On Manuscript Preparation Part 2
(Two straight "Part 2" blogposts, this one and the one just before it; 'tis a season for sequels).
Last November I made a post, "On Manuscript Preparation", explaining to the best of my ability the "standard manuscript format". Thanks very much to Zen In Darkness for sending me these three links on the same topic: a rant and a supporting post from Ellen Datlow and Paul Mcauley respectively, and a response from M. John Harrison.
Reading through these three posts and the comments, and being a printer who knows and is involved pretty much daily with the printing production process, I find myself siding with Ms. Datlow. Let me put it this way: anything that makes it easier for me and my fellow blue-collar hard-hats to get the job done, to lay out and strip the film of your work properly before they go to plate (assuming one doesn't have a direct-to-plate machine, like my small press), to get your story mass-produced onto paper, is a blessing. Anything that makes the job harder, that adds extra steps and costs us time, is not.
Here's an interesting comment from madwriter:
One reason I haven't done writing workshops for awhile is because now and again I would want to talk about things like proper manuscript format, proper spelling and grammar, and so on, but the workshop coordinators would get huffy and say they did not want to include technical discussions. In a few cases they made it clear that they thought technical discussions would impinge on creativity. In cases where I pointed out to a class that editors might not even bother looking at a manuscript containing errors of language or format, some coordinators got downright angry, implying that playing by the editorial rules was a detriment to creativity.
(Ms. Datlow goes on to ask what kind of workshops madwriter has been attending, if they were mainstream workshops, because she says she doesn't know any sff workshops that would react this way. Madwriter replied that those workshops were indeed mainstream ones.)
I respect and see the viewpoint of the creative. Technical stuff is, as I wrote in that old post, seemingly archaic, and surely boring. But there are reasons for technicalities, as I wrote then. I believe that there can be no better compromise than this comment from berry k:
I really don't understand why so many people argue about this. The manuscript format is for the EDITOR'S convenience, not the writers'. They should: 1) Write however they like: Times Roman, Garamond, Unicorn Sans, a hand-cut pen made from a phoenix plume using their life's blood on handmade papyrus, whatever. 2) When the time comes to submit, if the market has formatting guidelines, do that. Don't argue. 3) If there are no guidelines, use Standard MS Format of double spaced 12pt Courier, 1 inch margins, paragraphs indented 1/2 inch, black ink on white USLetter paper, pages numbers on top, etc. DON'T ARGUE! Don't make it EASY for your work to be rejected!
Simple, really. Everyone's happy, the creative and the technical guys. Well said, berry k.
There exists the editor who reads the submissions, like Ms. Datlow. This editor, depending on his adaptability, can adjust to different submission formats. Or not. It's his choice. But in the printing process there exist people behind-the-scenes who won't care about the nuances of your prose and how easy or how well it reads, or whether your story is terrific or not. In fact, chances are, they won't even read your work. Rather, these people care about getting your text onto paper, into the proper form for readers. And that involves technicalities. They care about making sure the text reaches paper in its complete form, in its readable form, with clear instructions from those who read the words. The guidelines set by the publication are what help all these people make it easier to get the work onto paper. The easier it is to get this job done, the better. The more steps, the more time taken, the more difficult the job, the crankier these folk get. The crankier they get, the more careless they get, which leads to more errors, and then, more delays. And maybe even a poorly printed story.
It's been argued that with computers as fast as they are, and the power of modern word processors, writers should be allowed to focus on the creative side and leave the adjustments to the editors. But writers outnumber editors. Why not help the editors out and follow the guidelines? Maybe it's a sign of professionalism, maybe not, but it's certainly one of courtesy and respect, of being polite to the other guy, the same as being asked to "Be Kind, Please Rewind" (this is for those of you who remember renting VHS and Betamax tapes; if you don't, go ask someone older). The amount of submissions PGS receives is manageable, which is why there is a high level of leniency here with regard to format. It doesn't take too long to adjust manuscripts into the preferred format. Five, ten minutes, tops. But imagine larger publications here and abroad which receive ten, twenty, thirty times the number of submissions. A good hour could be spent fixing all those submissions into the preferable format, maybe more. Time that could be spent reading the pieces instead of fixing margins and font sizes. Even if PGS is lenient, I'd like for contributors to practice with us. I've always encouraged everyone to send in their work to other markets, bigger ones, and if you've practiced the standard form with PGS it should come pretty automatically when you send your story to other places that are stricter.
