

Traditionally, the word count is rounded to the nearest hundred words. In the upper right hand corner, place the approximate word count of the story.
#Creative writing manuscript title page professional
Showing you are a member of a professional writers association will impress some editors, and make others yawn, but it never hurts to add the information. Under that, place any important professional membership information, such as SFWA or Authors Guild. This includes name, street address, phone number and email address.

The first page of your manuscript should have your contact information in the upper lefthand corner. Staples irritate editors and result in ripped pages, if not in automatic rejections. If submitting hardcopy, never staple your manuscripts. If your manuscript arrives looking like it was formatted for your college class, it makes a poor impression on the editors that view it. Having already been submitting stories for several years before entering college, I was shocked at the formatting of stories shared in writing groups in several classes. for creative writing and never heard any professor describe proper formatting of short stories for submitting to magazines. I attended what at the time was considered one of the best English departments in the U.S.A. Surprisingly, many colleges with excellent creative writing courses don’t teach manuscript presentation. Unfortunately, many excellent stories get rejected just because they are poorly formatted.ĭon’t feel too bad, if you don’t know standard manuscript format. I’ve been submitting my own stories since the 1980’s and the format has essentially remained the same. That format is different for plays and novels. You can vary slightly from the standards according to your tastes, but keep close to the standards so as to avoid looking amateurish.Īll stories submitted to this blog, or any other publisher, should be in standard manuscript format. If you want to be treated professionally, format your story according to industry standards. Among other things, your presentation needs to look professional. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, writing a great story is not enough to sell your story.
