How to format a novel manuscript for agents
Agents rarely reject a manuscript for formatting alone, but clean, conventional formatting means nothing distracts from the writing. Standard manuscript format for novels is close to the format for short stories, with a few differences in the first page and chapter starts. When an agent's guidelines say something different, the guidelines win.
The basics
- Font: 12-point Times New Roman is the safest choice. Courier is traditional and still accepted, especially in genre fiction. Avoid decorative fonts.
- Spacing: double-spaced throughout the text.
- Margins: one inch (2.5 cm) on all sides.
- Paragraphs: indent the first line of each paragraph by half an inch, using your word processor's first-line indent rather than tabs or spaces. No blank lines between paragraphs.
- Alignment: left-aligned with a ragged right edge. Don't justify.
- Italics: use italics for italics. Underlining in their place is a typewriter-era convention that few readers expect now.
- Spaces after full stops: one.
- Page size: US Letter for US agents, A4 for UK and most other agents; either is rarely a problem.
The first page
Conventions differ on whether a novel manuscript has a separate title page. Both of these are widely accepted:
- Title page: your name and contact details (email, phone; a postal address is optional) in the top left, the approximate word count in the top right, and the title, centred about halfway down, with "by [Byline]" beneath it. Chapter one then begins on the next page.
- No title page: the contact block and word count at the top of page one, the title and byline centred a third of the way down, and the text starting below — the same layout the Shunn format checklist describes for short stories.
Round the word count to the nearest thousand for a novel ("85,000 words").
Chapter starts
- Start each chapter on a new page (use a page break, not repeated returns).
- Drop the chapter heading roughly a third of the way down the page and centre it.
- Begin the text a couple of double-spaced lines below the heading.
- Name chapters consistently: "Chapter One", "Chapter 1", or a title — just choose one style.
Running header
On every page after the first, put a header in the top right with your surname, a keyword from the title, and the page number: Morgan / Last Light / 47. Page numbers run continuously through the whole manuscript, not restarting each chapter. Some agents no longer care about headers for electronic submissions, but including one costs nothing.
Scene breaks and the end
- Mark a scene break with a centred
#or* * *on its own line. A blank line alone can disappear when the file is converted or the page breaks at that point. - Don't indent the first paragraph after a scene break if that's your convention, but be consistent.
- Optionally centre
THE ENDorENDafter the final line.
Pasting pages into an email
Many agents ask for the first five or ten pages pasted into the body of the query email rather than attached. Formatting rules relax here:
- Paste as plain text if your email program allows it, so you don't carry over odd fonts or sizes.
- Use single spacing with a blank line between paragraphs; indents often disappear in email.
- Keep italics if they survive; if not, it's acceptable to drop them.
- "Ten pages" means roughly 2,500 words of double-spaced manuscript. Stop at the end of a sentence or paragraph, not mid-word.
Query management forms like QueryManager have their own fields for pages; paste into those exactly as requested.
File type and name
Send a .docx unless the guidelines specify otherwise. Name the file clearly — Morgan_TheLastLight_Full.docx — so it can be found later in an agent's inbox. Remove comments and tracked changes before sending, and check the document properties don't show an embarrassing working title.