Fiction Writing & Style Guide
Ernest Bywater
Fiction Writing & Style Guide
All rights reserved © 2017
This book is a revised combination of the following guides at recent changes to better incorporate html style sheets in the html format:
Writer Guide © by Ernest Bywater 2009
Make a Good E-pub © by Ernest Bywater 2015
Fiction Writer Style Guide © by Ernest Bywater 2016
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. All rights are reserved by the author, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Product names, brands, and other trademarks referred to within this book are the property of their respective trademark holders. Unless otherwise specified there is no association between the author and any trademark holder is expressed or implied. Nor does it express any endorsement by them, or of them. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, service mark, or registered trademark.
Cover Art
The background image is Mary Pickford Writing at Desk by Hartsook Photos and is in the public domain. The trimming, manipulation, and adding of text is by Ernest Bywater. All rights to the cover image are reserved by the copyright owners.
23 March 2021 version
Published by Ernest Bywater
E-pub ISBN: 978-1-365-80781-7
The titles I use are a chapter, a sub-chapter, and a section.
Special Author's Note on Copyright
I used my default copyright with this guide because I'm too lazy to change it, and also it gives others a guideline as to what they should have in their copyright message.
Please note that while I retain the copyright of this guide and it is not in the Public Domain I do make the book available for free from a range of e-book services and distributors with the only copies being paid for are the print book version to cover the printing costs of those who want a printed copy. I also give permission for the e-book formats of this guide to be freely distributed to people as long as it stays in it's original form with the copyright and this note unaltered in any way. This has always been the case with all of these guides.
Ernest Bywater
12 June 2019
Foreword
Over the years I've had many new authors ask me for advice on writing. In response to the requests I produced the Writer Guide in 2009. When I finally developed a way to create an E-pub file I liked the look of for an e-book I published Make a Good E-pub in 2015. In 2016 I wrote Fiction Writer Style Guide, and when I revised and published it in 2017 I was asked to combine the three guides. In order for it to make sense as a single integrated guide I've moved some parts of the guides around, revised some areas, and expanded on a few of them too. This has all of the information of the other guides, and is more aimed at fiction writing.
Since 1998 I've been writing entertaining fiction stories and I started publishing them on-line in 2001. As of January 2017 I have over one hundred stories published. Over the years I've learned how to write in a smoother and more entertaining way, and then I revised my stories to reflect the better style. All I've learned is in this guide, as well as the hard earned knowledge about how to properly format a story at the start.
During the years since I started writing I've learned many readers and writers have preferences in writing styles. I've also learned that the use of grammar and the other tools of writing are taught in different ways in the different English speaking countries. This has meant some of the on-line discussions with other authors have been volatile due to the differences. The longest and most involved have been about using style guides that were originally designed for academic and business use. While some of the aspects make sense to use for a fiction story some of them don't suit fiction writing at all.
This is not a full set of grammar rules, but it will cover the ones where the main existing academic and business style guides direct the writer to use something that detracts from a story or causes confusion to readers. I'll also cover some items where they don't give much guidance.
Note: This is written by an Australian using UK English. You'll see many of the things mentioned in this document are used in it before I talk of them. I thank Jim Whiteshield, Dick Parsons, and Vincent Berg for assisting with some of the aspects and content of this guide.
So You Want to Write
When you decide to write a story there are many things you need to think about, and sort out, before you even start to write the story itself. The following list is not a comprehensive one, but it does identify most of the major decisions you have to deal with first. Later I'll go into each item in more detail.
Can I handle rejection and abuse?
What is the intended audience?
Will I charge for it, or make it free?
How will I publicise my story?
Which presentation media: on-line or print or both?
All these questions need very clear and definitive answers before you start a single word of what you want to write, because they will strongly affect the way you write the story or document, and how you present it to the world. Changing your mind after you get started will leave your material looking unprofessional, or it will require a lot of extra work to fix it, often much more work than what it did to write it in the first place.
The reason is the answers to these questions decide how your story will appear to the reader. Different formats are usually required for different media and different subjects. How you write an article for a group of academics is totally different to writing a text book, a technical manual, a love story, an action adventure novel, or an erotic novel. Each has it's own subset of rules that are applied to how it should be written and look. Many have very similar rules, while some are not the same.
For example, technical manuals are expected to be extremely brief with a minimal number of adjectives, and are set out in dot point lists wherever possible. Academic works usually have a lot of acronyms and terms that are common usage within the field of study the work is being written for. Text books are expected to have a lot of acronyms and terms used in the field it's about, but it's also expected to have very simplified definitions and explanations of them in a Glossary list. Such material is expected to be written in perfect, technically correct English, while novels use less formal language. More on this later when I discuss writing style.
