Basic Writing Tips

I'm no expert on this subject. Grammar avoids me religiously, my spellings not too hot and I like horror, which "people" keep informing me is a dying market, don't you believe it! But I love writing stories and poetry when I’m able and after reading a lot about writing and trying it for myself there are a few things I’ve actually noticed!

1. The more you write the more you improve.

2. Stories/manuscripts should usually be double-spaced in an even sized font face like Courier New, (all letters are the same size). Never Justify a manuscript, it should look as if it is typed. The frist page should have contact details, your word count and then a third of the way down the page (or there abouts!) the title of the story. For example in single spacing:

Your Name                     0, 000 Words
your street
your town 
Telephone
email etc...

Further down the page centred and back in double spacing, (You can put the title in bold):

TITLE OF MANUSCRIPT


By Your Name

Then on following pages in the header and to the right:

Surname/word from story title/page no.

Return once and start your story.

This is basic formatting and requirements do vary.

3. Always include a stamped addressed envelope if you want a reply.

4. Magazines like it when you subscribe to them before submitting – Not always essential, but at least you’d be up to date with their submission format. I sent a story to a magazine and received a rejection slip telling me they were no longer accepting submissions due to backlog and would announce the start of them again in the magazine. Research your market and try to pick out a few magazines that you think are suitable and subscribe for 3 or 4 copies, most do this and it’s not as expensive as a years subscription.

5. Research is important even when writing fiction. You may have a great idea about a dog/alligator boy living in the sewers, but if the story doesn’t sound credible people probably won’t want to read it.

6. Nerves of steel to wait for replies after you’ve sent your babies away.

7. Spell check and spell check your document again before sending it, try always to send a perfect manuscript, A4 or whatever the market specifies.

8. Good manners – don’t hurl abuse at editors who reject your work, you might find them lurking where you least expect it! Remember, they are people too and just because they rejected your masterpiece doesn’t mean you should throw it and yourself on the fire!

9. Never send your only copy of a manuscript away, always back it up on disk/paper. Always send it on clean white paper held together with a paperclip.

10. Keep a record of all submissions, I found a nifty little American program on the Internet called SAMM for windows and it lets you list markets, manuscripts word counts and events! Why not check it out, it’s completely free.

S.A.M.M. (Sandbaggers' Automated Manuscript Manager) - "was designed to help with some of the "housekeeping" chores that writers face. You can store information about your manuscripts--when you submitted them, to whom, and their response--for easy retrieval and reporting. All of the information in S.A.M.M. is easily searchable. The results of those searches (along with everything else in S.A.M.M.) can be printed."

You might also like to try TreePad "You can see this program as very intuitive database program, outline text editor and Information Manager. The usual database programs are not good at storing unstructured information, TreePad excells at this! It lets you define and impose your own structure."
I use it to keep backup copies of my stories, poems and various information on writing. Combined with the calendar you can also keep track of submissions and things like that, just delete the days/months you don't need to save space. Treepad is also free.

If you want more links to free software you should visit the Whispering Blackboard Index and view the back issues of The Rejection Slip's newsletter. The first two issues are at my Petsburgh 7317 site where the Rejection Slip used to be, so some of the internal links won't work.

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