Here's a comment from Robert Stephenson, who works at an agency:
I get single spaced justified and unparagraphed submission at my agency. Sometimes, when I am feeling generous I do read a page, but am usually left disappointed. These days if a mss comes to me badly formatted I just dump it - life's too short. Cruel, I know, and maybe I might miss a gem but if you can't submit properly it immediately tells me you haven't done any homework on the industry at all. If you can't get simple things like that right how could you get the complexities of a novel right?
When doing anthologies I'm a little more forgiving but problems still exist and they aren't getting any better. A good format means I'm more likely to read your work.
You wouldn't want your work dumped and unread, would you?
You wouldn't want the film-stripper or the layout person scratching his head and taking a guess as to how to sequence your sentences, paragraphs, or pages in their chronological order, would you? Remember, these are the guys who most likely aren't reading your work, just setting it up before it gets to the big machine, and following the instructions of those who have read the work. Once this gets to the machine operator, all he'll know is what's on the plate, and that he has to get that onto paper. Imagine if the chronology is wrong, and he's printed two thousand copies already. What a waste.
Different media, different formats. What is easy to work with for an online ezine is different for a print magazine. A short story's format is different from that of a novel's. And poems! You know how many forms that can take. With so many variations, even when things are done properly, as with anything, mistakes slip through the cracks. I can only gnash my teeth that despite my best efforts, there are errors in released PGS issues (Forgive me, have mercy!). Making it easier for those who work behind the scenes to produce the physical copies lessens the number of mistakes.
(I would like to point out that we always do ask for soft and camera-ready hard copies of a client's chosen design and layout, that is, how they want the final product to look. Then it’s up to us to execute, using the MSS as something of an instruction manual, and the soft and hard copies in their preferred format as a mock-up and guide.)
There are big names who don't follow formatting, for sure, but they have the clout (whether that's a good excuse or not I leave to you), since they've proven themselves in terms of sales and readership. Urban legend or not, I emailed Zen In Darkness that there's a story of Stephen King sending in one of his manuscripts to his agent typed on old and dry milk cartons when he ran out of paper. The agent had to ask his secretary to retype the story so he could read it. But that's Mr. King, and I don't think he does that now. Mr. King probably can hire a secretary to format his work for him. And whether you're a big name or not, it doesn't hurt to be courteous and professional.
So the safest and best bet is to follow what berry k said above. Write as you please, then follow the guidelines where they exist, and in the absence of any specific ones, query, or simply follow the standard. You can't go wrong. In fact, there exist magazines and ezines that provide several formatting options for contributors to choose from. And as I've said many times, following the guidelines gives your work an even chance at being read and hopefully, published.
If formatting becomes a habit and second-nature, this technicality actually becomes the easiest part, leaving you to focus on the harder part of getting your work as close to perfectly written as you can.
Last November I made a post, "On Manuscript Preparation", explaining to the best of my ability the "standard manuscript format". Thanks very much to Zen In Darkness for sending me these three links on the same topic: a rant and a supporting post from Ellen Datlow and Paul Mcauley respectively, and a response from M. John Harrison.
Reading through these three posts and the comments, and being a printer who knows and is involved pretty much daily with the printing production process, I find myself siding with Ms. Datlow. Let me put it this way: anything that makes it easier for me and my fellow blue-collar hard-hats to get the job done, to lay out and strip the film of your work properly before they go to plate (assuming one doesn't have a direct-to-plate machine, like my small press), to get your story mass-produced onto paper, is a blessing. Anything that makes the job harder, that adds extra steps and costs us time, is not.
