Formatting and the Written Page

I got dinged in a contest once because the reviewer took out a ruler and decided that my margins were 0.95", rather than the industry standard (and contest required) 1.0"! Nothing was said about the content of the story, but everything was said about the format.

I've had newbies in my writer's group ask about ms format. I can recite it off the top of my head:

1. 1" margin all around
2. double-space
3. 12-point
4. Courier or Courier New *
5. single-sided
6. chapter starts 1/3rd of the way down the page **

* see this link for using Times New Roman http://agentquery.com/format_tips.aspx In reality, get the agent/editor guidelines and follow them.

** this is a matter of judgment. One site told me 1/2 way down the page. Now I go 3 blank lines, the title line, a blank line, and then verbiage.

Word count is a critical thing. I won't go into the definitions of lengths. The results you get from different methods are all over the place. There are a number of ways of figuring this.

1. if using M/S Word, use the Word Count tab under tools.
2. count the spaces and characters and divide by 6
3. turn orphan off and divide the total page count by 250.

For example. Minus One comes in at 409 pages in Courier New. That works out as 124,446 words in Method #1; 664,142 spaces and characters, which equals 110,735 words in Method #2; and 102,250 words in Method #3. How long do I think it is? Oh, about 100,000 words.

The important thing is to be consistent. I found that going to www.sfwa.org and using their methods works the best, which puts Minus One at 102,250 words, and if you allow for partial pages (i.e. those pages with just a couple of lines on them) you can be fairly close. There's also a method of counting the words per line on three different pages and so on. I'd rather use the tools I outlined.

Now a word about getting things uniform. The margins are easy, but Word, and presumably WordPerfect (I also use Open Office) will do things to the bottom of the page so you don't have the same number of lines per page. Turn Orphan Control off in M/S Word. Do a CTRL-A to select the entire text. Then go to the Format Tab and select paragraph. Then select Line and Page Breaks. Click on the box for Orphan control until it is blank. Exit. You'll find that you the last line on the page will always be in the same place (until the last line, of course). This evening out helps when calculating the word count.

Headings - I do this now so it's automatic. I use Headers, and in the upper right hand corner put in Last Name/Title*/Page #. If this is a chapter, I'll put Last Name/Title*/Chapter #/Page #. So, to pick on Minus One again, this looks like Bretthauer/Minus One/135. *if you have a long title it is permitted to use a key word from the title: Bretthauer/Engage/Chap 3/5 which is page 5 of the 3rd chapter of Engage the Enemy More Closely.

Why the upper right corner? Because the majority of editors and agents are right handed, and would hold your m/s in the left hand. And if they drop it on the floor, or it gets knocked off the desk, this will help them reassemble the story.

Page breaks and end of chapter/story. I use a # for line breaks, centered. This is an old typesetter mark that said line break. At the end I use # # # to indicate chapter or story end. Do I have to say The End? You can, but you don't have to. I did have something get mislabeled because the person posting the story was expecting "The End" and it wasn't there. That got straightened out in a hurry.

Alternatively, use * * * for your scene and chapter breaks. Whatever you do, make it consistent!

Courier New vs. Times New Roman. The former is a fixed-pitch font, the latter is a proportional font. This means that in Courier New, each character takes up the same space. An 'i' is the same width as a 'Z'. I do the former rather than the latter in a submission unless requested otherwise. Agents read for a living, and their eyes get tired. Nobody ever lost a sale by making it easier on the customer. But check Writer's Guidelines or Writer's Market for suggestions. Don't use a fancy font. I know Courier looks boring, but you are not there to jazz it up. That's what the typesetter does. Your job is to get the story in the hands of the editor who will buy it. That's why you check Guidelines. If they want it in Verdana, Arial, Bookman, or New Century, a click of the font tab will give it to them. But you'll find most want it in something easy on the eyes.

What about special characters and formatting? Don't. Okay, so you have to do some things. Use underline instead of italics. Don't use bold at all. Why? Only underline shows up when you use Courier or Courier New. And turn off the conversion thing that converts two dashes -- into an em-dash. Again, you want to make things clear.

None of this applies if it is an e-publishing as those have their own rules and you have to rely upon the editor to convert it to the format he/she wants. It's worth some time to learn a little about HTML. And you can always edit HTML in Notepad.

One final point: You've created your m/s and it comes in as a bloated 156k file in M/S Word. How do you trim out the goo and dribble Microsoft puts in everything? Open it in Wordpad. Save it. Reply yes to the request to save it as a .rtf and then close. Magically all the things that were eliminated but so helpfully kept in the file by Word are gone as they are not supported by Wordpad (which is a bare bones version of Word). You'll have to check your margins again (Wordpad likes 1.25" margins) and your header will have been wiped away. That's easily adjustable.

