Most novels don’t, but sometimes it makes sense to have a date or even a time-stamp for the scene.
#SHOULD I NUMBER CHAPTERS IN MANUSCRIPT TO AGENT PLUS#
Sol edited about 1600 manuscripts, plus he authored a number of books. Much of this I learned from Sol Stein years ago in a small group that he taught in Laguna Beach. Here is how I format my manuscripts for submission to publishers. You just need to present it to a publisher in a format they’re expecting. So you don’t need to stress much about making camera-ready copy. doc format) and convert it to the final typeset form. Remember that your publisher has a typesetter to take your manuscript (typically in Word. Since we’re talking about scene formatting, let’s address the various other issues that can come up. You need to give the reader some visual cue that the scene has changed. The one thing you don’t want to do is to do nothing. I generally put one line with three asterisks centered as my scene break within a chapter. To answer Morgan, you show a scene break in any of those ways. Randy sez: This is a good question and opens up several other questions on formatting scenes. How do you show a break between scenes in a single chapter? I’ve seen some books where they put something (like a symbol or stars or dots) and I’ve seen others where there is a lengthy space before the new scene begins. Morgan posted this question on my “ Ask A Question For My Blog” page: Today’s question is a tactical question on formatting a scene in a manuscript.