Three Pieces of Formatting Advice for Writers

zagorin:

I’ve just gone through the process of submitting some short stories — for other writers out there, I’d figure I’d toss out a few tips that I learned today which may save you some busywork.

1 — Publishers care about formatting; to create a manuscript that EVERYONE will accept, do the following:

a. Use this template — its by no means universal, but if you’re someone who gets distracted by font choice, margins or spacing (like me) using this will take those choices out of your hands

www.shunn.net/format/story.html

b. Use straight-down quotes, not smart-quotes that curve in on either side. There are submission systems that will mess up your text if you have those, and MS Word autoformats them. Those same systems don’t like emdashes, replace those sleek autoformatted lines with two dashes, like so: — . This link will take you to the part of Word where you can fix both of those for when you’re manuscripting

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-HP005190124.aspx?redir=0

2 — Use Duotrope to find and track submissions, look at rejection stats and find the genre, tier and pay-grade of publications you’re aiming at

http://duotrope.com/

3 — Clarkesworld submission guidelines; lolz but 2 tru

There are no barriers as to levels of profanity, gore, or sexuality allowed, but high amounts of profanity, gore, and sexuality are generally used poorly. Be sure to use them well if you do use them.

Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells:

• stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory
• stories in which the words “thou” or “thine” appear
• talking cats
• talking swords
• stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines
• stories where FTL travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies
• time travel too
• stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a’ comin’, Communion wine turns to Christ’s literal blood and it’s HIV positive, Satan’s gonna getcha, etc.)
• stories about rapist-murderer-cannibals
• stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).
• stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago
• stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it
• your AD&D game
• “funny” stories that depend on, or even include, puns
• sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates
• zombies or zombie-wannabes
• stories originally intended for someone’s upcoming theme anthology or issue
• stories where the protagonist is either widely despised or widely admired simply because he or she is just so smart and/or strange
• stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one
• your trunk stories