MS format

[MikeWrecka]

ive written a picture book for young children. ive studied childrens writers and illustrators market for a few months and im ready to submit. i just dont really know how to format my manuscript. my story is written in verse so should i put it in paragraph format. i feel that this really takes away from the flow of the story. if not paragraph format then should i capitalize the first letter of each new line like poetry? could really use some help here and i was guided to this web site. thanks in advance.

[alleycat]

I believe the usual advice is to format it similar to poetry (single space between lines/double space between stanzas). In that case, the first letter of each new line would be capitalize.

William Shunn's website has a general example of a formatted poetry submittal.

I'm no expert on children's picture books, but I hope that helps.

[Jeffery E Doherty]

Don't parragraph it. Format as you would a poem, double spaced and left justified. put your name, title and page number in a header at the top of the page. If the text goes over the page, do the same on each. Check out the submission guidelines on the publisher's web site to see if they have any special requirements.

Bare in mind though, rhyming picture books a really difficult to sell to a publisher. They have to be absolutely perfect. Every rhymes has to be natural, they can't seem forced and the metre must also be flawless and it has to sing when you read it aloud. Rhyming text is hard to make editorial changes to without interupting all those factors.

Good luck with it though.


JED

[MikeWrecka]

these are conflicting answers. which is just really confusing me that much more. is it single spaced or double spaced ? thanks.

[alleycat]

I'll bow to anyone claiming superior knowledge. However, in this case I don't think it matters as much whether it's single spaced or double spaced (it would matter if this was a typical novel manuscript). Jeffery sounds like he has more experience with rhyming picture books so you might go with his suggestion of double spaced.