[Physics Knight]

As I'm preparing the manuscript of my novel for submission to DAW, I thought I'd brush up on the various manuscript format webpages. Of course they all say size 12, Courier, 1-inch margins, double-spaced, name/title/3 in upper right hand corner, blah blah blah. Here, however, are some formatting questions I have that were never answered in my searches and I'm wondering if anyone knows the solution(s):

1. How does one format chapter titles? New page each chapter? Is it underlined or not? Is there extra spacing around it?

2. How is a book inside a book formatted? ie One of my characters reads a book and I include a few paragraphs of it in my novel. For now I have the passages in italics. However, in manuscript formatting italics are supposed to be replaced by underlining. I think that's fine for a word of two, but a paragraphs of underlining is seriously ugly.

3. The goodies! I have a list of my characters, family trees, and a map to help my reader (for instance the family tree of the royal family is very helpful since the order of succession is important to the plot). Should these be included with my submission, or only be mentioned later in the unlikely event I actually get accepted? If so, should I mention them in the cover letter so the acquisitions editor knows to find it? Now for my map, I'm not artistic, so it's just plain lines and dashes drawn by hand, and then I scanned it in and typed the text over top to spare people my atrocious handwriting. So should the map be included, or just character lists? Both? None?

4. Other weird things. Do they really want "--" instead of the extra long hyphen that Word auto-texts in? (It'd be a pain to change back) Do they like straight or smart quotes? Are there any other annoying auto-insertions that Word has done to me that I am possibly unaware of and may mess up the manuscript if I don't undo them? I'm fed up enough with Word that I'm considering LaTeX'ing my next novel.

This is all stuff, I presume, from the publishing industry's hangover from the typewriter days, something in itself I find scary since I wasn't even alive in those days. Some of the webpages I looked at said, "For those of you with a computer do this... for those with a typewriter do this..." Does anyone actually use typewriters anymore?

That's alot of questions. Thanks to anyone who knows more about this than to I do!

[Holbrook]

As I'm preparing the manuscript of my novel for submission to DAW, I thought I'd brush up on the various manuscript format webpages. Of course they all say size 12, Courier, 1-inch margins, double-spaced, name/title/3 in upper right hand corner, blah blah blah. Here, however, are some formatting questions I have that were never answered in my searches and I'm wondering if anyone knows the solution(s):


I will take a shot these.

1. How does one format chapter titles? New page each chapter? Is it underlined or not? Is there extra spacing around it?

New page for each new chapter. Check the publisher guidelines,(and double check) I have known some that want just a page break at the end with the chapter number/name centred and underlined. Others want the chapter name/number dropped four lines down, centred, underlined. If they don't say, I have gone for the latter.

2. How is a book inside a book formatted? ie One of my characters reads a book and I include a few paragraphs of it in my novel. For now I have the passages in italics. However, in manuscript formatting italics are supposed to be replaced by underlining. I think that's fine for a word of two, but a paragraphs of underlining is seriously ugly.

Might look ugly, but this is more or less a standard, unless the publisher/agent says different in their guidelines.

3. The goodies! I have a list of my characters, family trees, and a map to help my reader (for instance the family tree of the royal family is very helpful since the order of succession is important to the plot). Should these be included with my submission, or only be mentioned later in the unlikely event I actually get accepted? If so, should I mention them in the cover letter so the acquisitions editor knows to find it? Now for my map, I'm not artistic, so it's just plain lines and dashes drawn by hand, and then I scanned it in and typed the text over top to spare people my atrocious handwriting. So should the map be included, or just character lists? Both? None?

Just the book, nothing else, this is something I have heard both agents and publishers say on panels at conventions.

4. Other weird things. Do they really want "--" instead of the extra long hyphen that Word auto-texts in? (It'd be a pain to change back) Do they like straight or smart quotes? Are there any other annoying auto-insertions that Word has done to me that I am possibly unaware of and may mess up the manuscript if I don't undo them? I'm fed up enough with Word that I'm considering LaTeX'ing my next novel.

This is a thorny one, as I have said before if the publisher's own guidelines say they want something do it, if not stick to the basics, double-spaced, single sided, courier font, 12. 1 in margins all round, name/title/3 in upper right hand corner.

