Format

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Someone asks me to read something for them. Naturally, I oblige. I open their Google Doc, and I’m confronted with a tremendous wall of text in 11 point Arial that goes down page after page into the abyss.

Where is the dialogue? Where are the breaks in the action?

They’re in there, somewhere, but I sure as heck can’t find them.

Editors are going to say the exact same thing. Formatting is the most important thing people don’t talk about. I want to fix that for you guys.

When you open a document for the first time, here are a few housekeeping tips. If you have a WIP (Work in progress) you can do the same thing by highlighting the entire document:

1. Set the font to 12 point Times New Roman. This is the industry standard. Courier is accepted, but is being phased out.
2. Set the spacing to double spacing! I can’t tell you how much it frees up the page!

That’s it! That is how you will immediately make someone more likely to read your work. To keep them reading, try a few of these tips:

1. Start a new paragraph whenever a new train of thought starts. Characters transitioning from inner monologue to observation of their surroundings for instance. Just hit enter, then tab and you are good.
2. Start a new paragraph whenever someone speaks. One paragraph per new person speaking.
3. Use dialogue tags: “Like this”
4. If you want a really big scene change, don’t just tab to start a new paragraph. Create an entire new block. Hit enter twice and don’t tab.

Your work will look exponentially more professional this way. Consider this:

VS:

Doesn’t it look more like a book and less like a WIP? It’s also easier on the eyes.

If you guys have questions, I’ll be in the comments.

Until next time.