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How To Create a Manuscript

Editorial Guide

The Editorial Guide is only a checklist to help you format your book correctly, help to ensure that you have the correct kind of content in each section of your book, and help you to understand comments and suggestions made by our staff and by your editor.

This Editorial Guide is not a substitute for having an editor work with you on your book, nor is it an exhaustive list. If questions or issues arise that are not covered here, we recommend that you consult the same main sources used by our professional evaluators and editors. They are the standard relied upon by the majority of the publishing industry:

The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003 (On-line version).
 

Editorial Checklist

You have poured your heart for months—years—into producing a finely crafted manuscript. You’ve read, reread, tweaked, chopped, and gotten it just the way you want it. You’re ready to send it to your publisher...

Or, are you?

Before taking that next important step, go through the following checklist and see if there is anything missing, anything overlooked, anything that needs to be added or deleted that would derail your dream from coming true (or that would at least cause a major delay, significantly increasing your costs and creating a lot of work for a lot of people).

 Proofreading

Proofreading is essential before you consider any work “finished”. Proofread the entire manuscript all the way through, once you feel it is completed. Note but do not make necessary changes until after you have read it completely through. Now, have at least one other person proofread your manuscript. Having another set of eyes not already familiar with the text is extremely helpful. Make any changes you feel are appropriate.

Here is what you and they are looking for:

Layout

Verify that everything is in the proper section of the book – front matter, book block, and back matter.

Formatting

Run the Spell Check feature of your word processing program and correct all spelling errors that the program catches. Think carefully about the suggestions made by the Grammar Check feature, also. Make sure that punctuation, capitalization, use of hyphens, numbering, and all other formatting issues conform to the guidelines in the TILC Editorial Style section.

Consistency

The entire document should be easy for the human eye to follow and flow smoothly from beginning to end. Details such as font, font size, page layout, and indentation need to be consistent throughout your manuscript. They also must conform to the Editorial Style of TILC.

Variation

Do not use the same word repeatedly. Finding good, descriptive words and phrases is a key ingredient to crafting a book that your readers will find entertaining, insightful and worth reading. A word may work once, sometimes twice, but never, ever, ever three or more times.

Active, Not Passive

Using what is known as “passive voice” is an agreeable device once in a while. For the most part, though, using the “active voice” is preferable. An example of the passive voice would be, “The last piece of pie was eaten by my son.” By modifying the sentence to, “My son ate the last piece of pie,” we make the active voice and change the flavor of the story.

Show, Don’t Tell

Instead of telling your readers about a conversation, let them “eavesdrop” in on it. Stay away from, “Dave told Sandy how tired he and his brother got on their hike the day before.” Take the time to write out the conversation, adding descriptive phrase about the facial expressions, reactions, exclamations, and things of that nature. Show the reader what is happening, don’t tell them about what happened when they weren’t around.

Using the above example, it would read something like this:

“Jonathan,” I said quietly as I stood with my hands on his shoulders and looked intensely into his eyes, “what happened to the last piece of pie?”

Trying to avoid my gaze, he looked down at his hands. “I-I-I,” he stammered, “I ate it.” His confession was more a whisper than a statement.

As you can see, the reader is involved in the story – almost as if they were there when it happened.

Syntax

Syntax in the context we are using it here refers to the rules of linguistics as they apply to grammar. How we are applying the term here can best be shown in the following example:

"The snowball hit Jack in the back of the head running across the road."

Okay; who was running across the road—the snowball, the head, or Jack? To keep the syntax of the sentence clear, a better way to give this information would be:

"Jack was running across the road when the snowball hit him in the back of the head."

"The snowball hit Jack in the back of the head while he was running across the road."

You can see how much clearer the information is when the syntax is clear.

Have You Followed The Manuscript Preparation Guidelines?

Spelling, grammar, punctuation, abbreviations, in-text references, capitalization, and the rest of the details of your manuscript need to comply with the TILC Manuscript Preparation Guide (that means everything on the pages under this heading—How to Create A Manuscript). Looking over these pages and checking your manuscript against them might seem overwhelming and time-consuming, but time and effort invested before submission will save time, money, and heartache after submission.

If you have questions not answered by the Guidelines or the Final Editorial Checklist, e-mail your questions or challenges by using the Information Request Form. Be sure to include a telephone number in case a personal conversation would be the most expeditious way to help you. If you have selected the Idea to Manuscript program, or the Idea to Book-in-Hand program, some of these questions can be dealt with during your consultation times.

 

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Next Step: Anatomy of a Book

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