[Rocket Sheep]

The whole world ISN'T MS Word compatible. For example slanty speech marks... don't go down to bare text. -- translates to bare text, the MS Word emdash does not.

In Aus, instead of italics, we underline the space before and the space after the italicised bit rather than the whole thing. I don't know what the US convention is. For a book inside a book I would consider indenting altho formatting like that is easy to lose... have they asked for MS Word?

Four or five centered stars and a gap is generally considered an adequate chapter break, chapter titles or not.

Do you need to read a family tree/map/character list in order to understand the book? I rarely read beyond the first paragraph of a preface. I think the story has to work alone. I never want to start a story with backfiller or (at that stage) irrelevant detail. Consider appeal and consider what would be published as a book. Maybe preface and two chapters will work better than first three.

[Rocket Sheep]

Oh and where's this Fun key? I want one!

[lin]

I wouldn't touch that line......

[BrianC]

Holbrook has it right, that the basic standard formatting. Your font doesn't have to be courier, however, it just needs to be non-proportional. (Don't know why, though. A non-proportional font is ugly and gives me a headache--but that's what they want.) Check your publisher to see if they have any specific requirements.

On an aside, it just occurred to me. Why don't we writers demand adherence to a rejection letter formatting standard?

[Shane]

I've got nothing to say on the formatting part, because everyone else here has the right of it. But as far as character outline and family trees and all that garbage goes, it seriously needs to not be a part of the book at all, unless you've already sold your book, your publisher prints a million copies, and they decide to do some kind of special edition book so that your crazy fans who gobble up every tidbit they can get from you will have something to suck on for a while.

And even then I wouldn't read it. Family outlines that provide details as to why so and so is here and what this title means and yadda yadda yadda -- most people don't care. And if it's needed in order to understand your book, then you have failed as a writer.

Just food for thought.

[Taramoc]

Hi there,
I'm a bit confused about the goodies.

Many fantasy books are published with list of characters and maps, even from first time authors.

Take Steven Erikson for example. He has so many characters and places that honestly maps and lists not only make his books better IMO, but are quite frankly necessary to follow all that's going on. I don't think he has failed as a writer because of that.

I can understand publishers wanting to judge a book only by the writing, and a beautiful map or exhaustive list of character won't change that, but I fail to see it as a negative thing.

Taramoc

[Shane]

Let me put it another way, because I don't want it to come across like I think those things are evil and shouldn't ever be included in books. As a matter of fact, for the novel I'm writing I'm currently coming up with quite a detailed map for it, which not only going to be informational, but it's going to be very, very pretty.

I think that if you've made a map, that's great. I think that if you have a cast list... well, that shouldn't be necessary... but okay. If you have a whole backstory that isn't a part of the novel itself but can be shoved into an Appendix, uh... I won't read it, but I suppose it could be okay.

But, if the novel makes less sense unless you've examined the map or read the backstory/family tree/character outlines/included dictionary of new words, well, this is bad. To be more specific, if there's ever a time while reading the book when you're like "Wait a minute... what? Hrm... let me refer to the Family Timeline for King Nottingspam back in Appendix F... ah... okay... now I get it," then the book has failed to tell you what you need to know inside the story itself.

Maybe it's just personal preference, but I prefer to learn everything I need to know from the novel itself. Maybe if it's a really good novel I can get obsessed over, then an Appendix filled with goodies expanding on what's told in the novel might be okay. But it should never be necessary.

A map might be slightly different. In general it's difficult to get a firm visual of the landscape in a fantasy world. A map can put things into focus for you, and that's fine. But even then, you should never come to a point in the novel where you have to say to yourself "What? Wait a minute! Let me refer back to my map to make sense of this." A novel should never confuse you like that.

[jchines]

FWIW, my last book with DAW includes italicized sections at the start of each chapter, sometimes two pages worth. It was ugly as heck, but I underlined each section, and they were fine with it.

I've never included the extras, but a friend of mine has maps for his books with Tor. These were designed after the book deal was done, and I don't believe they were included as part of the initial submission. But like I said, I'm not an expert on this point.