If you’re planning on one day turning your manuscript in to literary agents and publishing houses, you need to make sure it’s formatted correctly. In many cases, your manuscript will be skipped over if it isn’t done to industry standard, so here’s the basics that you’ll need if you don’t want to be ignored. Before I get started, please know that this is aimed specifically at fiction manuscripts. If you’re writing non-fiction or a memoir, the expectations will be different, so it would be wise to Google what you need.
The Basics
Make sure your font is 12 point Times New Roman, Courier New, or Arial. These are the only three fonts you are allowed to pick from.
Your spacing should be 1 inch on all sides of the text. This is the default on most word processors, but double check your settings just to be sure.
Your text should be double spaced.
All of your indentations must be a half inch. Do not press indent. Instead, drag over the top arrow on the ruler to have every new paragraph automatically indent.
The Title Page
The top left-hand corner of your title page will have all your personal information. They want to see your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, the novel’s genre, and word count.
Your novel’s title is allowed to be between 20-24 point font if you want. Bold is also an option, but not necessary.
The title will appear halfway down the title page.
“A novel by [your name]” will be about three quarters of the way down the page.
The Next Pages
If you have a dedication, it will be on its own page.
If you have some sort of verse or quote, those will also need their own pages.
Do not include a page for acknowledgements.
The Chapters
Chapter titles will be 12 point font. No bolding or italics.
Chapters will start from one quarter to halfway down the page.
An easy way to format chapter headings is to press enter five or six times
Make sure you always start your chapters the same way every time.
When you start a new chapter, make sure you use a page break to bump the new chapter onto a new page. This will keep it in place so that it will never budge, no matter how much you cut out or add to the previous chapter.
Page Numbers
Page numbers will start with 1 on Chapter 1 of your manuscript. Page numbers will not appear on the title page or dedication page.
Page 1 will be labeled in the footer of Chapter 1. It should be centered.
Page 2 will be in the header of the next page.
From page 2 onward, your headers will be labeled like this:
If you insert a section break after the title and dedication pages, it will make it easier to insert the page numbers.
For the most part, this is the most important of what you’ll need to know for formatting your manuscript. I used this video as reference, so I’m trusting everything it says is true because it was made by an author who has several novels published, and because it was uploaded this year, it should be up to date.
But just remember, whenever you go to turn in a manuscript, make sure you check the website of the agent or publisher you’re trying to contact. They might have specifications that differ with the ones stated in this video, and you should always do whatever you can to abide by what they want.
Reblogging aggressively. Some publishers will throw your manuscript into the slush pile or, worse, the trash if you don’t follow their desired format. Spec fic publishers are especially strict about manuscript formatting.
There are a few programs I use on an almost daily basis as an artist and illustrator which I find invaluable, but that seem to be unfortunately more secret than they deserve to be. Which is too bad, because they solve a lot of small workflow problems that I think a number of people would find useful!
I’ll keep this list limited to my big three, but it is organized in order of usefulness. (And incidentally of compatibility, as the latter two are Windows-only. Sorry! Please do still check out PureRef though, Mac users.)
PureRef is a program specifically designed to make it easier to view, sort, and work with your references. I actually put off downloading it initially because it seemed redundant– couldn’t I just paste the refs into my PSD files? Indeed, the only real barrier to working with PureRef is that learning the keyboard shortcuts and the clicks to move around the program takes a little while. But getting over that hump is well worth it, because it has some distinct advantages over trying to organize your refs in your actual art program.
Firstly, you’re no longer bogging down your actual PSD file with extra layers, nor having to fight with said layers at all– PureRef has no layer panel, so you never have to scramble to grab the right one. All images you paste into the program retain their original resolution data, so you can resize, rotate, crop, etc as needed without distortion. If you find yourself needing to adjust the values, color, etc of a ref image, you can just copy paste it into Photoshop, make your adjustments, and copy paste it back into PureRef.
The other great advantage is that you can toggle the program as ‘Stay On Top’ and keep it above Photoshop (or whatever else)– which was always a problem when trying to make a reference collage in a separate PSD file. I find that I just don’t look at my references as much as I should when they are on a second monitor, and this solves that problem.
I’ve used it religiously for about a year now, creating a new PureRef file for every illustration I do, as well as a few for specific characters, cultures, or settings in personal projects. As you can see in the example above, I like to sort my images into little clusters or ‘islands’ of specific content, so that I can easily scroll out to see the entire reference map, then zoom in to the relevant cluster easily.
There is one big tip I would suggest for using this program, if you have the harddrive space: As soon as you get it, turn on the ‘Embed local images in save file’ option. This will make your PureRef files bigger, but you’ll never have to deal with a ‘broken link’ if you move around the source files you originally dragged in.
This is such a simple little app that it doesn’t have a very formal name, though I think of it as ‘Work’ or ‘Work Work’ (for some reason.) It’s a timer that counts when your cursor is active in any (of up to 3) program you set it to count for, and stops counting when you change programs or idle. No starting, pausing, stopping, or forgetting to do any of those three things.
