After I got all excited about my spectacular “Chapter One,” I ended up revising a short story that needed some work and stumbled across different submission guidelines for various markets. I took one look at the formatting guidelines and went… “Uh-oh…ARGENTUM does not look like that…”
So, I went ahead and formatted it differently using a 12 point New Courier font and one-inch margins. Then, I indented the first line of the paragraphs and double-spaced the text. Excited, I went back and peeked at this “professionally formatted manuscript” and I found mistakes in Chapter One.
I believe I literally used the phrase, “What the hell?”
After a minute or two, I got the answer. For whatever reason, both the font and the spacing make it really easy to edit the text, which is probably why several markets prefer that type of formatting. Now, I know I may have to alter the formatting again once I provide the final submission, but in the meantime — it’s helping me edit!
Well, I went ahead and fixed Chapter One. Again. I pulled out some repetitive phrases and as much of the “meta”-storytelling techniques that I could. I felt like I was unconsciously worried about word count (e.g. the average chapter is about 2,500 words) that I must have fluffed some scenes and backstory up. I’m a big one for word conservation, so I decided to hack off the unwanted bits. Even though Serafina doesn’t start to get her memories back, until the end of Chapter One, this first chapter still needs to grab you and keep you interested, right?
In addition to the formatting and the hacking, I decided to edit this book in two parts. The first part is Serafina’s story. The second, are her memories. For my own sanity, I took out all the memories and put them into a separate file for a couple of reasons. First, it’s much easier to “keep” Serafina’s point-of-view if I can see all of the pieces at once. Second, I discovered it’s also easier to revise Serafina’s story if I have that storyline mushed together, to ensure that the rhythm and the pacing weren’t thrown off by the chapter breaks.
Sounds like a lot, eh? Yes, it did take me a fair bit of time to figure all of this out. I’m very optimistic now, though, because the more I learn the better this story will get.
Till next time,
- M