I will not be covering such things as marketing or merchandising your story in any way. That's a whole different field that varies with the type of story and the country of origin or intended sale.
Writing is not an easy task, and it often takes a lot of practice to get right. Later I'll cover some details of punctuation, grammar, and spelling, but you must know there are variances in these areas around the world, and they affect the understanding of the story by the readers from those areas. All know of the US versus UK spelling of words like color / colour and ass / arse when referring to the human posterior. However, some words are regional in usage, and others have localised meanings that are different to the rest; so you must take care when using such words. Some regions who use English as a first language also use a lot more commas in their stories than other regions. There are plenty of websites that provide advice on punctuation and general English usage, so I won't cover those topics in full detail, except where they're best used differently in writing fiction stories. You can find a lot of current websites by using the search engine of your choice. Be warned there are a lot of writer blogs with faulty or regionalised advice as well.
Some of the decision points I mention early in the list are noted in the list so you will consider them well before you start, and not find them a reason to quit near the end, or when you've finished writing your story.
Rejection or Abuse
Whatever you choose to write you can be sure someone will abuse your story. They will point out perceived, or actual, errors; while others will reject it because they don't want to read it, or be involved with it. Make sure you are ready to handle and deal with this, or you will go crazy with anger and angst when it happens. This is part of being a writer. You must accept it happens, get over it, and get on with life. Other people are entitled to their opinions, and you're just as entitled to totally ignore their opinions if you want to.
If a publisher or editor rejects your story and bothers to put some comments on it take time to talk to them about their comments, if they'll agree to talk to you. Take their comments in, don't reject them off hand, because they have years of experience and are usually offering you help in making your story better for their target market group, or the general market. Also keep in mind the publishers are concerned about what's good for their market demographic, and it may not match what's good for other markets or target groups. Also, it may not match what you really want to say in your story.
Regardless of how much rejection or abuse you get, you will live through it, so don't let it annoy you too much.
The Audience
What is your intended audience? I bet you thought this was easy; it isn't. Your audience is the people who you hope to get interested in the story, be it free or paid for. If paid for you want to interest as many as possible to maximise your income. You need to answer the following questions about the readers you want to read your story.
Age
Gender
Employment
Educational level
Subjects of interest
Nation of origin
Religious background
Cultural background
Racial background
Ethnic background
Social background
Financial situation
Economic background
In many cases the answers to these questions won't matter; but in others they'll matter a lot. Some people will see certain things above as being the same as others, yet each is a different aspect of an individual or a group of individuals in a society. These are the factors that go to make up a lot of what a person is, as well as how they think and behave.
You don't have to please or appease anyone with your story, unless you specifically wish to. However, you do need to be aware of how some people will react, due to their personal aspects of all these factors.
These factors may affect the story in a number of ways:
How you think and write.
How they understand what you've written.
How they perceive what you've written.
How their emotions respond to what you've written.
They may affect certain types of stories in different ways and to different extents because of the type of story and content. In all cases you need to consider how the factors may affect your story or how you think it will affect the audience, due to these factors. An example of a possible effect would be a fiction novel that has a character enter a religious shrine and not show the proper respect for the shrine will likely see an adverse reaction from that sector of the reading community. That could lead to a loss of sales for that story and other stories if they boycott you as a writer.
People often confuse religion, race, culture, society, ethnic group, and nation as being closely linked. However, the truth is each of them will often mix across the others. A racial group can be spread across a number of countries, cultures, and societies. A society may have many different religious or ethnic groups within it. A religious group can be spread across many ethnic, racial, and societal groups. Even within a very large society with the same ethnic, racial, and religious background you'll find differences caused by their different ages, education levels, gender, economic background, current financial situation, and sub-groups of each of the above. How much you need to consider these issues will depend a lot on what you're writing, for some they won't matter much while they won't matter at all in others, but they'll matter a lot for some.
You need to consider all of this in how you intend to write your story. If you're aiming for an audience in the teenage group the use of words and behaviours suited to their grandparents won't get a good reception or high sales. The same applies for all of the factors stated above. Some examples of the different writing for different intended audiences are:
Romance novels use a different tone and word list to an action adventure story. A western tale about cattle rustling will vary in the words used to those of a love story set in the same period and place. If the story has any violence the level of violence and the descriptions acceptable to the reader usually varies with their gender or age. Gender of the reader is important in writing erotic stories because the descriptions of people and activities often get different reactions from men to that of women.
