Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Since my next project (whatever it may be) would be my first "lengthy" endeavor after a hiatus (aka four years filled with LOTS of HS research papers, lol), I need to make tackling it seem less overwhelming. One of my problems has always been TMI dump and not writing "tightly" enough. (Must be the FB generation, lol.) I think writing a story in a slightly larger font may help me. I know, kind of like those papers where you didn't have much to say, but needed to fill X amount of pages, so you wrote it in a bigger font and double spaced. My question is, since MSes are supposed to be double-spaced anyway, once it's edited and polished (obviously no 1st draft comes out "perfect"), is it OK to send out in 14pt if someone requests it? What about queries, synopses, etc., is 14pt OK for those?

12pt double-spaced Times looks like this:


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14pt double-spaced Times looks like this:


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Also, I wear glasses (as seen in my avatar), and even 12pt is too small for me to read without straining.

Any thoughts?

I say use whatever format/font size/font/color is best for you when you are writing and editing, but always send it out 12pt double spaced, black Times or Courier.

For example, I work best in single spaced format, so must convert to double to send out. I also maintain each chapter in its own Word doc, so must combine all chapters into a single doc before sharing.

Quill wrote:I say use whatever format/font size/font/color is best for you when you are writing and editing, but always send it out 12pt double spaced, black Times or Courier.

For example, I work best in single spaced format, so must convert to double to send out. I also maintain each chapter in its own Word doc, so must combine all chapters into a single doc before sharing.

Thanks, Quill. Not the answer I was hoping for but I guess rules are rules. 12pt rather than 14pt would obviously shrink it quite a few pages, but I guess having room to grow is better than bundling in too much.

I had tried the so-called fullscreen text editors (Q10, WriteMonkey, etc.), which always write single-spaced, and immediately found that I was more prone to TMI dump than if I were "constrained" to a certain number of "pages" (vs. word count). Playing Jedi mind tricks with oneself, I suppose.

I've read and evaluated more than a few student papers where the writers inflate to achieve a word or page count expectation. They have the content down. Organization is the shortcoming that stands out, that and timely getting to and making a point. My advice is invariably to locate a main idea at sentence, paragraph, and larger scale levels and write to that idea.

One exercise I demonstrate and suggest is looking at how many nouns and prounouns a sentence has, asking if they're thematically related. If not, what's the main one. It quickly becomes apparent there's too many unrelated ideas crammed into one sentence. Same with paragraphs, especially when there's a wall of text per page. No paragraph indents. Smaller scale shortcomings benchmark larger scale shortcomings.

The basics, I know, of grammar and mechanical style that everyone's taught but for some reason are overlooked. Back to a fourth grade lesson I turn my struggling writers, or sentence diagramming on the fly. Subject, predicate, object syntax. One idea each per sentence. Subject subject to emphasis, i.e., what's the sentence really about, who mostly, but what, when, where, why, and how too. Sometimes an object, though, rather than an actor is the stronger subject. Once a writer understands syntax again then it's a comparatively simple process to break out the individual ideas into their own sentences and intended orders of emphasis. Word and page counts then become irrelevant as long as a text timely gets to the point. Same with paragraphs and larger scale structures.

Hey Rachel, when it comes to sending in manuscripts Quill's got the right idea. Write in whatever format works best for you (personally, I use 1.5" spacing) but always submit in the standard 12pt, double-spaced, Times New Roman format.

Writing fiction isn't at all like writing HS essays. Page count means very little when submitting to agents or editors - they look at the actual word count. 200 pages for a Word document won't phase them if they know it's 70,000 words and therefore in an acceptable range for whatever genre you're writing for. Don't worry about the size of the stack of paper, cause no one else will. It's your words that really count.

Hopefully that'll take a little pressure off of you right now so you can just enjoy the writing.

A final solution for me with text size and eye strain issues was getting a larger monitor. An expenditure I was loathe to make. I bought a wide screen digital high definition TV when my tiny analog TV gave up the ghost. I spent money I didn't have, but it's been money well spent. Lo and behold, a laptop can be connected to the TV by a not too pricey cable. I added a wireless keyboard and mouse that sit on a light lap board on my lap at a comfortable working height. The heavy laptop sits on a side table. Wow! I don't feel closed in by the laptop anymore.

The height of this capital A on the TV screen is a quarter inch. In my wordprocessor apps a capital A is a half inch. Easy to read for my plain 20/60 vision. With glasses the view is even better. No more squinting at text at a distance neither my reading glasses nor myopia prescription glasses can see clearly. My best vision without glasses is at arm's length, how far my eyes are from a laptop's monitor. Neither of my eyeglasses focus my vision on text at that distance. This new TV is fabulous.

Wow, thanks for everyone's replies! I guess I had gotten a little confused when it came to pg. count vs. word count. 70K is 70K whether it's in 12 pt or 2012 pt. (In which case going under a bit wouldn't be "the end of the world"!)

That said, I much prefer creative writing to writing ABOUT writing. But I also don't think it can be "taught," just molded and polished. I say this because a HS counselor of mine said I should go for a MFA in creative writing, or at the very least a Bachelor of Arts. Obviously I didn't. I'm part Brazilian, and the abbreviation for Bachelor of Arts is a Portuguese slang for flatulence: "bofa" (B of A), which kind of refers to what a lot of stuffy professors are full of. (But I'm also part Irish, in which case it could also be read as Bachelor o' Farts!)