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Reply Subj: Re: Ten points on e-mags Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 at 11:03:35 am EDT (Viewed 2 times) | |||||||
Quite often author submission guides are specific about the format they want the stories to be sent in. The main practical reason is that they will need to copy/paste the things into a single publishing document, and Word and its imitators tend to slip in lots of secret formatting codes if you're not careful that them muck up pdf or epub reformats. So typically, I get told to send in documents as follows: MS Word or equivalent Font: Times New Roman, 12 point Single spaced (or sometimes double spaced depending on publisher preference) Format style: Normal (the styles are shown in a drop-down box in Word) No space between paragraphs (occasionally they want one blank line) No hard-tab paragraph starts (those tab markers really screw up some publishing software, so editors have to strip them out first thing; modify the Normal style to use "soft" tabs that don't port across so the publisher can use their house style) No formatting other than bold and italics except by previous agreement; this includes no underlining or font size changes. Any fancy stuff requires negotiation with the publisher. Some guides forbid even bold font. No headers or footers (except sometimes they ask for right hand side page numbers at the bottom) How to signify a story break, like a scene change or time passing. Some publishers like three asterisks in a line like this: Others prefer you to leave two (or even just one) blank line. The advantage of asterisks is that you can globally search-and-replace them with some fancy graphic of your own at the formatting stage if you want to. Your guide might also: Specify whether you want American or British English if you care about it; you may wish to cite a dictionary or online dictionary which you use as your guideline. In the UK this is usually the Oxford English Dictionary. Specify that reported speech is in double quotations, reserving single quotations for citations etc; eg, "She said we were 'taking a break', whatever that means." Some publishers now prefer internal dialogue to be in italics rather than single quotes; eg He knows full what she she meant, Mandy thought. Specify italics for names of books (except the Bible and other major religious texts like the Koran), ships, songs, plays, and unfamiliar foreign words; eg: If you check in The Science of Star Trek, the USS Enterprise D is Galaxy Class, so stop kvetching about it. Specify if you want to use abbreviation points in things like A.D. or O.K. or I.D. It is reasonable to ask writers to proofread and spellcheck their work before they send it in. Some won't. You may just refer writers to the Oxford Style Guide, the Cambridge Style Guide, the Harvard Style Guide, etc, all of which are available online, but are really set up for academic writing not for fiction. Publisher guidance on content is spotty in my experience, but the best stuff I've seen has included: A list of things the publisher won't accept, or wants to discuss first. This is almost always things that will bring in hate mail: graphic rape, violence against children, underage sex, homophobia or racism, religious hardcore bigotry or religion-bashing, partisan politics etc. Mostly its a matter of knowing where the lines are. A story that dramatically cuts away can sometimes be more effective than one that includes extreme detail. Guidance on bad language. This depends on the target audience of the book, and its age range. Very occasionally I get very specific rules like "one fuck or cunt per 1000 words". Mostly it's "keep this about PG-13" or "keep this Disney" or "anything goes". Some publishers are very strict now on racial and homophobic insults. Some still count profanity as swearing, so no "Oh my God! Sweet Jesus, dont!" etc. A caution about quoting modern movies or songs. A line from Star Wars is usually fine. The entire lyrics of a Michael Jackson song - sometimes even one line, has led to lawsuits. Some publishers ask for the author to indemnify them by stating that neccessary permissions to quote have been sought. Anything more the 70 years old is public domain. A caution about using real people, events, or commercial entities. You know the small print in the books and movie credits about "no resemblance to any persons living or dead..." etc? You need that. An author can theoretically include any dead person as a character in their works; if I want to portray a vampiric Mother Teresa of Calcutta I could probably get away with it. Portraying a werewolf Donald Trump will get me sued; even portraying a plump presidential candidate werewolf called Darryl Rump might get me in court - with my publisher. I'd have to use a satire laws defence. Some publishers won't accept stories written in the first person. Most won't accept stories written in the second person. The "said" question: Some editors don't like repeated use of "he said" or "she said". They prefer more dynamic attibutions: "he growled", "she gasped" etc. One editor I know word-search counts the "said"s and rejects short stories with more than 25 of them. Other editors really hate the circumlocution and forbid the florid replacements. If you have strong views, say so in your guide. One editor I know really hates any sentence that begins with "Suddenly" or "Then". Bless him. As editor you'll need to Google any character names and company names to check that they don't accidentally match real-life ones. The BBC nearly got into bother once with a planned TV series about a high court lawyer called Horace Rumbold. They found out just in time that there actually was a high court lawyer of that name who worked at the Old Bailey court. The series had great success as Rumpole of the Bailey. I know of one author who got into trouble because the name of his evil megacorp turned out to actually be the trading name of an actual megacorp who were not very happy about it. Writers should check this stuff - you could include it in guidelines; editors have to check it! | |||||||
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