An often mentioned difference is women prefer stories with lots of emotions described and acted out while men prefer less emotions being described. The validity of this generalisation is often challenged, and the matter has never been fully resolved one way or the other. While the sales of certain types of books seem to support the generalisation. This is often argued about because the content and story types also differ a great deal to the extent they may be the reasons for the differences.
The reading ability of the story will vary with the educational level of the reader. This will appear in word choices and sentence structure. The younger the intended audience the simpler the sentence structure and words you should be using. If people find the start of the story, or a randomly selected section, difficult to read they won't read it at all.
The educational level will also affect the amount of knowledge it's safe to assume the reader has, and their ability to deduce things from what is in the story. This is important when writing something like a mystery novel because the educational level will affect how they put the clues together. Due to research reports on what's seen as the best level to use in fiction most fiction writers aim for a level equivalent to a year ten education since this is reasonably understandable by most people.
Mixed into all this is the use of nicknames for people and acronyms for organisations. What may be very common and well understood in one area of a country may not be known at all in another area of the same country, and is totally unknown in another country. A few US based stories I read mentioned a place called IHOP, but the context didn't match what looks like a dance club's name. I later learned it's a restaurant called the International House of Pancakes. The authors didn't make it clear what happened at an IHOP, they just assumed everyone knew it.
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Note: Often you will brush over many of these items as not relevant to the story, and that's true; but it's best if you first take a little time to consider how they may apply or affect the outcome or the reader's response to the items mentioned.
Free or Charge for It
Regardless of if you give your story away free by publicly posting it on the Internet or you sell it to a publisher you still own the copyright, and that is protected by law in most countries around the world. You, as the creator or author of the story, can decide how much remuneration you get for your story, if any. Some people will put a story out in the public view for free because they want to get the message out. That is putting the story on public display, not in the public domain. You still own and control it, and you have the legal right to protect it. Check your local laws on intellectual property rights and copyright for more information about that aspect in your area. I'll say more on this later.
However, the way you intend to provide your story to the world at large will have an effect on how you go about writing and preparing it. This is because it affects how much time, effort, resources, and money you're prepared to put in to preparing the story. It also affects many of the later decisions on media and format because the methods of display and distribution vary between what you can charge for an item and what you can put out publicly for free, and where you place it publicly.
With enough of your own personal money there's no difference. But most people wish to distribute Free of Charge material at no cost to themselves, and this requires you to find a suitable distributor and you must match in with their method of distribution. The same applies for a publisher distribution process as you must meet their criteria for format and presentation, etc. This is true if it's free or if it's sold for a fee.
Another thing to remember is you can always change your mind about it being free or not. If you do change your mind you just change the value assigned in your marketing distribution system.
Note: I have two marketing system I utilise through the same service. All of my works are made available through bookapy.com and www.lulu.com with some items I make free as a public service being approved for wider distribution by their marketing partners of Apple iBooks Store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. I usually allow only free e-books through the partners, but some have a charge.
Publicising Your Story
This is another short, but important, aspect that can kill a writing project if not taken into consideration early. Think hard about how you will make people aware of your completed story. If you intend to publish a novel through someone like Amazon, or Lulu, or any other publisher you have to research how they want the book formatted and set it up to simplify their printing or presentation process. You also have to consider how they'll want manuscripts submitted. Some publishers want the manuscript in a different format to what they want the print ready version, while others want the product in a print ready version only.
If you wish to self publish, print, and sell at your own expense you have to look at the various printed options and their costs, and what the finished book will cost to provide it. Different print sizes and types have different costs involved. Paperbacks are easier to carry around in boxes in the car to take to flea markets for sale than hard cover books are. The lower priced paperbacks will usually sell better than hard covers at flea markets while text books will sell better as hard covers. These are all issues that can affect the finished product you need to consider up front to save on work and costs later by starting out fully set-up to suit the answers you reach as being needed for the finished product.
Note: Although what is in the last paragraph is most relevant to a printed book everything above also needs to be considered if you're intending to publish the story as an e-book. More on this later.
The last chapter of this book is the fine detail of how to prepare a story for submission for publication by a Canadian company that operates a number of free story sites. The section demonstrates how you need to tailor your story format for the publisher. What's interesting to me is the number of people who find the stories on the company's sites for free who then go on to buy the finished e-pubs or print copies of my books.
Which Presentation Media?
