Standard Manuscript Format with Microsoft Word

In Pitch Wars and writing workshops, people always have questions and misconceptions about the standard manuscript format. I run into a lot of people that try to do some of the work manually, but you should be doing most of the work using Microsoft Word settings.

I introduce the elements of standard manuscript format, then show you how to do it in Microsoft Word 2013.

8:55 Formatting in Word Demo
22:28 Formatting Using Styles

[besssherret]

Thank you so much for your clear and precise directions, I had tried watching many others you tube video's and was beginning to feel like I would never understand, and then I found YOU! Again my sincere thanks for giving me the tools to format my manuscript. Bess Sherret

[seank]

Very detailed and useful video. Thank you for taking the time and effort to creat this. I am especially happy because I am using the same version of Word. Best wishes.

[maesdaughter]

Absolutely amazing video. You have helped me tremendously with formatting my manuscript.. Thank you Sarah.

[janicetorres]

holy crap Sarah! This was perfect and so useful! This is gonna make everything so much easier to format...I can't tell you how much time it's already saved me. Would love to know if you can do the same formatting tricks on Google Docs...

[dominiclondesborough]

I had some glitches in my existing title page, and when I deleted this and created it again from scratch, following Sarah's instructions, all my problems with creating a header and page numbering were solved.

[ericcarroll]

Great Video. Thank you for the information. I spent quite a lot of time trying to find out how to take the page number off the title page.

[catherineparilla]

Very helpful video. Can you tell me how to distinguish a letter received by the protagonist and the remainder of the text. There are twelve in my novel and can be several pages. Initially I had them italicized and was told not to do that. Then I gave them a different script font to suggest they were handwritten. What do you recommend?

[souldeception]

loved the tutorial. Well done! If a character reads a letter in the story. Is the letter formatted differently?

[johnthacker]

This was so helpful thank you so much!

[dominiclondesborough]

Good video instruction Sarah. I'm using Microsoft Word 365 which is different to your version, but after lots of hunting I find the correct tabs/options etc.

At 9:38 you talk about creating title page, great tips.

At 12:20 you talk about creating a header for the manuscript. I used to be able to do this but lost my notes on how I did it. The problem I'm having is that it only creates the header and numbering on one page, not all pages. Any idea why this is happening? Also when I click Format Page Number and select 'Start at 0' the page number says 0.

[sharoinaclarkelindsay]

Start each new chapter a third of the way down on the page can I use two space down or does it need more than two?

[thairston]

On the next page, when I paste text on the page, and I do paste using unformatted text when it goes to the next page, it will go too far down the next page. How do I correct that?

[carinrobinson]

no matter how many times I tried to do what you said about the formatting it turns out all over the page it says it is doing what you are saying with the paragraph and spacing but after doing it the sentences are all out of whack

[outcast-tkgv]

why shouldn't you have an extra line space between different paragraphs? to me it makes it more organized and easier to edit if you separate paragraphs with a line space.

[OliversWorld]

@Sarah Nicolas, I wrote a four hour story (among others) and just wrote it out as one long sentence using proper grammer and commas etc. I did not format my paragraphs and is there a way I can do this in Post, or do I have to read over my 4 hour novel and manually insert tabs and spaces etc? PLEASE HELP ME. I already have stories narrated on youtube so Im good. Madame Raven (4.13k subs) does my story PERCEPTION by David MorningWay and Entropic Society is narrating the 4 hour story im presently mentioning (18k subs on his channel). However this problem is keeping me from posting to sub-reddits. Please help and God Bless 😈😎😇