Here's an interesting comment from madwriter:
One reason I haven't done writing workshops for awhile is because now and again I would want to talk about things like proper manuscript format, proper spelling and grammar, and so on, but the workshop coordinators would get huffy and say they did not want to include technical discussions. In a few cases they made it clear that they thought technical discussions would impinge on creativity. In cases where I pointed out to a class that editors might not even bother looking at a manuscript containing errors of language or format, some coordinators got downright angry, implying that playing by the editorial rules was a detriment to creativity.
(Ms. Datlow goes on to ask what kind of workshops madwriter has been attending, if they were mainstream workshops, because she says she doesn't know any sff workshops that would react this way. Madwriter replied that those workshops were indeed mainstream ones.)
I respect and see the viewpoint of the creative. Technical stuff is, as I wrote in that old post, seemingly archaic, and surely boring. But there are reasons for technicalities, as I wrote then. I believe that there can be no better compromise than this comment from berry k:
I really don't understand why so many people argue about this. The manuscript format is for the EDITOR'S convenience, not the writers'. They should: 1) Write however they like: Times Roman, Garamond, Unicorn Sans, a hand-cut pen made from a phoenix plume using their life's blood on handmade papyrus, whatever. 2) When the time comes to submit, if the market has formatting guidelines, do that. Don't argue. 3) If there are no guidelines, use Standard MS Format of double spaced 12pt Courier, 1 inch margins, paragraphs indented 1/2 inch, black ink on white USLetter paper, pages numbers on top, etc. DON'T ARGUE! Don't make it EASY for your work to be rejected!
Simple, really. Everyone's happy, the creative and the technical guys. Well said, berry k.
There exists the editor who reads the submissions, like Ms. Datlow. This editor, depending on his adaptability, can adjust to different submission formats. Or not. It's his choice. But in the printing process there exist people behind-the-scenes who won't care about the nuances of your prose and how easy or how well it reads, or whether your story is terrific or not. In fact, chances are, they won't even read your work. Rather, these people care about getting your text onto paper, into the proper form for readers. And that involves technicalities. They care about making sure the text reaches paper in its complete form, in its readable form, with clear instructions from those who read the words. The guidelines set by the publication are what help all these people make it easier to get the work onto paper. The easier it is to get this job done, the better. The more steps, the more time taken, the more difficult the job, the crankier these folk get. The crankier they get, the more careless they get, which leads to more errors, and then, more delays. And maybe even a poorly printed story.
It's been argued that with computers as fast as they are, and the power of modern word processors, writers should be allowed to focus on the creative side and leave the adjustments to the editors. But writers outnumber editors. Why not help the editors out and follow the guidelines? Maybe it's a sign of professionalism, maybe not, but it's certainly one of courtesy and respect, of being polite to the other guy, the same as being asked to "Be Kind, Please Rewind" (this is for those of you who remember renting VHS and Betamax tapes; if you don't, go ask someone older). The amount of submissions PGS receives is manageable, which is why there is a high level of leniency here with regard to format. It doesn't take too long to adjust manuscripts into the preferred format. Five, ten minutes, tops. But imagine larger publications here and abroad which receive ten, twenty, thirty times the number of submissions. A good hour could be spent fixing all those submissions into the preferable format, maybe more. Time that could be spent reading the pieces instead of fixing margins and font sizes. Even if PGS is lenient, I'd like for contributors to practice with us. I've always encouraged everyone to send in their work to other markets, bigger ones, and if you've practiced the standard form with PGS it should come pretty automatically when you send your story to other places that are stricter.
Here's a comment from Robert Stephenson, who works at an agency:
I get single spaced justified and unparagraphed submission at my agency. Sometimes, when I am feeling generous I do read a page, but am usually left disappointed. These days if a mss comes to me badly formatted I just dump it - life's too short. Cruel, I know, and maybe I might miss a gem but if you can't submit properly it immediately tells me you haven't done any homework on the industry at all. If you can't get simple things like that right how could you get the complexities of a novel right?