This is the final decision point before you get to your content. There are some presentation format aspects decided by the content, but most of the decisions made have reduced the choices left to make. Within the presentation format types of print or on-line the content will have some impact on the format of your story. This is because there are often set layouts required by the publishers or the audience group.
Which media do you wish to use in presenting your written story to the world - Print or on-line or both. If a print book, which size and type, paperback, pocketbook, hard cover, or electronic. All have different needs which have to be thought about at the start. The type of presentation media will have a major affect on the presentation format of the story; so decide this at the start and set up your format accordingly. If being presented on-line as HTML code it doesn't matter much about font or font size as most HTML code will be set to let the reader's browser use their own fonts and size settings. Also, white space is irrelevant and it's all eliminated. However, if it's to be on-line as a PDF file then it follows the same rules of the printed media because it makes images as if it's a printed media item. Some on-line HTML story sites have their own set of publication requirements, due to limitations on the code they allow, as is shown in the last chapter of this book.
In the printed media the format of a hard cover book is different to that of a pocketbook, even though both are prepared to the same basic principles. In most cases this is due to the different page size. In print white space is needed around the text area and between the letters, but different page sizes means a different amount of letters per line and a different number of lines printed per page, and this means they display differently, especially when the lines are justified to spread evenly across the page. A change of one letter can make a difference of a whole word being on one line or the next, and the length of the word can change the way the line looks. Much more on this later in the Format chapter.
Within the print media you have different formats according to the page size because the page size can be decided by the publisher, local laws, international standards, market preferences, and yourself as the creator of the story. These don't always coordinate well. The number of countries who use a small book print standard of A5 is larger than those using the 6 x 9 inch standard, also known as US Trade. But the number of printers and publishers who use the US Trade for many books is larger than those who use A5, some publishers and printers don't use A5 at all, while all of the world's printers use US Trade. You may need to consider this in how it affects the way your story is to be published.
Another aspect of the print book choice is the size of the story. Most printers have a limitation on the number of pages they'll print in certain book sizes. With a very long story you may have to go to another book size due to the book exceeding the number of pages for your preferred one. One book I sell has to be sold as a hard cover to allow for the extra pages available as a hard cover version. An anthology I recently made had to go up in page size to reduce the total number of pages to fit the printer's page size limitations. This affected the page presentation too.
In the next two sub-chapters I cover the basic requirements of both on-line and print stories, but I'll later cover the fine detail of the word processor settings and what to do to create the finished story ready for the publication system you're using.
I strongly recommend you choose a modified print book size and format then set up to write in that because the excess format code can be stripped out for any electronic document type you want. It's much easier to strip out excess code and format than it is to add it in at a later stage. This is something I know from past mistakes that needed correcting. The same is true about the information on the Story Layout Format.
Throughout this document, and all my stories, I use a modified print book layout format to write them and then I use the conversion processes I later mention to create a print ready PDF file, an E-pub file for e-books, as well as a webpage in HTML code. This means I have multiple display formats with the minimum of effort to create them all.
The main modification for dual purposes I use is to have an indented first line plus a line between paragraphs for all the print and on-line versions I create. This is to simplify the process for both media as well as to make it easier for all of the readers.
Basic On-Line
Generally on-line documents are for display on a webpage set up by HTML (hypertext mark-up language) code. Although many now display in JavaScript and other scripting languages for the Internet, the same basic rules and principles apply to all on-line documents.
The reader's browser is set to display in the colours, fonts, and font sizes the reader prefers to view things in. Most on-line documents do not set fonts and font sizes beyond the use of codes to indicate headers and some text in bold; headers can have a few different sizes. It's suggested on-line documents be prepared with the use of sans serif fonts like Arial and Verdana as some people use the fonts set in the original document and these fonts allow for the best on screen display settings.
Headings should always be centred in the page, and they often have a line space between them and the start of the text. The most common way to show chapter headings is to use the Heading size tags in HTML. A second way is to have the new chapter as a new page, recommended with longer stories. A third way is to insert a line at the end of a chapter and have the next chapter heading in bold text. Lines across the page or stars across the page, be it the whole page or just part of it, are often used to designate changes of scene and changes of point of view as well.
A contents page isn't a requirement for on-line stories, although it's recommended for longer stories and to set it up as a set of hot links to the chapters. A hot link is a link where you click on the text in the index and the webpage or place listed opens up by replacing the current page or by opening a new page, depending on how the system and the page is set up to operate. This will make it easier and quicker for readers to go direct to a particular point, especially good for saga length stories.
