My Scriptwriting Plus

November the third - Manuscript Formatting Standards

Manuscript Formatting Standards

At first, I was going to blow this off again today. After all, I need to concentrate on writing as much of my Wandita and Jessica Strong novels as I can this month. Which I am having trouble doing already. I thought that I was about halfway through my first Chapter, aka Introduction, of my Wandita novel when I realized I’m not halfway after all.

I’m trying to write them to Manuscript Standard Formatting, and I am having trouble in that area. I know about double spacing, indenting five spaces (but not by hand), no space between the paragraphs, and how to separate sections with a #, but that’s about all that they all agree on. What they don’t agree on is how many lines are in a hardcover and paperback novel. I’ve gotten a few paperbacks around my house. So, I can count the number of lines with them. I don’t have any hardcover ones though. It looks like I’m going to need to go to the library on the way to work tomorrow and get a few.

I always thought that there was forty-eight to fifty lines for hardcovers, minus the first page of the Chapter, and thirty-six lines for a paperback. Is that still the standard? I’m still checking into that. So far, all I have found out is that there are twenty-four to twenty-five lines for manuscript formatting. Which means I need to write four pages per section instead of the two I have been doing the last couple of days. Isn’t that right? I thought that I was more organized this year that I was last year. From what has happened the last two days, I’m not so sure about that anymore.

Another problem I’m having is the line length. I thought that it was supposed to be sixty-five aka one-inch on each side, but when I started doing my research on all my other problems I learned that it should sixty aka and inch and a fourth. Which is it? I’m still working on that one. Don’t know what to do? Maybe I could make two documents for each one of my novels. One for sixty, and one for sixty-five. What do you think? Maybe I should ask the other novel writers on WDC how they write theirs. I’m probably being too technical again. I have a very bad habit of doing that.

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What you are about to read (see) is true. Nothing needed to be changed. After all, this has already been translated into a language that we all know and understand - English (German, French, Italian, Russian etc.).