So now all you have left to do are the ideas in your story.

When you want to be a writer, sit down and write. You'll make mistakes. But you learn by doing, and you'll gradually get better. And after a million words or so, you should be ready to be published.

Happy writing!

Gee, it's nearly the end of October, and what have I been up to? What's new on the writing front?

First, The Minstrel was published in Winter's Night magazine! Payment was typical for an inaugural issue: a free copy. But woo-hoo!

Second, I've been putting the 2009 version of Firestar on Beyond the Far Horizon. This is the expanded version, and comes in at 30 chapters, and 209,000 words. A far cry from what Joshua was looking at. I'll expand on this in a moment.

Third, I've been polishing Minus One. It first came in at 105,000, but now it's up to around 120,000. Mostly I've been cleaning up loose ends and completely rewriting the ending so Jan has a much bigger role in the events. I've also started on the synopsis and pitch letter.

Related to that story is Plus One, which are the stories related to Minus One, but follow what happened afterwards. It also touches on the experiences of the members of the group, her attorney, some DJs who knew her, and her husband. That's at 86,000 words, more or less, but will probably come in at 100,000.

A moment about word count: I know MS Word has a word counting feature. I use that for a rough guess, but my method is twofold: first, I convert the ms to Courier, and count the pages. I take 1 page off for every other chapter, the divide the resultant by 4 (because in Courier with 1" margins you get 250 words/page). I also turn Orphan control off so each page has the same number of lines. Then I use MS Word to tell me how many characters and spaces, and divide that number by 6. That is probably slightly more accurate, and it's kind of interesting how close those two numbers come.

Fourth, I finished Body of Evidence, another Gina Stone story. This one brings in Marge Bergeron and ends with Gina married. This is the first draft, and is around 110,000 words in 15 chapters.

