Writing 101--Formatting

In the old days (pre-computers)--and no, I wasn't a writer back then, but I did have a typewriter--formatting a manuscript used to be so, so simple.

Courier, 12-pt font, indent 5 spaces first sentence of a paragraph, unjustified right side, 1-inch margins all around.

Personally, I hate Courier font. I never liked the look of it and it's difficult to read. The reason publishers like it is because each letter takes up the same amount of space. An i takes up as much space as a C or M, making it easy to typeset a manuscript.

Computers, especially PC's (personal computers), opened up a whole new can of worms. Anyone and everyone who ever wanted to write would have the ability to write, spellcheck, and edit without even wasting one piece of paper. Which means more and more people were trying their hand at writing the Great American Novel.

--on a side note: just because you can write the next GAN, it doesn't mean it's ready right out of the gate. *Pay attention NaNo fans* Find a crit group AFTER you've gone through the story and edited it a few times.

So, I'll go over the basics for you when you type a story that you would like to publish, traditionally (through the NY publishing houses) or independently (known as self-publishing). There are differences between the two, AND the formatting for electronically self-publishing is constantly evolving, so check the guidelines for the site you wish to upload your product onto.

FONT: The font that automatically comes up on Blogger is Times New Roman, 12-pt, which happens to be my favorite font. Many other fonts are acceptable as long as they are legible.
Arial, Courier, TNR, Helvetica, etc. are fine, just don't use Comic sans, Chiller, or Old English, just because you think it looks cool.

--a short word about serif vs. non-serif fonts. Leave it to the French to complicate things. Actually, I love the French, I have a French sis-in-law and she's wonderful. Anyhoo, serif fonts are the ones that have the little 'dookies' or tails hanging off the letters. Okay, dookie isn't the technical term, neither is tail, but it helps explain serif.  
I'll use my initials as an example:

M A G See the little tails?  Here's a non-serif font: M A G No tails.
FONT SIZE: 12-pt font is the norm, but 14-pt font is also acceptable for some fonts. Just because you can write your novel in itty-bitty 8-pt font, it doesn't mean someone can READ it that small.

MARGINS: 1-inch margins all around, left justified, right unjustified. This basically gives it a clean edge on the left side, but the right side is ragged. Justifying left and right sides tends to make the text in the middle of the line look wonky. So don't even bother with it at this point.

PARAGRAPH: Indents: This is different depending on where you want to publish your work. Traditionally, you would have a 5-point indent at the start of your paragraphs and that is still acceptable. But if you intend to electronically self-publish, you should change the indent to 3-point. When 5-pt is used on ebooks, it looks wrong as the spacing is too large. Line spacing: Traditionally, at least 25 lines per page, which isn't necessarily double. Electronically, they prefer single space, but no more than 1.5 spaces between lines. Tabs: is the button that you push to automatically move your cursor to the next set tab. DO NOT USE THIS FUNCTION. USE YOUR ENTER KEY. Do not tab down to the next line. Do not tab over, except to place a page number in the header. This causes too much work to fix, either way you decide to publish.  Widows and orphans:  Remove them. Under Paragraphs, Line and Page breaks. Uncheck the box. When this is active and you print out your manuscript, it will keep a paragraph together, which results in a large blank footer on some pages. Headers and Footers: Neither one of these are needed when you write fiction for self-publishing electronically. Headers are required when you enter contests, submit to editors/agents, and to keep track of your pages if you decide to print them.  To add a header, click at the top of your word document. This will make the header design available. Move the insert tab (top one) over to the left on top of the margin tab. Type in the name of your manuscript and your name. For example: To Gnome Me is to Love Me/MAGOLLA.  And then you tab over to the right where you want your page number (on the right margin). Go to Page Number on the top of your document and click the location that you want (current location). Then choose they style you would like. When you're finished close Header/Footer. Footers aren't used in fiction writing.

And that's it for Formatting your manuscript.

The Truths about Self-Publishing

For those of you who think self-publishing is simply slapping your manuscript up on an e-pub site, let me be the first to educate you.

Just because you wrote a story, it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.  Just because you read your rough draft and fixed a few errors, it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.  Just because you allowed your family and friends to read your story (and they gushed . . . unlike my family who simply ignores me), it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.

Once you finish that first story, you heave a big sigh, you can't wipe that huge grin of your face, you set it aside for a week or six, and you tell those near and dear that you finished your novel . . . and then the real work starts.

The creative portion of your work is out of the way, now you have to get analytical.  Yes, you have to be logical and think about how to improve your story and make it more marketable.  You need to see what's selling in your genre. You need to read your target genre VORACIOUSLY.  You need to know what length of book is acceptable for your particular genre.  You need to know what is morally acceptable in your particular genre. Pushing the limit on certain topics might work for your story, but be simply be AWARE. You might have a book that talks about abuse, drugs, and sex, but if it's for a Young Adult novel you need to approach it with a delicate touch.  YA's don't want preachy, they want real and if you can educate them at the same time then good for you.

And now you need to rip your story apart--RUTHLESSLY.  Cut any crap that doesn't move the story forward.  Cut any chapter/paragraph/sentence that doesn't show growth in your character, expand the plot, or reveal information. Cut any sentence that you have to read twice--if they confuse you, they will certainly confuse the reader. You need to be analytical about your story's pacing, characterization, and dialogue, which should reflect the style of each character (age, dialect, syntax).

If you think your story is ready to publish--think again. Do this 3-4 times before you even let anyone look at your story. Now is the time to call in your trusted writer friends, your critique buddies, or beta readers.  Let them know what is expected from them.  Do you want big picture items? Pacing, characterization, plot.  Or do you want them to find the nit-picky stuff? Grammar, punctuation, word choice (this is HUGE, especially with characterization). It's a waste of EVERYONES time if you have a CP fix your grammar and punctuation problems, if you have to cut an entire chapter or two because your pacing is off. 

