doubt, consult Strunk & White.

No fancy fonts!

I know I already mentioned Times New Roman. Apparently Courier is okay, too. But seriously – don’t even use a fancy font for the titles. Your story should stand out because of the writing, not the type. Besides, if you send an e-query, the agent’s computer might not recognize said fancy font, and it’ll just pick the next-closest thing, which may look grotesque.

No fancy paper!

Standard 8.5×11 white printer paper. No colors, designs or sparkles!

File type

“.doc” seems to be the universally accepted file type. If you have a current version of MS Word, it may automatically save as a .docx, but if the agent you are querying has an older version of Word (like mine), they won’t be able to open it – so make sure you change it to .doc.

Questions? Need clarification? Shoot me a comment!

What fiction genre sells the best?

  By ,
book store display

Image by Kriss

You’re going to be smart. Strategic. You’re going to look at the books readers are going crazy over right now and write one just like them – but better – and copies will sell like hotcakes because you’re giving the people what they want.

As you’ve probably figured out, it doesn’t work like that. You can look at the market now and see that Twilight* is popular and decide to write a novel about the forbidden romance between a vampire/werewolf hybrid and a dog lover who runs a blood bank. It’s going to be huge! The problem? It’s going to take you a few years to write and edit the book, another couple of years to find a literary agent to represent you, another couple of years for your agent to find a publisher willing to take a chance on you, and another year before it sees print. Next thing you know, a decade has gone by and paranormal romance is so blasé now. Steampunk zombies are the new hot topic.

Don’t write for the market; write for yourself. This sounds narcissistic at first, but when you really think about it, it’s quite the opposite. If you are writing for the market, what’s your motivation? You want to sell a million copies, become rich and famous, and be interviewed on Regis and Kelly. But if you write for yourself it’s because there’s a story you need to tell. You want to write the kind of book you’d enjoy reading, and you want to share a bit of your soul with the rest of the world.

Now this soul bit you create may or may not be a huge commercial bestseller. It may or may not sell at all. But it will be honest, and it will be a good story, and because of that, it will be more likely to succeed than any produced-for-the-market book would ever be. When you like your own story, you put more tender loving care into it. You take the time to get it right, and your readers can tell.

With that being said, you must also be conscious of your responsibility to your audience. Writing talent is a privilege, having your work read by others is an honor, and in exchange for these things you owe honesty, quality and completeness. So write from the gut, rewrite like a critic, and be sure to tie up all your loose ends.

—

*If you’re curious, I’m team TARDIS.

book store window

Should you be writing a different genre?

7 surefire writing tips for April

  By

I thought I’d kick off the month with a quick list of writing tips that are sure to create a bestseller.

1. Don’t write every day. Writing is like lifting weights. Your mental muscles need to rest every other day, or you might strain something and damage it permanently.

2. Don’t read other people’s work. When you create something, it needs to come from you alone. You can’t write something pure and honestly yours if you have other people’s words swimming around in your head.

3. The more words, the better. A short novel is the sign of an amateur writer. Anything less than 100,000 words is a disgrace.

4. The first chapter should be mostly backstory. Your readers need to get to know your characters before they can get into the real action. Flashbacks are really useful for this, and you can use as many as you want.

5. Don’t nitpick. 99% of the time, the first version you write will be the best version. Don’t second-guess yourself. Anyone who criticizes your grammar or sentence structure just obviously doesn’t understand art.

6. Use a cool font. Times New Roman is kind of boring. Comic Sans is much more fun looking, and it will add whimsy to your writing.

7. Take up smoking. That way your hands will have something to do when you’re not typing.

BONUS TIP: Once you get published, make sure that on the front cover, your name is bigger than the title of the book. Branding yourself as an author is way more important than promoting the story itself.

Lemony Snicket: four victories and one epic fail

  By , ,

A Series of Unfortunate Events. Even the title is enough to spark interest for its sheer cleverness. First, because of the play on the word “series,” and second, because “unfortunate events” is simultaneously charming and intriguing – a word which here means “makes you long to pick it up and peruse its pages.”