On-line stories do not indent the first line of each paragraph. The text shows in left aligned blocks on the page with a line space between paragraphs. Paragraphs and sentences should be formulated as normal, all that's different is they way they display.
Page headers, footers, and page numbers are not used in this format.
Basic Print
There will be variations required for the specific book size being used, but the basic principles apply to them all. The aim is to have the printed page look pleasing to the eye and easy to read. To achieve this you need to make sure the finished page isn't cluttered or too open.
It's recommended you use serif fonts because these display better on the page as justified text. The most common used are Arial, Times New Roman, Courier, Century, Garamond, Tahoma, and Palatino Linotype. Some people say you should not use fonts like Courier and Times New Roman for novels because they're the most often used work fonts and they remind people too much of work documents. Palatino Linotype is a font that's long been used by printers for novels, and it's the one I use.
Font size is another important consideration at this point. Business documents often use a twelve point font like Courier 12 with a single line spacing to give large characters on A4 or letter sized pages to make them easy to read at a glance in a business meeting. Some people like to use a twelve point font with single line spacing since that's what they're used to for work documents. However, on a smaller page it looks very odd. Many publishers recommend an eleven or ten point font size, depending upon the font type being used. This is because the fonts vary in size and the white space around them. You may wish to play around with some fonts and font sizes until you find what looks good to you. Below are some examples of different fonts in different sizes.
Ten point - Palatino, Times New Roman, Courier, Arial.
Twelve point - Palatino, Times New Roman, Courier, Arial.
Notice how they have different spacings and spread across the page differently. The larger the font the fewer words there are in a line and on a page, so the more pages you need for the story and thus increasing the printing cost as well as the final book size. The main font used in this document's original is Palatino Linotype in ten point.
The text needs to have a reasonable amount of white space around each letter, so some fonts will need line and a half spacing while others need only single line spacing, as is the case in this document. The white space is used to stop the text from looking too crowded.
The first line of each paragraph is usually indented to show it's a new paragraph. As a general rule no space is left between paragraphs, unless there's a change of scene or a change of point of view without a change of chapter. So the indentation of the first line is very important to show it's a new paragraph. This is especially important when there are speech paragraphs of two people talking, otherwise readers won't see it as a new speaker and they'll get confused about which character says what.
Page margins are another important aspect that needs care because they may also include your gutters. Page margins are the space between the text you write and the side of the page, while the gutter is the space on one side of the page to allow for the book to be bound, this is an extra space to the margin. The general rule is a half an inch minimum for the margin on any book, some recommend an inch, plus between two tenths and three tenths of an inch for the gutter, many people use a quarter of an inch for the gutter because that's easier to set. The gutter is added to the inside edge of the page, the side of the page in the middle when the book is opened. Some programs you may use to prepare your story will have the capability to add a gutter, so you'll enter two separate figures. Some programs won't have a separate gutter setting and you'll need to set the margins differently to include the gutter space as part of the inside margin. You also have to set the pages to 'mirror' instead of both sides as the same so they'll print in the correct manner. Business documents are usually stapled after printing on one side only, so their default is usually both sides the same, and this is what many programs are default set to.
A heading is required for each new chapter. The standard setting is for the heading to be halfway down the page, set in a larger font than the text - usually about double or triple the size, in bold, centred, and often in capital letters or small capital letters. Some people have a major heading of the chapter number like this with a chapter title under that of the same size without the capitals; while others just use either a chapter number or a chapter name as the heading. A line or two is usually left between the heading and the first line of text. As a general rule no other headings are used. The first letter of the first paragraph of a chapter is often an initial capital or drop capital, this is larger than a normal letter; old Bibles are good examples of this process. This practice is not as common as it once was and it's on its way out with many writers and publishers, partly due to modern printing methods, and partly due to the difficulty in getting this right in some word processing programs.
Headers are used on each page. These are set at the top of the page with a space between them and the text. The header should be centred and fairly unobtrusive, so no bold characters and no large font size. In most cases the header is in the same font and size as the text. There are two common types of headers, the traditional one is to have the even numbered pages with the book title and the odd numbered pages with the chapter title. Both are usually in small capitals to differentiate them from the text. This requires a bit more work in setting up the word processing program, so another trend has been growing for some years. With this new format you place the book title on the odd number pages in small capitals and the author's name on the even numbered pages in italics; in both cases you use the same font and font size as the text.