I use this one to accurately track my hours, both to inform myself and for commissions or other client work. At the end of a work session, I take the hours counted and add them to the hours I’ve already spent on that image in a spreadsheet.
I have it set to count my three art programs (Photoshop, Painter, and Manga Studio), so based on the settings I use, it doesn’t count time that I spend doing relevant work in my browser (such as looking up an email to double check character descriptions or ref hunting), so to counter that, I set the ‘Timeout’ option in it’s menu to 360. This means it will count to 360 seconds of cursor inactivity before it considers me idle and stops counting. Since it instantly stops counting if you switch to ‘non-work’ a program, I figure this extra time just about cancels out relevant time that it ignores in ‘non-work’ programs by counting an extra minute or so when I walk away from the computer to grab some water or what-have-you.
I use Carapace the least of these three, since my work doesn’t often have a need for creating perspective lines. But when there is architecture involved in something, this proves invaluable in simplifying that process.
Carapace lets you copy paste an image into it, and then drop in vanishing points and move them around to create perspective lines. (Though you’ll want to scale down your full res drawing or painting a bit to avoid lagging the program.) Like with PureRef, fighting the shortcuts is the worst part of it, though for myself it’s more of an issue in this program because I don’t use it often enough to remember them. Still, it gets the job done, and it’s easy to adjust the points to feel things out until you get them ‘right’. Then you just copy and paste the grid back into your art program and you’ve got that information to use as need be on its own layer.
Of course, using Carapace isn’t a replacement for actually knowing how perspective works– you still have to have a sense of how far apart the vanishing points should be placed to keep things feeling believable. But it sure does save you a lot of trouble once you do have that knowledge.
So, there are my big three recommendations for programs to help your art workflow. I hope people find them useful– if you do, please share so that they climb a little higher out of their unwarranted obscurity! And if you’ve got a favorite tool like this that I didn’t cover, feel free to share it in the comments. I know I’m curious to see what else is out there, too. Also, if Mac users have any suggestions for programs that fill similar functions, feel free to share there as well!
THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS
I used to really worry that medications would harm my creativity and it’s part of why I resisted taking them. It hasn’t. If anything it’s allowed me to be more focused and able to complete things. My imagination hasn’t changed just because I’m on anti-depressants.
a lot of my family didnt want me to start medications because they thought it would impact my ability to create, and I believed them.
Now im getting better and better with my art because i dont have to fight through the brainfog or the constant panic attacks and can dedicate my energy to my work.
Antidepressents didnt take my emotions away, they made them easier to handle.
also Van Gogh was literally in an asylum receiving mental health treatment when he painted ‘Starry Night’. It was one of the most stable & productive periods of his life, despite the fact that wasn’t hugely effective treatment, because they didn’t really have modern understandings of what things work on mental illness. Like, you know. Medication.
This is why we don’t romanticize mental illness or chronic disease.
ALSO because I am reading a book of his letters right now, Van Gogh himself addressed the idea that the best art came from pain and said that his art tended to suffer when his depression was hitting pretty hard. So don’t even pull that shit where you give his untreated depression credit for his art. Van Gogh would have hated that, and if antidepressants/better treatment of mental illness HAD existed then we might have even more of his work now.
thanks in advance: get this done by the time i press “send”
thanks for your interest: why’d you have to bring this up
would you be so kind: fucking do it
best: i have never physically met you
all best: this conversation is over
all my best: i wish you would die
happy to help: this is the easiest thing in my inbox
i hope this helps: i’ve done all i’m willing to do
i did a bit of research: i googled it, because you’re too lazy to
sorry to chase: answer my email
so sorry to chase: answer my FUCKING email
i am really sorry for being a pest but: i am LIVID that you are ignoring me
please contact my colleague: this isn’t my problem
i’m copying in my colleague: this isn’t my problem and i am thrilled about it
i’ll check and get back to you: i might forget to
i’ll let you know when i hear anything: i will forget to
can you check back with me in a week?: i’m hoping you will forget to
per our earlier conversation: i just yelled at you on the phone
great to chat just now: you just yelled at me on the phone
thanks!: i’m not mad at you
thanks!!: please don’t be mad at me
thanks!!!: i’m crying at my desk
please advise: this might be your fault
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mind if i swing by?: i’m already in the elevator
can you confirm for me: you told me before and i deleted the email
sorry if that was unclear: i think you’re an idiot
let me know if you need anything else: please never contact me again
You know how anti-abortion propaganda pegs women as emotionally distraught, sad and alone after their abortions? I was one of them.
I never expected it. Leading up to the procedure, I was laughing my ass off in the clinic, joking with my best friend about how we wanted to keep the “sack of cells” to put on the mantle.
But in the three weeks following my abortion, I sobbed at everything. Being alone was debilitating. I lost my shit and banged my head. Laugher was a foreign concept.
I was everything the pro-lifers said I would be.
