Knowing how to format a short story isn’t always clear. And before it comes to sending out your shiny new stories to publishers, it needs to be formatted in the right way.
A failure to follow story formatting guidelines could see it rejected automatically. In this guide, you’ll learn how to avoid this outcome.
We’ll take a look at the Shunn manuscript format and why this approach is so favored by publishers and editors. In addition, we’ll examine the differences between formatting short stories and novels. And you’ll find lots more formatting tips and advice too.
Click below to jump to the chapter that interests you most.
Short Story Formatting: A Quick Overview
Here are some tips for formatting a short story:
- Font – Use a clear and easy-to-read font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, and a standard font size, such as 12 point.
- Spacing – Double-space your text to make it easier to read and edit.
- Indentations – Use proper paragraphing to break up the text and make it more visually appealing. Indent the first line of each new paragraph (the size is up to you but around 1cm is standard).
- Dialogue – Use dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking and to break up dialogue. Use quotation marks around dialogue and separate it from the rest of the text with a comma or colon.
- Format – Add the page number, your surname and the story name to the header of each page, except for the first
- First Page – Add your contact details and the story word count to the top left of the page, followed by the title below (centre aligned) and the story below that
For a more in-depth guide, keep scrolling
What Is Short Story Formatting?
Short story formatting is the process of presenting your manuscript in a way that is expected of writers trying to make their way in the industry. As we’ll see below, it covers everything from the font you can use, the sizes of that font, spacing, margin width and so forth.
The idea is to standardize the process globally. The same formatting requirements apply to the US market as well as the UK, Canada, Australia and beyond.
While some publishers have their own preferences, which they should state in their submission guidelines, the standard is something known as Shunn Formatting, which we explore in detail below.
A failure to follow these guidelines may see your story automatically rejected, so pay close attention if you don’t want to end up with a stack of rejections that will have nothing to do with your writing!
Why Is It Important To Format A Short Story?
The importance of following short story formatting guidelines cannot be understated—ignore them and your story will very likely be rejected.
Most publishers state in their submission guidelines how they wish a story to be formatted. Don’t ignore this. If you do, it’ll demonstrate to the editors that you either don’t care enough to take the time to do it or that you haven’t read the guidelines. Both will annoy them just as much. This is the golden rule when it comes to formatting your work—follow the guidelines.
A lot of publishers, particularly those based in the US, will ask for your manuscript to be formatted in the Shunn style. Indeed, William Shunn’s formatting guidelines have proven so popular they’ve become the default. By that I mean, if a publisher does not state in their guidelines how they’d like your piece formatted, revert to Shunn.
Let’s take a look at the Shunn manuscript format in more detail.
How To Format A Short Story: The Shunn Manuscript Format
William Shunn is the chap behind these formatting guidelines, and his short essays on both formatting manuscripts for short stories and novels are freely available over on his website http://www.shunn.net.
Shunn (also known simply as Bill) is a prolific and talented writer of science fiction and fantasy having been published in Asimov’s and F&SF, among others. A number of his stories have been nominated for awards such as the Nebula and Hugo Awards.
His foray into the world of manuscript formatting came in 1995 when he published his guide “Proper Manuscript Format”.
Such was the impact of that guide that the wider publishing industry decided to adopt it. And now, nearly 30 years on, it’s still in use.
As a short story writer, Bill Shunn has put together a detailed guide on how to format manuscripts for short fiction, which you can find here. He has two options: classic manuscript formatting and modern. For our purposes we’re looking at modern formatting.
The guide couldn’t be more user-friendly. It offers two types of manuscript formats—the modern take and the classic approach. You can download either in PDF form so you can print them off and refer to them as you work.
The online guide is interactive. It opens with an example manuscript, with different parts highlighted in blue, as you can see in the image below.
Simply hover over those highlighted parts to see the instruction. For example, if we hover over “Proper Manuscript Format”, the instruction is “Your title, centred in capital case.”
On that first line, we’re instructed to indent each paragraph by half an inch.
The written content itself is very important. It explains in detail the reasons for each step in the formatting process. For instance, it explains why certain fonts are used and by who.
It also explains why you need to round your content up to the nearest hundred, so if it’s 1,256, you’d round it up to 1,300. The reason behind this is to tell the editor how much space the story is going to take up in their magazine or journal.
The guide continues to talk you through every aspect of the manuscript formatting process. Below, you can find more detail on some of the key points:
Which Font Should I Use?
Keep it simple. Shunn recommends using either Times New Roman or Courier. Courier is his strong preference because it’s monospaced, meaning every character is evenly spaced apart, which makes it easier to detect spelling mistakes. Size 12 font is also recommended.
Which Line Spacing Setting Should I Use?
Often a subject for debate. Shunn recommends double spacing—it’s easier to make notes around the text, and for me, I find it easier to read the text and detect any mistakes.
What Should I Put On The First Page?
The first page is where you feature your name, contact information and word count, usually positioned at the top left of the page
Some publishers will ask you to format your manuscript in their own ‘house’ style. It’s worth taking the time to follow their guidelines completely. And it’s not that much extra work. I usually save another copy of my formatted piece and just make the adjustments. Shunn is, however, the industry-standard it seems, so it won’t be often that you have to deviate.
How To Format Dialogue In A Short Story
So how do you format dialogue in a short story? There are lots of personal preferences when it comes to writing dialogue. Some people prefer to use single apostrophes (‘) while others prefer classic double speech marks (“).
Here’s what Shunn has to say on the matter:
So to summarise the above:
- Quotation marks should be used (“). This means no single quotation marks (‘) unless someone is being quoted by the speaker.
- You should start a new paragraph when the speaker changes to aid clarity
- Try using smart quotes which can concert double and size quotation marks to the curly version—some word processors use straight quotations
Why Is Shunn Formatting So Popular?
Shunn is a prolific short story writer who has worked with some of the leading publishers around.
That experience is vital; it’s helped him put together his formatting guide which at first received approval from peers, and then approval from the publishing industry as a whole.
The guide instructs writers to keep things simple and professional. It tells them to include only the essential information that publishers want and crucially, it explains why so that authors have a solid understanding.
Given its wide approval and the fact that it’s been used for so long tells us that it’s a quality resource and one that isn’t going away any time soon.
What Happens If I Don’t Follow The Formatting Guidelines?
If you don’t follow standard formatting when submitting your short stories there’s a very good chance it’ll be automatically be rejected. This is something stated by many publishers on their website.
In their view, if you don’t comply with the guidelines then it’s shown that you haven’t bothered to read them and therefore can’t be that interested in working with them, or that you’re taking them for granted.
So even if your writing is the best that’s ever been scribbled, editors and publishers may not even bother to look at it.
Where Can I Submit My Short Story?
Congratulations on finishing your short story and now formatting it ready for submission! The next step is to send it out to the world. If you want a hand finding a home for it, I have a massive list of short story magazines and publishers you can check out here.
Most nights you can find him up into the wee hours scribbling away or watching the NBA.
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