I've also started something new: shape-shifters. I have one I'm 6 chapters into, and am fighting off the urge to stop to do other things. More some other time.

~~~~~~~~~~~

All right, the difference in Firestar is that the one Joshua saw ended with Corey assigned to Morosini's Children. There was to be a story by that name as a follow-on, but it wasn't coming together. So I grafted the last back on to what I'm calling Firestar09, and have been posting that on Gina Wylie's sight. That means that the first one for deadtree is going to be Setosha. I've spent some time with it, and, well, we'll see. I'm probably going to have to trim it as well as rewrite it even more.

While I'm doing that, I'll try to see where I can send Minus One. I have hopes for that story as general fiction, and think it's publishable.

To date, since 1999, I've written 3.2 million words, or so, mostly since 2003. Ironically The Minstrel was written in 1986. And Kalliste, 400,000 words, was between 1999 and 2001. And Kalliste's Storytime was extracted from that. Still leaves 2.8 million words. That's a few.

My initial reaction to getting home from PNWA is/was drained and depressed. Part of that was the Agent/Editor interviews, part of it was the heat, some of it was the sessions, and some of it was the state of the industry.

Industry - there are fewer large publishers, and what you get from them, assuming you land a contract, is less help than before. So you'd better learn how to do the marketing yourself. Small Pusblisher? They're great in that it's very likely you can find one, but they'll print 2,500 copies of your book, and that's it. It's up to you. And they go out of business with surprising frequency. POD? Bookstores don't like them because there's no return policy for unsold books. And the sheer amount of garbage that was produced in the first wave of POD printing has led to a stigma that they're all crap. Web? Sure, but find a way to do so so you get paid is a challenge. Remember, it's all a numbers game. People are tight with their entertainment dollars.

Some of this came out in the editor interviews. There are 5-6 of you around the table with the editor. He/she starts with those words: "I can't acquire anything." You give your elevator pitch anyway, and judge the reaction. Then they answer questions and explain how a book becomes published. They have to "love" it. They promote it to the editorial board, who has to "love" it. Then the senior or managing editor, again, who has to "love" it. Then you have marketing. Again, "love" is a factor. Finally, after all of that, it gets put on the schedule, usually a year to 18 months out. Do editors edit? Yes, though they've pushed a lot of that down to the agent. The editor edits, then the copyeditor does his or her thing. The average editor does between 12 and 20 books a year. And did I mention the layoffs in the publishing houses? Since a lot of them were acquired, there have been layoffs and shrinkage as they want their book divisions to be as profitable as possible.

Agent interviews - here's a secret. Constantly check the board near the agent interview rooms. That's where cancellations are put. You might score another interview or two. Know what the agent is looking for. Have your pitch ready and honed. This is your one-paragraph pitch. Know how long your m/s is. First time novelists, they're looking for around 100,000 words. You get 10 minutes. And the agent won't be taking anything back with them. The good news, electronic submission is getting to be the thing. Server space is so much less room than paper. Your goal is to have them ask you for your work. The dreaded words are "I'm sorry, I don't think I can represent that." That is all too common. But did you know that in fully 90% of the time the author doesn't send anything in?

Work on your elevator pitch - this is the 1 minure or less summary. It's called the elevator pitch because you have to be able to give it in an elevator or in a bar. A lot of work gets done at a conference in the bar. One of the people I met spent 20 minutes talking to an agent in a bar. That's a good reason to go to the site and stay rather than commute.

Sessions - these are 90 minutes long, and at most you can get 5 in. That's a depressing ratio of minutes to dollars spent. The good news, there's a lot of really great information. I attended the ones on marketing, small press, and legal affairs. The world-building one was pretty good in that I ended up with a lot of questions to ask about background in a story. And you get an idea of what you should have been writing two years ago because of the way the industry is tending. There are also nuts-and-bolts things you can pick up. For example, writing query letters. Three paragraphs. Writing a pitch, both elevator and sit-down (and you are encouraged to practice it frequently). All of these are things to know. They assume the other nuts-and-bolts things are taught in community colleges, high schools, colleges, or wherever. For sessions in general, you pays your money, you pick and choose.

Overall experience - PNWA this year had the feel of an organization that is changing to suit the member's needs. In the past it was very much an old guard type organization, and they did things, but you didn't see how it benefitted you, the writer. That's changing. The big thing about a conference like this is to give you face time with the agents. Think of going as an investment. And you get free meals out of it at breakfast and dinner. Reaction from others? I met several people who've decided to keep writing, but only for themselves, with maybe a POD contract. I think that was the most depressing thing to come out of the experience.

Gee, here it is in July, and I haven't posted in months. What's been going on?

Completed projects:
1) The Tree Spirit - another dryad story. Eco-freaks are camping in a tree to prevent logging in an area. They injure Jen the Dryad's husband, and she deals with them.

2) The Ted Wannabe - Caitlinn O'Shay is a lieutenant in the Seattle Police Department, and head of an interagency task force. Young women have been disappearing, sort of like what happened with the Green River Killer and Ted Bundy. Caitlinn is a shape-shifter, one who feeds off of life-energy, and she is attacked and kidnapped by this guy.

3) Minus One - and Minus One: Related Stories - MO is a novel, 120,000 words. I wrote this in a frenzy starting on March 23rd, and having the essentials done in less than a month. It is now in its last rewrite (a lot of details). Jan Sutherland is a musician accused, convicted, and sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison for Second Degree Manslaughter. The story is about her time inside, what led up to it, and what happens after she's paroled. Hint, the crime is on the first page (in the first paragraph), but most people haven't seen that it was until the last chapter.
Related Stories are the stories that spilled over in the telling: her twin brother Jay's version of events from the outside; her best friend Angie's story; Jan's telling of the next few years after she wins her complete and unconditional freedom, up to and including her wedding and the birth of her first child; band member Pete's story of those events; and band member Charlie's story of watching Jan emerge from the emotional walls prison built around her.

