How Do You Format Your Writing?

July 30th 2005 at 6:01 pm

Stephen Leigh asks what tools you might use and how your format your writing. He says:

As you may have guessed from the above, I also write in manuscript format: double-spaced, Times New Roman, and in page view so I can see my headers and have a bit of visual separation between pages. Writing single-spaced seems ‘crowded’ to me; there’s not enough space to think. Besides, writing in manuscript format means that I can see how many pages I’ve actually produced (and using Nisus with its floating palettes, I always have a word count to see as well…)

Interesting. I don’t write in manuscript format. I try to write as close to what the final product will look like when it comes out as a novel. I use a times new roman type font and have the page sized so that I get the same number of letters across the page and lines as a standard paperback novel. When I print out the manuscript for -me- to edit I usually print it out the page as a ‘layout’ in times new roman at size 10 in 2 columns. It looks very close to ‘galley’ pages that you get from publishers.

This gives me a truer feel.

I imagine this is just a very personal thing that varies from writer to writer, but Standard Manuscript Format, which many writers use, frustrates me in that it doesn’t look like what I read out of books. So it looks fake and weird to me, even though I submit in it.

I also don’t write in MS Word, though I sometimes use it to format manuscripts. I used to use OS-X’s default text editor, called ‘Text Edit’ and break each chapter into it’s own file (75 of them for the first draft of Crystal Rain), which allowed me to work on one chapter while looking into the contents of another which was open right beside it so I didn’t forget anything. I also kept open ’scratch files’ so I could type in things that randomly occurred to me.

Now I use a program called ‘Macjournal’ that was intended to be for journalists, but I am using it to write Ragamuffin. It has a slide out pane that lets you create individual ‘entries’ that can be dragged around in any order or hierarchy that you want, which correspond to chapters and sections for me, as well as ’scratch files’ sections that are way more organized now. It also allows me to toggle something called ‘Full Screen’ mode where when I press a key combo, the entire screen goes black and green letters fill the whole screen.

I use this when I’m writing new words to avoid the distraction of seeing any other programs open and beckoning me with their siren calls of things that need doing that aren’t writing.

Like email.

Or my blogging program… goes off and presses FULL SCREEN.

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