How to Format Short Stories for Submission

[@AuthorLevelUp]

What's your top short story formatting tip?

[@Cato229]

My tip: Don't cry over Word's section breaks. Just start a new document and cut and paste. That's for longer works, though. :P

[@EdgeOfEntropy17]

This video deserves more views. It is excellent!

[@thebroadcasterleague7712]

Aspiring writer experimenting with short stories here - thank you so much mate, I really appreciate this!

[@minerva5025]

Michael, happy that I found your channel, did subscribe as a token of my appreciation, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, for sure will prevent me from making equal mistakes.

[@bigphilly7345]

Excellent video. This is exactly what I was looking for. I enjoy writing short stories as a sort of artistic palate cleanser. It also helps tighten scene-writing skills, as many shorts are only one dramatic scene. The traditional route for shorts is still viable business-wise. Thanks, Michael.

[@AuthorLevelUp]

Any time, Philip! Glad it helped.

[@Axxman300]

William Shunn has templates for Word, Word Perfect, and Open Office on his website under "Templates" located at the top of the screen. He provides instructions on how to use them. Great if you don't have Scribner. Just plug and paste.

[@TW-sh2un]

Hi, just had a question, I know how to format a short story in the classic style, however, every website I see, even the New Yorker, has their short stories in a block paragraph formatting style. Should I be submitting in block format? Or is that something do by altering my submission themselves? Thank you!

[@creativelabadvertising5743]

they still have magazines?

[@jaelei3966]

can you do a video on formatting short stories for school?

[@Reshme77]

Submission for amazon or for a contest

[@paulwilliams1731]

Would you say it's better to submit to a magazine, rather than self publish via Amazon/Kindle for free purchase? To me, it seems like it would be better to self publish because it would grow my Amazon Author page/presence and I could market it freely to my following on social media. With a magazine it seems like it will be made available to a couple 100 readers, and then be put aside. I'm not exactly sure if that would be the case, but I would love to have another opinion.

[@AuthorLevelUp]

Great question. With a magazine, you’ll make more money upfront and you’ll bag more prestigious rights. You’ll sell first serial rights which, when they expire, will give you more leverage in the future. If you self publish a short story right away you’re not likely to make as much money, if any at all. Readers generally do not buy short stories unless they are part of a collection, and even then, it’s harder to get them to buy a collection unless 1) it’s tied to a series of yours that is selling or 2) it was published first in a magazine. So it’s a catch-22. The best route in my opinion is to write stories, circulate them to magazines, and then after a certain period (1-2 years once you’ve tried all the major mags in your genre), take the story, put it in a collection and publish. It’s the best of both worlds, though it’s not exactly fun waiting for mags to respond. Hope that makes sense.

[@paulwilliams1731]

@@AuthorLevelUp Thanks for the breakdown. For my situation, I wasn't planning on using the story for money, it was going to be like a free sample of sorts for potential readers, so I think I'll continue with that plan at least for now.

[@thomasstarkey4538]

So I don't need MS Word for when I do a format, I can just use Open Office? I started writing again a little over a year ago and just been using Open Office. Now that I'm getting more serious about my writing I've been looking into Scrivener and thought I also had to get MS Word because I never heard anyone mention Open Office when they did their formats.

[@AuthorLevelUp]

You can use OpenOffice but I’m not a fan. MS Word is definitely better if you can afford it for formatting short stories. Scrivener can do it as well but it’s not quite as easy as it used to be.

[@thomasstarkey4538]

@@AuthorLevelUp I can afford it, That's not a problem. Since I'm already talking to you, I have one more question for you If you don't mind. When I buy Scrivener is the editing any good, or should I keep using ProWritingAid?

[@AuthorLevelUp]

Keep ProWritingAid. Scrivener uses a similar (but weaker) version of spell check. PWA will help you catch more errors.

[@thomasstarkey4538]

@@AuthorLevelUp Thank you, sir.

[@rhuneke]

No, you're wrong. Editors now take italics above underlining. Underlining is an OLD format.