4) I got "Theseus and Ariadne" back from the PNWA writer's contest, to mostly uncomprehending reviews. You can't do much in 14 pages, and this was the shortest Kalliste story other than The Dance.

5) I got "Cross Time Cop" back from the PNWA writer's contest, to mostly terrific reviews. They dinged me on the synopsis, though, and I've been looking to rewrite it. JABberwocky Literary Agency declined to represent it, and again I think the synopsis had a lot to do with it. I did find an excellent link to writing a synopsis, and include it here: http://jpsorrow.livejournal.com/143076.html

6) I'm rewriting "Setosha" with the aim of publishing. I'll have to allude to events in "Firestar" in passing, which will sort of end any suspense of what happens to Corey, but the critical questions are obvious in the opening chapter of "Setosha". Have to write a good synopsis, too.

So that's an update. Back to writing. And I just had to share that synopsis link.

What of my other work?

Joshua didn't care for Kassandra's Song, so I sent him Crosstime Cop. I entered the latter in the PNWA contest as a thriller. We'll see.

On the SF stuff, I just shut down on Firestar, so I'm not working on it for a bit. I like how it starts. I am working on Setosha instead. The off-hand group is giving me some very good feedback on it. I also submitted Kassandra's Song for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and got cut right away. This wasn't mainstream fiction. They should have said so up front. I may forget to enter next year.

Then there's Minus One, which meant I didn't work on anything else. I didn't mind. The words were flowing.

On Writing Jags -

A writing jag is when you get totally consumed by the writing. You come home from work, you write for several hours, you go to bed, sleep poorly, get up and write some more.

Another way to say 'writing jag' is to look at numbers. How about these? I started writing the novel Minus One on March 23rd. I finished the last update on April 23rd. 103,000 words. Or this: in the first week I wrote 50,000 words. THAT is a writing jag.

So what is Minus One about? It's a mystery, but it's also a novel of personal growth and change. Jan Sutherland is a singer in a group that does folk, some country, and some oldies pop. She, her twin brother Jay, and the other three members of their group (Angie, Charlie and Pete) are "Friends Making Music". When the novel opens she is giving a farewell performance. At the end she walks off the stage, is cuffed, and transported to the Women's Prison in Hannah, KY (a fictional place). There she is to serve 7 to 10 years for manslaughter.

The story flashes back to how this happened, and then resumes with her time in prison. She is paroled after 5 1/2 years, and reluctantly is persuaded by her twin brother to go back on stage. The group has changed their name to Minus One as a reminder to people that they are a singing group that is minus one member. When she rejoins them, they become Minus One and Sister Jan, a country group that also does some traditional and some folk.

There is a caution for language. There's no lurid scenes of sex or even very much violence (though she did kill two men).

I did some research on prisons, and the story draws from an amalgam of prisons in the US. Conditions in state prisons vary widely. Some, when someone is paroled, give the former inmate a bus ticket, some money, and that's it. Others, such as Virginia, Washington, and Colorado make a very strong effort to rehabilitate the inmate so they can re-enter society. There are some very dedicated people who have to balance society's desire for punishment with society's desire to make these inmates functioning members of society. It is not an easy path. And the work of parole officers is often only seen in the exceptions when someone resumes a life of crime.

I picked Kentucky for the location of the story because of the music scene there, that it still had links to the folk music world, and it was in the middle of the country. Jimmy Jack's, a restaurant/bar that is a central location in the story is based on my memories of O'Reilly's Pub in downtown Indianapolis (which, despite the name, is not Irish). Indianapolis has a very active music scene, and some of that was transplanted.

One other point (I might blog about this some more later); Jan and Jay are that very very rare set of twins: male and female, but who appear identical except for the male and female bits. That happens in something like once in every couple thousand sets of twins. It is both important and unimportant to the story. It helps personalize Jan by showing the differences between her and Jay.

I'll let the reader ponder the rest of the story. Prison isn't a pleasant place, but what some people call coddling has been found, through a lot of experience, to be a very effective way to lower the recidivism rate. These are people in there, and we need to try very hard not to make enemies of them.

The Good News --

First, pitchers and catchers report today. Baseball is back, even if they're only doing their physicals today.

Damned funny game, baseball. The defense controls the ball, and the offense only gets to do anything when the defense messes up. You have no clock, but you have time-outs. And defense can dominate a game and completely alter a player's statistics. An example: putting Ichiro! in right field against a line-up of left-handed pull-hitters will lower the pitcher's Earned Run Average because of Ichiro!'s defensive skills (and that arm of his).

But baseball season gets underway today, at least the Spring Training portion where players practice and sharpen their skills in large, climate controlled environments like Florida and Arizona.

Second, www.crossedgenre.com will be carrying one of my dryad stories, The Eyes That Catch! This garners an official "Woo-Hoo!" The story will be in the March 1 release of the e-magazine. They also have a print version that will appear on April 1. Detective and urban fantasy. Interesting combination.

Third, www.beyondthefarhorizon.com, also known as BTFH, or Gina Wylie's site, is about 35 chapters into Kalliste, having previously done Counterfeit Line (which will soon go back in the shop for some maintenance). Kalliste was my "practice novel", the first one that I actually did all the way through to the end. From it I extracted Kalliste's Storytime, which certainly garnered all sorts of feedback (including from archaeologists and other professionals in the field). The story certainly needs some rewriting, especially knowing what I know now. But as an example of organic plotting (plot as you go), it was certainly educational.

Fourth, Setosha is nearly rewritten, and I got enthused, sort of, for Firestar again. Have I done anything new? Firestar, with a different starting point, and a different conflict. We'll see how it goes.

Other things (Fifth): I entered Kassandra's Song in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and I'm submitting both Crosstime Cop and In the Heart of the Woods for PNWA's literary contest this year. I have to get cracking, only one weeks to go on those.

So, yeah, so far this year it's been pretty good.