Traditionally the first page of a chapter doesn't have a header. Again, this is a format that is slowly changing due to the way books are now prepared on word processing systems plus the problems and extra work to make this happen properly.
Footers are placed on every page except the first page, the title page. They're near the bottom of the page and just below the text in the same font and font size as the text, although they may be smaller if you wish. The page number should be on the outside of the page. If all is set up right the odd numbered page will have the number on the right of the page while the even numbered page will be on the left of the page.
A table of contents is required and it should be the third page of the book, following the title page and the copyright notice page. The first page should have the same basic format as any new chapter page and the contents list should go for as many pages as it needs. If you use sub-chapter headings the title of the sub-chapters should be indented to show it as part of the chapter heading above it. If the table of contents only uses one page you should leave the next page blank so the first page of the start of the book is on an odd numbered page. After that chapters may start on either an odd or an even numbered page.
Depending upon how you wish to have the title page shown the title should be in large bold type in the top half of the first page with the name of the author in a much smaller font in the bottom half of the page, many publishers now have them about a third of the way down.
The second page is the copyright page and it usually has the book title plus a standard copyright declaration, if multiple prints of the story the print history is often displayed on this page too. Space is often left at the bottom of the page for the ISBN and bar code with the copyright text just above that, thus leaving the top of the page blank. Most pages fill from the top down while this page fills from the bottom up. It's common to put the copyright information about two thirds of the way down the page to allow space below it for the ISBN and bar code to be added.
The second page is also where you should provide the attribution of the artwork on the cover, if you have any. This should note the name of the work with the artist's name and the names of any others involved in creating the cover. This is often placed just under the copyright notice.
The last page of the book must be left blank and the total number of pages must be divisible by four, both of these are requirements of the printers. If you have less than the multiple of four pages the printer will usually increase the number of blank pages at the end to make it a multiple of four. This is due to the way books are printed on larger sheets of paper, usually four pages to a sheet, and the page is cut up. If your text comes to a multiple of four the blank page requirement means they add four pages, if your text is less than a multiple of four then they add just enough blank pages to make the multiple of four. One trick to use here is to use any extra blank pages, except the very last one, for advertising your other stories, if you have them, or to talk about yourself. My personal action is to have the finished print book pages add up to a multiple of four minus one page so the printer knows he'll have a blank page without having to examine the book closely.
Most importantly, set up all these page and text settings right at the start of your writing because later adjustments will change everything, especially the appearance of the page. Then start typing your content.
Formatting Your Story Layout
There are two aspects of formatting your story: one is how you layout the story to write it, and the other is to how you prepare it for display as a print book, or an E-pub file, or an HTML file as mentioned in the previous chapter. Whatever the end format you'll be using you will first be writing the story in some sort of document on your computer or tablet. You'll need to format the layout of the document to write the story so you can assign the text to the proper chapters and paragraph types while you write the story. The usual hierarchy is:
Chapter.
Sub-chapter.
Section.
General text of narrative and dialogue.
Not every story needs to use sub-chapter or section headings. But you can use them if you wish. What you use will depend on the needs of the story while you write it. To simplify the conversion of your finished document into the final published format it's best to set-up your original document with Paragraph Styles for all of the types of headings and text types you'll be using in the story.
Within the software you're using you'll need to assign the story title, basic headings, and two text styles regardless of the final output.
In each of the paragraph styles you'll need to define the font size, font type, the alignment on the page, and if you want it as italics or bold text. You can set the formatting for any letter or word or group of them as needed, but by setting the paragraph style to begin with it allows you to just highlight the text then you click on the paragraph style to do it faster while ensuring it's uniform. The paragraph styles needed are:
Default - for the general narrative and text paragraphs.
Heading - for the story title.
Heading 1 - for the chapter headings.
Heading 2 - for the sub-chapter headings.
Heading 5 - for the section headings.
Quotations - for quotations, notes, and special text items.
By using these paragraph styles when you convert your completed written document to HTML or E-pub the appropriate stylesheets will be created and codes for the levels included in the new document. Also, the system will create a contents index by using the paragraph styles you tell it to use for the contents if you create a contents index. When you convert a word processing file to an E-pub file the converter will automatically create a contents index for it using the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles, but will ignore the Heading style because it knows that's for the story title. HTML and E-pub versions don't require set page sizes or margins since they'll adjust to the device it's being read on, so the conversion software will often remove those settings from the file - but not always.
If you wish to prepare a print version you'll only need to set the extra paragraph styles for left header, right header, left footer, right footer, contents heading, contents level 1, contents level 2. Also, you'll need the footers if preparing a version you want page numbers on. A print version also requires proper page setting for the page size and margins.