REMEMBER: Fix the big stuff first and then work down to the little stuff.

You need to come up with a decent title.  It's up to you to find a title that conveys what your story is all about. Put on your thinking cap, brainstorm with your group of CP's, or simply jot down every crappy title you can think of until the most obscure thought pops into your mind.

Once you have a viable story and title, you need to come up with a blurb, synopsis and logline. A blurb is what you would find on the back of a physical book. It identifies the main character(s) and their conflict.  A synopsis (long-5-10 pages and short-1 page) describes your story in detail (some e pub sites require both).  And a logline is a way to convey your story idea in less than 30 words. Think of the TV blurbs in the paper or TV Guide. If you can't develop an 'elevator pitch', then you aren't ready for the big time. The Smashwords site requires a short blurb of less than 400 characters, not words, characters including spaces.  How would you tweet your story concept?  Condensing your 90,000 word story into 30 words is HARD.  You have to think about the core story, and then choose the words carefully to convey what that story is about.

THIS IS THE POINT WHERE YOU WOULD QUERY AGENTS AND EDITORS WITH YOUR STORY.  YOU ARE ALSO READY TO PITCH TO AN AGENT/EDITOR, TOO.
Now you need to think about your cover concept.  What is the impression you want the reader to have when they first see your cover?  Is it dark? Romantic? Thriller? Fun? Fantasy?  If this story is the first in a series, you need to think about the series logo, idea, or concept.  This idea will carry through all the books in the series, so spend some time thinking about your 'look'.  And if you have zero artistic talent, take a crowbar to your wallet and spend some money. 

Why?

Think about it.  What is the first thing a prospective reader sees when looking for a book?  The cover.

And now you have to think about tags.  Those are the words that will be searched on by a prospective reader. (for GNOME, I used, gnome, goblin, witch, magic, fantasy, etc)

You've checked all of the above and you think you're ready.

Think again.

Now it's time to format your story.  Get rid of all those stupid extra spaces that snuck in when you weren't looking.  You know the ones.  They're insidious.  Some times they crop up at the beginning of a paragraph or they multiply in-between sentences, or they'll even show up at the end of a sentence. This includes those extra ENTER keystrokes, which translate into blank pages in an e-book. You might not think it matters, but it does when your manuscript converts to the computer formats used by various e-readers. This is a good time to slowly go through your story AGAIN.  One trick is to go through it backwards to keep yourself from getting caught up in the story and missing things.

Verify each chapter number--trust me on this. Been there, done that. I forgot that I cut a chapter, which made everything wonky. If you changed a character's name, or left ??? where you meant to check something or find a more appropriate noun or verb.  Or simply left a word out of a sentence (and it had been missed by you AND THREE OTHER PEOPLE!). 

Take a deep breath and realize that you are now ready.  Look beginnings of other e-books that are in your genre.  Did they have a cover page, write a disclaimer, add licensing notes?

Now, you're ready.  Go through the instructions.  If you don't have a cover image the correct size, then fix it BEFORE you upload the image.  If you need to add a teaser chapter for your next book be sure to add it to your copy before you upload the document.

Then you have to fill out the legal forms and "sign the contract".

And all you have to do is wait for the money to roll in, right?  Be real, remember your you're (and this was after I proofed it 3 TIMES!) already in the hole . . .

Uh, think again.  Now comes the marketing part of the equation.

I don't know about you, but I'm beat.

So this is all for today!

Later Peeps!

Drudgery of Formatting

Tuesday morning, my beta reader/grammar maven sent GNOME back with her comments and edits.  This is the final FINAL edit of this story.  It's slow going because I decided to verify my formatting at the same time. 

When you take the step to self-pub, you have to do it all yourself (or pay someone).  Now, don't let the thought of formatting your work overwhelm you.  There are a few tricks of the trade, BUT it is very slow and tedious to check all your sentences to make certain you don't double space, have your quotation marks going the wrong direction, and place only one space AFTER every period, plus I didn't want too many paragraph returns between chapters since this can leave blank pages on e-readers.

I must say when my beta reader returned GNOME, she sent me an email along with the manuscript.  The one sentence that stood out was, "I read half the book last night, and frankly, I didn't want to stop, but I was SO exhausted I knew I was starting to read for just pleasure and I wasn't catching edits, so I shut it down for the night."

THIS was why I decided to take the step to self-publish. 

THIS was why I started writing middle grade.

I want to share my stories. I want to write stories that pull readers from their reality and immerse them into my fantasy. Editors and agents aren't looking for my type of story.  That's my reality. It's too light and not dark end-of-the-world type of story.

Is self-pubbing for everyone?  My response is still NO. 

This year, I intend to publish ALL my finished Goblin's Apprentice stories.  So far, that's three novels in the series and three short stories.  I also intend to write three more short stories.  Think about it.  The stories are written, but need editing, blurbs and covers= time and $$$.

Which means none of them are ready to go up without some work!

At the end of GNOME, I will place a teaser of the next book in the series, The Fast and the FAERIEous, but that doesn't mean FAERIE is ready to publish.  It needs edits-slicing and dicing-beta reads to catch the stupid mistakes (missing words, wrong tense, confusing sentences, etc). 

*sigh* and the cycle begins again.

I do have one regret by self-publishing.

I don't have any books to sign.  I won't get the chance to meet my readers at a book signing, but I'll take that trade off if I get kids to read my quirky stories.  And readers are more than welcome to chat with me on Facebook, or email me a note.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent again.

--and now, I need to figure out how to market my stories . . .

No excuse, just tired. 

Later, Peeps!