When doing anthologies I'm a little more forgiving but problems still exist and they aren't getting any better. A good format means I'm more likely to read your work.
You wouldn't want your work dumped and unread, would you?
You wouldn't want the film-stripper or the layout person scratching his head and taking a guess as to how to sequence your sentences, paragraphs, or pages in their chronological order, would you? Remember, these are the guys who most likely aren't reading your work, just setting it up before it gets to the big machine, and following the instructions of those who have read the work. Once this gets to the machine operator, all he'll know is what's on the plate, and that he has to get that onto paper. Imagine if the chronology is wrong, and he's printed two thousand copies already. What a waste.
Different media, different formats. What is easy to work with for an online ezine is different for a print magazine. A short story's format is different from that of a novel's. And poems! You know how many forms that can take. With so many variations, even when things are done properly, as with anything, mistakes slip through the cracks. I can only gnash my teeth that despite my best efforts, there are errors in released PGS issues (Forgive me, have mercy!). Making it easier for those who work behind the scenes to produce the physical copies lessens the number of mistakes.
(I would like to point out that we always do ask for soft and camera-ready hard copies of a client's chosen design and layout, that is, how they want the final product to look. Then it’s up to us to execute, using the MSS as something of an instruction manual, and the soft and hard copies in their preferred format as a mock-up and guide.)
There are big names who don't follow formatting, for sure, but they have the clout (whether that's a good excuse or not I leave to you), since they've proven themselves in terms of sales and readership. Urban legend or not, I emailed Zen In Darkness that there's a story of Stephen King sending in one of his manuscripts to his agent typed on old and dry milk cartons when he ran out of paper. The agent had to ask his secretary to retype the story so he could read it. But that's Mr. King, and I don't think he does that now. Mr. King probably can hire a secretary to format his work for him. And whether you're a big name or not, it doesn't hurt to be courteous and professional.
So the safest and best bet is to follow what berry k said above. Write as you please, then follow the guidelines where they exist, and in the absence of any specific ones, query, or simply follow the standard. You can't go wrong. In fact, there exist magazines and ezines that provide several formatting options for contributors to choose from. And as I've said many times, following the guidelines gives your work an even chance at being read and hopefully, published.
If formatting becomes a habit and second-nature, this technicality actually becomes the easiest part, leaving you to focus on the harder part of getting your work as close to perfectly written as you can.
posted by pgenrestories at 9:30 AM
3 Comments:
Thanks for your post.
Interestingly, Mike Harrison is largely joking--his submissions are professionally submitted as are most of those writers who actually want to get published :-) Surprise! surprise!
It's obvious that several of the people commenting on his post aren't professional writers and have no interest in being so. I pointed this out (not so directly) in my response but I'm sure I'll be attacked for it. That's how these things work. The "artist" are convinced that editors are elitist and stamping down on their creativity, not seemingly having a clue that creativity is for the content not the presentation (although of course sometimes the presentation can and should be creative as in Mark Danielewski's House of Blue Leaves.
Hi, Ms. Datlow!
In addition to what you said about content and presentation, I'm of the mind that perhaps they also don't know the printing production process, and that the standard MSS can serve as some sort of instruction manual on how to execute and produce the desired format in the final product. Perhaps if they knew the practical reason behind the standard MSS, they'd understand this requirement.
And I still do think berry k's suggestion is the best compromise that makes everyone happy.
Thank you very much for leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts here on this blog! Have a good weekend!
Thanks for your post.
Interestingly, Mike Harrison is largely joking--his submissions are professionally submitted as are most of those writers who actually want to get published :-) Surprise! surprise! It's obvious that several of the people commenting on his post aren't professional writers and have no interest in being so. I pointed this out (not so directly) in my response but I'm sure I'll be attacked for it. That's how these things work. The "artist" are convinced that editors are elitist and stamping down on their creativity, not seemingly having a clue that creativity is for the content not the presentation (although of course sometimes the presentation can and should be creative as in Mark Danielewski's House of Blue Leaves.
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