Chapters and Scenes
A story should be as long as it needs to be to tell the story you wish to tell. The same is true of any scene or chapter within a story. A typical story will have multiple scenes and it will often have multiple chapters, while some longer stories may have sub-chapters and sections in them. The longer the story the more chapters you're likely to have. Chapters help readers to know where they are in a story and make it easier for them to find where they were or a particular scene they're looking for.
The basic building block of a story is a scene, which may have one or more paragraphs to build and deliver what you wish to convey in the scene. Multiple scenes go together to make the higher level components of a section, sub-chapter, and chapter. You can write a story as a single scene or a single chapter, many short stories are written as such. Nor do you have to use sections or sub-chapters when you write a story. There are many times you need to change the scene due to a change in time, place, or characters present, and you can do this with a scene change indicator of a part line of stars by using the asterisk key or a part line by using the underscore key to create a break as shown below. Or you can use a section heading or a sub-chapter heading or a chapter heading to do the same thing, or you can use a mix of them. The aim is to clearly show an important change from the previous scene.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Minor changes of scene can be shown by a transition paragraph of having the characters move their location, or change their grouping with people coming and going, or changing the dialogue topic.
Whether it's a section, sub-chapter, or chapter the content of the unit should have a central theme with all that is within it closely linked. The key here is to break it into sections, sub-chapters, or chapters relevant to that part of the story. The level of relevance and the way the story is broken down is up to the writer and it usually improves in quality with practice, but not always. It's similar to how paragraphs are linked and split up when you write them.
This whole section comes under the general heading of 'Horses for courses' because you need to shape the approach and divisions to suit the story you're writing while keeping the reader's attention and seeing they're entertained by what you write. What you want to avoid is huge tracts of words, but you also want to avoid the 'See Spot run' type of scene. An example of the suitable way to break up a story would be if you were to write a story about all of the Presidents of the United States you'll have a new chapter for each President, within that you'll have a section heading for each of the common aspects of their term of office like their inauguration address. Some Presidents would have a simple short chapter due to not much of significance happening during their term of office, while others would need sub-chapters for significant events during their term of office, and they'd have sections for important sub-events. In this example the chapter for President Lincoln would have a sub-chapter for the War Between the States while the Gettysburg Address would have it's own section heading. How you use these story dividers will depend on the needs of the story being written, and their use is totally up to the writer.
Many writers use only chapters, while some writers use chapter and section headings, and others have chapter and sub-chapter headings. The best advice I can give is for you to find stories by others who used the various options to see how they've done it, then decide if you should use them for the story you're writing. Every story has its own needs.
This document is written using chapters, sub-chapters, and sections. Some chapters have sub-chapters and sections while some don't have either sub-unit and others have only one of the sub-units. You can see how they're used to both link things together while they also separate them at the same time. The usual presentation of all the headings is to centre them in the page with a space between them and the following text as well as the text above them. There is a slight difference in the way they're done for an electronic document to what you use for a print document, which is covered in another chapter.
I now use Heading 5 for Section Headings instead Heading 3 because PDF creation programs auto-include Heading 3 in the Table of Contents.
Writing Style
This is an area where you have to match the style with the content of the story. By style I'm talking about how you write, the type of English you use - or any other language you use for writing. This is about the style, syntax, and grammar you use in your written story.
Technically Correct English is a must for technical books and text books, but is very boring in novels. This should be perfect grammar with few adverbs or adjectives, because it is meant to be exact and dry
Vernacular English is more colourful and much more active than the technically correct English, and it's also much more fun. I write fiction this way because this is how people talk and how I'd tell you the story if I was speaking to you. Thus giving the impression of someone telling a story over a camp-fire, or the like. More on this later.
Characters
Another part of writing style is how you handle the characters and their descriptions. Some authors tell you all about the main characters at the start. While others tell you the basics, the minimum to allow you to picture them for yourselves. During the story they add more little details about them so you learn more as you get to know them better; the same way you learn about people in real life. In either case, while the story progresses the reader should learn more about how the characters think, their past, their behaviours, their attitudes. The readers should learn to love those you want them to love, and to hate those you want them to.
