Format for Letter Within Manuscript

I had only had snippets in my manuscript-
Looking at most books with letters unless they are massively long you can indent them and make them single spaced...
Neither my editor nor agent cared how they were handled- the publisher will decide how to put it in the final book...
The biggest thing is to make sure it can be easily differentiated from the narrative.

I didn't italicize but it would not have mattered- I know I have seen books that did- it really is up to the publisher- As I said- as long as you make it clear that it's a letter it should be no problem. You can pretty much do anything...

You don't have to reproduce the form in which the letter would be printed in the final book.

(The copyeditor will take whatever you have done, remove all your formatting, put your letter into a bracket and mark it something like LET off to the side to tell the typesetters to set this in the house style for letters. You, the writer, don't need to know the house style for letters.)

All you have to do is make it clear to the reader of the manuscript that this is a letter.
You want to do it in a way that is legible and allows easy editing and won't annoy anybody.

With that in mind, I think I'd eschew both Italics and underlines.

Maybe indent the whole paragraph.
Maybe change the font (to another of the normal submission fonts.)
Maybe put a hiatus before and after the letter (use a centered #).

Before the manuscript is sent to the copyeditor you can write ... this is a letter ... in red pen to the side if you think the copy editor won't notice.

The rule for academic manuscripts (in which letters are often quoted) is to single-space and indent the letter. This is probably the easiest way to handle this when preparing a novel manuscript--as others have said, it'll wind up being set in type according to the publisher's house style.



Thus:

In the base of the old clock, Jerome found a tattered piece of parchment, marked by ancient creases and the prints of

centuries of hands. He waited to unfold it until he was upstairs in his bedroom and had locked the door safely behind

him. He read in amazement--


Jerome ran his thumb cautiously over the red wax seal that still hung, jaggedly torn by an impatient paper-knife,

from the bottom of the parchment sheet.

Don't overthink this. As long as it's neat and clear to your editor that this is the text of what the character is reading, it's fine. You can indent, italicize or indent and italicize; any of the above are commonplace and acceptable.

Each publisher will have their own house style; you don't have to guess what it is, they'll look after all that for you when the time comes.

Just indent on the left by five spaces and write it out, double-spaced, same as the rest of the MS.

Do not change fonts unless you want to indicate it is in italics. (They might change that to conform to house style.)

Don't shift from Courier New to New Times Roman and back. I get cranky about that kind of thing depending how much coffee I've had.

If it's a really LONG letter, consider its level of interest to the reader and whether or not it pushes the action of the story forward or brings things to a full stop.

Short 1-3 paragraphs can work, but as a reader my eyes glaze over if it runs on for pages. You're essentially doing a viewpoint shift--a legit one--but it can be jarring when not done well and annoying when done badly.

If you want a loooong letter, then consider making it a chapter with the letter writer as your viewpoint character.

childeroland said:

I only have one more question and I hope I do not tax your patience: is a full page for a letter okay or is that too much also?

Click to expand...

In my opinion, anything over 150 words is too long for an interpolation. I'd follow Gillhoughly's advice on this and make the letter a separate chapter (or section).

What IceCreamEmpress said.

Remember, it's a viewpoint shift; you're using a different voice than your MC.

Sometimes you can get around this:

On Monday I got a "Dear John" letter from Mavis. It ran to twenty pages in her tight little machine-like hand, but the between-the-lines message was "Don't ever call me again this side of hell."


I told myself I was better off without her, tossed her soap opera rant in the shredder, and went out for a donut. I wanted to see if it tasted the same when washed down with Jack Daniels.