When I wasn’t sobbing, I was rolling around in bed, with just enough energy to want to get out of bed, but too little to put my feet to the floor. And when I was up, I snapped. I screamed when something went wrong—or just not right.
As in not finding a spatula—this was grounds for a full-on breakdown in the kitchen, because not finding it meant not making myself lunch, which meant eating out, which meant spending money, which meant time not working and not working meant I wasn’t functioning.
I was equating my self-worth to my ability to find a spatula.
I threw the rest of the utensils on the floor, partly out of desperation, partly out of rage. I slammed the drawer. I hit my head with my palm. I wanted the mess in my head out. I wanted out.
It was ironic though, that I, the usual dreamer of escape plans, of plan Bs, Cs and Ds, was unable to see the several other spatula-like utensils in my kitchen, or recognize the other lunch options crowded in the fridge.
I was not myself.
On less volatile days, I begged my husband to stay. I begged him to come for me at lunch, to leave work early, to arrive at work late. I was being clingy—I, the one who shoos everyone out of the house on the regular, because they disturb my sacred workspace.
When my husband did leave for work, I created imaginary situations about how I was going to end up alone. He was going to leave. He was just waiting for the right day. Surely he would reach a breaking point with me. Surely everyone would. How much of my emotions could anyone take? Even I couldn’t take much more.
Logic was gone from my brain and my body. I couldn’t make sense of anything. My head was constantly spinning in some vicious cycle. I wasn’t myself. I felt powerless.
I was everything the pro-lifers said I would be—except regretful. I didn’t regret the abortion. At all.
That’s when I understood what was really happening to me. It was the hormones.
I remember the day. I was in the shower. I couldn’t get over this idea of loneliness. Sure, I had outbursts before, courtesy of synthetic hormones. But never had I felt so alone. I loved being alone. It wasn’t like me to be distraught over it.
And then it hit me.
“Oxytocin! It’s the oxytocin!!!” I blurted out. My mouth hung open as I stared into space processing it all. “It’s the oxytocin.”
Somehow my mind had wandered back to ninth grade health class in—guess what—Catholic school. The lesson was on hormones. While the teacher brushed as quickly over the topic as possible, he did manage to sputter out a few facts on oxytocin, AKA the bonding hormone. We learned it was what connected mothers and children and husbands and wives. That was it.
What the teacher really wanted to say was that oxytocin plays a major role in pregnancy, and it gives your orgasms that toe-tingling wow-factor. But you know, this was Catholic school—where the smoke from the burning fires of hell clouds the curriculum.
Somehow this nugget of information stuck with me, all the way to my post-abortion meltdown.
So I thought: If oxytocin was responsible for bonding, could the lack of it be responsible for my loneliness? And if my body was producing more of it because of the pregnancy, did production stop as the sack was yanked out of my uterus? And did this send a shock through my body and mind?
I was betting yes. I set to researching as soon as I got out of the shower. My hormones were way imbalanced. This I knew. The powerless feeling reminded me of all those times they gave me depression and bipolar meds and nothing changed until I threw away my birth control pills.
My weepiness was so absurd it had to be related to estrogen. My mood swings and racing thoughts were just like those I would get from the pseudo-bipolar hormonal imbalances.
But all this from the voluntary expulsion of some cells? This was new territory.
I knew women suffered from some pretty messed-up hormonal imbalances after giving birth. Post-partum depression is a widely recognized issue, even if it isn’t completely understood.
So I researched that. And what did I find? Oxytocin. Turns out that women with lower levels of oxytocin are at higher risk for post-partum depression.
Hmmmm, I thought.
So what about miscarriages? After all, your body is used to producing extra pregnancy hormones and then it stops.
And then what about abortions? Technically, it’s the same in the eyes of the uterus. This search took a little more effort.
While I did find evidence claiming that miscarriages cause hormone imbalances and emotions like that of post-partum depression, it wasn’t as forthcoming.
We talk a lot about women being depressed after a miscarriage, but not in a physiological context. The tone set by the American Pregnancy Association and the American Psychological Association is that these post-miscarriage emotions happen because of the sadness caused by the loss of the baby, as if hormonal changes are a mere add-on.
But that’s not always true. I wasn’t sad that I lost a baby or killed some cells or however you want to see it. I didn’t regret it. But I was still so, so sad.
Unfortunately, no one gives you a pamphlet in the abortion clinic warning that your hormonal changes may fuck up the next month of your life.
Other countries do, but not ours. Australia, even Canada, and the most Catholic Ireland acknowledges the hormonal changes that lead to emotional distress (within the context of a miscarriage, of course).
These are just the facts we need to be spreading. This is the dialogue we need to be creating.
I’m not crazy. We’re not crazy. The ones who dismiss physiological issues for psychological concerns are the ones who need to be examined. Not us.
Kudos to the women who already know this and thank you to the ones who are sharing it.
For more on the subject of abortion and hormonal imbalance, check out Period Makeover and PASS Awareness.
lanablack 