Is Telling The Facts Unkind?

A writer presented a picture book text for workshopping.  Now, picture book texts have a particular format and as a result they have various technical issues that must be addressed such as word limits, working in a fixed number of spreads rather than pages, and so on.  Above all, they will need to be illustrated, and therefore the text must imply pictures.  You can't really illustrate certain things, like sound or thoughts.  

The text presented was one continuous piece of prose.  I gave a brief run-down on how picture book texts were presented, and we tried to see how the text would work within spreads rather than pages etc.  It became clear that a lot of the text did not translate into images and that the action was static ie located in one place without forward movement.  In other words, the text was not working as a picture book text - which is not to say that it wasn't working as a piece of writing or a story, just that it didn't fit the market that the writer was aiming at.  

This seems to me to be a matter of fact, not opinion.  Publishing is full of facts like this. If a short story comp states a maximum of 2000 words, then 2500 is too long.  Full stop.  The writer can choose to cut 500 words, or send their story to a different competition, that's up to them, but the parameters are clear.  If someone is looking for apples, they don't want pears, no matter how beautiful the pears are. 

I don't think it's being unkind to present these facts.  If anything, I think it's unkind to pretend that these facts don't exist.  Sadly, I believe the writer misunderstood 'the text does not fit in with the technical requirements of the format you're aiming for' and heard it as 'this text is no good' and was hurt. For that I am sorry.  But it still doesn't stop the facts being the facts.  

6 Formatting Bugbears

One of the by-products of reading a lot of student work is how sensitive you become to poor formatting. I imagine it's the same for agents and publishers so I thought I'd list some of my bugbears...

Indents

The first line of every paragraph should be indented. You can do this very easily if you use Word. Go to Format, then Paragraph. There's a box marked Special, which is probably empty. Click on the little arrow on the side and First Line comes up. Save this page. From now on, every time you press the carriage return key your next line will be automatically indented. Hooray!

Spaces between paragraphs

Academic formatting is no indents, and a space between each paragraph. Creative writing is just the opposite. You should only have a space between paragraphs when you want to indicated a new scene.

Uneven spacing

Sometimes Word randomly adds spaces between lines. Actually, it's not random, you need to go back to Format then Paragraph and check that the gap between lines is left blank.

Justification

When the writing is made to form a straight edge on the right as well as the left hand side. It makes manuscripts look like a block of text which can be off-putting.

Dialogue on completely separate lines to the speaker's actions

Character A does X (an action). Character A says something. It's on the same line. It's not:

Character A does X.

Character A says Y

Character B does Z

Character B says W.

Italics and other difficult to read fonts

Arial is supposed to be the easiest font to read, Times New Roman the most common. Choosing an unusual and exciting font will not make your work unusual and exciting, just harder to read.

It's a real pleasure to pick up a manuscript and realise it's beautifully presented. I want it to read well. Isn't that how you want an agent to feel when they pick up your manuscript?