A reader writes to ask: How should I differentiate the character's thoughts from the rest of the narrative? Some people have suggested I put them in quotation marks, but I find that when I read novels in which the character's thoughts are in quotation marks, I
A reader writes to ask: What does the format look like for a novella? What's the first page look like? And, what do you do with chapters? The novella is a curious case. Not quite short enough to be called a short story, not quite long enough to
A reader writes to ask: I've been speaking with an agent who has expressed keen interest in my sci-fi/humor novel, and what she's telling me is that while she really digs it, the manuscript is simply coming in too long for most publishers to
My virtual contribution to the March CD Mix of the Month Club was Watching & Listening Vol. 2: 33 1/3 Revolutions Will Be Televised.
It has to have been 1988 when I first read Watchmen. I was a Mormon missionary stationed in Wenatchee, Washington—a zone leader, no less. We weren't allowed even to read newspapers or magazines, let alone comic books, but some sainted individual at church (I now forget who)
A reader writes to ask: I had a quick question for you regarding header formatting for novel manuscripts. I'm trying to customize the autotext feature for headers to follow the example you gave: Author / Book Title / Page # I had some luck with the author and book title, but
A reader writes to ask: Do you have any direction to point me in formatting elaborate typesets in manuscript. i.e. I have a sex scene written in the shape of a penis. Any help? An interesting question, and one that must have been encountered before by editors of books
My virtual contribution to the February CD Mix of the Month Club was Watching & Listening Vol. 1: Songs from the Big Screen.
A reader writes to ask: I've been writing a novel over the past year, and with the help on your site as well as a few other sites, I've been converting it into manuscript format. However, after having copied over the first two chapters, I'
For well over a decade my manuscript formatting guide "Proper Manuscript Format" has been available online, with the result that I've fielded hundreds of questions on the subject from writers around the English-speaking world. For years now I've wanted to share those letters
█████ and I became involved in a brief argument Sunday morning, not with each other but with a woman who loudly accused us of not picking up after Ella. She did this from some distance away, crossing the street toward us on a diagonal. After some hostile back-and-forth, I
I may have shared this video before, but I was waxing nostalgic about the (now broken-up) Rogers Sisters today and had to rewatch the charming video for their excellent song "Emotion Control," from their album The Invisible Deck: (Doesn't the guy in the video remind
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