And Lemony Snicket’s thirteen-volume series does not disappoint. Except in one important respect.

Mr. Snicket, as stated, does not lack charm. His whimsical wit is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams, but with melancholy overtones. A chapter titled “Déjà vu” opens with a description of the stated phenomenon. We read to the end of the page, turn that page – and find ourselves reading the same page again. And this is only one in a long list of amusing devices.

Mr. Snicket uses reverse psychology to make his writing irresistible. He opens Chapter One of Book the First with:

“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.”

Mr. Snicket does not forget that his narrator is also a character. From starting each volume with a mysterious dedication to “Beatrice,” to slipping in snippets of his own sad story at intervals, to confiding in his audience that he often visits bookstores so he can find copies of his books and put them on the highest shelves where they won’t be found, Mr. Snicket carefully paints a picture of his baffling, utterly depressed self.

Mr. Snicket keeps us interested by feeding us tidbits of information that we know are important. We begin to desperately wonder what happened  to Beatrice, whether or not the Baudelaire parents are actually dead, and what in the world is in the sugar bowl. We devour each chapter, bookmarking every few pages – everywhere we see a clue. As we near The End, the mysteries are piling up, we are holding our breaths, we—

And this is where Mr. Snicket fails us.

Granted, he warned us there would be no happy ending. Granted, he did everything he could to persuade us not to read on. But we still expected different. We expected the ending to be happy after all because no matter how vehemently the author denied it in every printed line, we could read the truth printed on the white spaces in between. Or so we thought. But even if we took his words at face value, we at least expected answers. Every problem promises a solution, remember? Every mystery promises an explanation.

But all we are left with at the end are broken promises and a sugar bowl that will remain eternally shut.

And hours of amusement. Yes, even though I am grievously disappointed in the ending, I would still highly recommend the series. Such is the dark art of Lemony Snicket.

Writer’s block

  By

I started writing a post about writer’s block, but it wasn’t working. I know that sounds like a gag opening, but I’m serious.

It was going to list the types of writer’s block and some tips for conquering it. I wrote the whole post but all I was saying was “keep working” or “take a break.” So instead I’m just going to talk about my personal experience with writer’s block, and how I deal with it.

Since most of my writing occurs in a work environment, so does most of my writer’s block, usually when I’m trying to write a headline for an ad or billboard. I call this “hitting my head against the keyboard.” I feel guilty, because I’m being paid – by the hour, from the client’s perspective – to come up with something clever, and here I’ve spent two, three, four hours staring at a blank screen with nothing good to show for it. I begin to panic, thinking I’ll have to stay at work until seven or eight, so I can still put in eight hours without counting the three I wasted. But how far have I gotten? I open an email to my boss and paste in my work from the last few hours. For some reason, it’s easier to think away from the Word doc I’ve been working on. I weed out the worst lines first. There might be two or three half-decent lines left, which I scrunch together and stare at. If I had just a couple more good lines, that would be a decent list of options. I take a few more minutes to think about it. I type whatever comes into my head. Then, most of the time, something good comes to me. It may be the best line of the lot – or not. Either way, I now have a decent list to send to my boss to pick favorites, tweak, or make suggestions.

It’s like playing the kid’s hiding game, Hot and Cold; to find out where the thing is, you have to move. You can’t be afraid of moving in the wrong direction, because even going from chilly to freezing helps you figure out where it is.

You have to write something to know what you are not writing to know what you are writing.

First, you just dump something out. Read it – no, that’s not it. Dump again. You kind of like that part. But the rest is rubbish. Dump again, building around the good part. No, never mind; you were really aiming for something else. Dump again. Eventually, you’ll eke out something decent. You’ll spend the next week editing, and a few months later, you will completely rewrite it again and that will be The One. With a few minor tweaks, of course.

It’s all part of the process.