Some writers give detailed descriptions of characters while others give only a brief description. This is an area where you must make a deliberate choice. Physical descriptions of characters can be just enough to allow the reader to draw a basic mental image of them and leave it up to the reader to add the fine detail. This allows them to use their own imagination and to make just a small part of the story their own, sort of personalise it. You can also give such a detailed description a good artist will draw a portrait. What happens if the description exactly matches someone alive that you've not met, or don't remember meeting. Oops, you really didn't want that law suit. You need to make a decision about which way to go at the start, and to use it throughout the whole story.
In this regards you also need to decide how to do the descriptions, especially in a novel. Few people think things like, 'Oh here's that Fred Joan's been talking about. Hmm, he's 185 centimetres tall.' The reality is people will think something like, 'Here's Fred, damn he's tall.' If you need to be more accurate you can use comparisons like, 'Fred is tall, and I only just come up to his shoulder.' Also use more common and generic terms for body shapes, try to make it as real and life like as possible. However, if the character is a police officer describing someone, then they may very well use the police terminology, even in their own mind.
Suspension of Disbelief
Suspension of disbelief is a plot device used by a writer in novels. It's applied through things like the concept of love at first sight, most people don't believe in it, but it happens. It's something that's possible, but is a low probability. Some are generally known suspensions, like love at first sight, while others are a specific plot device. When used they should only require a simple acceptance of one aspect by the reader, e.g. alien life forms masquerading as humans. This requires a single suspension of disbelief, but after that the rest of the story should be totally realistic in its plot and actions. Too many uses of this plot device in the one story will see many people put the book aside as too unbelievable.
One variant of this is the Possible Reality. In this you take an aspect of current life and extend it slightly. An example is the cyborg in the story Power Tool by Cazna Rochester and myself. Some people read the story and say “Yeah, get real, no way, it can't happen.” Yet the majority of the technology is there and it has been since the early 1990s. Memory plastic exists, so does Kevlar, carbon filament, fibre optics, Tasers, computer controls, and multi-tasking software. For many years scientists have been working on interfacing electronic devices with the human nervous system: the bionic ear, pace makers, bionic eyes, etc. It's happening right now. All the author does is add a small leap forward in the development, which is under current research, of a way to interface individual nerve endings of the spinal column with a computer to give a system of two way feedback and control. I know of all this because the basic hardware idea was one of mine I researched which my friend Cazna used for the story. As I said, you have to remain consistent within that area once you set it up. I remember a television series where the main character had a bionic arm and he was constantly doing things like ripping vault doors out of walls. The arm may have been capable of it, but when he uses his flesh and blood arm to brace with you have a situation where the reality would have the flesh and blood arm being crushed due to the force exerted by the bionic arm against the vault door; this was not real and should not have been done that way.
Many people see a cyborg as not realistic, yet most of the technology has been around for some decades and we can do this now, if you have millions of dollars to spare to do it. Give it a few more years and the price will come down a lot. In 1965 companies paid many millions of dollars for a building full of large computer equipment that did less than a two thousand dollar computer they carry around in a bag today.
The use of a possible reality requires a lower level of suspension of disbelief by the reader, and it leads to a more enjoyable story for them because they can relate to it better. Watch out, some past authors have found themselves being accused of predicting the future due to the way they extended a possible reality while some have been wide of the mark.
The aim is to write something the reader, the audience, will feel very comfortable with and can enjoy because of the way they relate to the story or a character in it or some part of the story. The more they can understand it and relate to it, the more they enjoy it, and the more likely they'll buy it or buy other stories by you.
Writing a Novel
Now we reach the hard part. Already a lot has been said about the best way to write for various purposes, such as the style for the purpose. You should confirm the words you use mean what you intend to convey, this is much more important in some fields where particular words have a special meaning beyond what the general usage is, and you use the style of grammar appropriate to your purpose. Grammar usage and the proper usage of things like commas, colons, semi-colons, etc. vary between some countries and some regions. They can also vary depending upon the content. There are plenty of references for them. I'll cover grammar and the use of the language in detail later.
Make sure you know enough about a subject to sound reasonably knowledgeable when mentioning it in your story. If you don't already know the required amount of knowledge to mention what you wish to use, research it and learn. Nothing turns someone off more than a badly written reference on which they have some knowledge. The classic example is the Hollywood mistake in the early westerns where they have shoot outs with the miracle guns that can fire forever without being reloaded until the script calls for the gun to run out at a key point. The audiences are getting smarter and more knowledgeable about many things the writers and scriptwriters used to be able to gloss over. If you wish to introduce an item for use make sure you know how it works. I read a story where the hero picks up a gun and he can't fire it because the safety is still on. Sounds OK, except the author went one step too far by naming the make and model of a gun with no safety switch.