A reader writes to ask:

At the end of your podcasts, you include the important fact that your podcasts have a Creative Commons license on them, and I'd like to ask how I can be sure my own work has that protection. I've uploaded some of the preliminary drafts of chapters of my unfinished book onto a website in PDF form, and I did put a copyright statement at the bottom essentially stating "it's my work, don't steal it," but I don't know if I need to receive any official documentation of a Creative Commons license, or if there's a more secure way to make my work available for anyone who wants to read it.

The only reason you would need a Creative Commons license is if you want to be able to make your work available for others to repost, reuse and/or remix for free. With Creative Commons, you can customize the license under which you release your work, choosing which rights you want to reserve and which you want to give away. Cory Doctorow and other high-profile writers routinely release their books online under such licenses, and for some of them it seems to be working out very well indeed. (For more info on Creative Commons and how to license your work, please see creativecommons.org.)

That said, when you post your work online, you always run the risk of someone using it for unauthorized purposes, Creative Commons license or no. Ironically, the safer way to ensure that no one reuses your work is probably to publish it on paper, since it's much easier to reproduce electronic documents than hard copy.

To close on a note more related to manuscript formatting and submitting, please remember that it is rarely necessary to include a copyright notice on your submissions. All reputable editors and publishers understand that your work is implicitly copyrighted, and the risk of their stealing your work and publishing it without attribution and recompense is, in practical terms, nil.

In followup to the post Proper novella format, a reader writes to ask:

What do you do if you are using a novella as part of a short story collection?

This, however, begs the question of proper format for a story collection. Different authors do collections in a couple of different ways. The quick-and-dirty way would be to just print out all your stories in normal short story format, then slap a title page (complete with total estimated word count) and a contents page on top of the stack and call it a day. I'm sure plenty of collections have been sold this way (which includes the bonus of allowing the editor to shuffle stories around to her heart's content).

But you might better treat your collection similarly to a novel manuscript. Give it a title page, and thereafter start each story on its own page with the title centered halfway down the page. Adjust the page numbering so that it continues sequentially through the whole manuscript, and does not start over again at 1 for each story. This, especially for a newer writer, will make your collection look more like an intentional book and less like a slapdash pile of stories.

Either way, treat any novella you include in the collection the same as any other story, with chapter headings centered after a skipped line rather than starting on a new page.

Also, don't forget to include, up front or at the end, a list of where each story was previously published. If a story was not previously published, indicate that too. An exception might be if the bulk of the stories in the collection are previously unpublished, in which case you will probably want to refer to your submission in your cover letter as a collection of original (not unpublished) stories.

A reader writes to ask:

How should I differentiate the character's thoughts from the rest of the narrative? Some people have suggested I put them in quotation marks, but I find that when I read novels in which the character's thoughts are in quotation marks, I initially think they're speaking rather than thinking. I have seen novels in which the thoughts were italicized, but I know it's not advisable to use italics in a manuscript you're submitting to an editor. Should I instead underline all the thoughts? It makes for long underlines, but maybe it's the best way. What do you think?

"I have to get out of this place," John thought, "if it's the last thing I do."

I have to get out of this place, John thought, if it's the last thing I do.

I have to get out of this place, John thought, if it's the last thing I do.

Each method has its adherents, and you're free to choose whichever one you think will help you make your prose as clear as possible. I'm with you on the quotes—I find it too easy to mistake those thoughts for dialog—but my own personal stylistic preference is for the third method. I find that italics gives thoughts such a strong literal flavor that seeing this technique employed often breaks me out of the story. I don't know about you, but rarely do I find myself thinking in complete literal sentences. (Except when I'm writing)

But I'm something of a cantankerous reader. I think it's safe to say that the italics method is the one most commonly used these days. It's a solid choice, and if you go that route, do not be afraid of long chunks of underlining. You are correct to avoid using italics in your manuscript; it's just too easy for editors to overlook when reading your submission, especially in Courier font. Underlining is the correct and accepted method for indicating italics in a manuscript (as demonstrated in the second example above), and no editor is going to blink at encountering a long string of it. That's what she's accustomed to seeing, even if it looks graceless to your eye.

I've written more about italics in the entry Italicizing long blocks of text.

A reader writes to ask:

What does the format look like for a novella? What's the first page look like? And, what do you do with chapters?

In my estimation, the format you use for a novella would depend on where you're submitting it, and for what purpose. If you're sending it to a magazine or anthology, format it the same as you would a short story. If you're sending it to a book publisher for consideration as a standalone volume, you should format it like you would a novel, with a separate title page.

In short story format for your novella, you would indicate new chapters simply by skipping a line, then centering the chapter header on its own line. In novel format, you could either do it that way or by starting each new chapter on its own page, with the chapter heading centered halfway down the page.

It's too bad the novella isn't more popular these days, though it's easy to see why publishing standalone novellas is probably not very cost-effective. To me, it's a great length for fiction because the author can explore a character or idea in depth but is still forced to focus his writing and make each word count. The reader gets the satisfaction of a complete, involving reading experience with some heft to it that she can still finish in one sitting. I think that's a great thing all around.

(I should point out here that my own standalone novella Cast a Cold Eye, co-written with and at the instigation of the estimable Derryl Murphy, will appear from PS Publishing later this year.)

A reader writes to ask:

I've been speaking with an agent who has expressed keen interest in my sci-fi/humor novel, and what she's telling me is that while she really digs it, the manuscript is simply coming in too long for most publishers to take a look at. Unbeknowst to me (rookie mistake), I need to reformat the mansucript using Courier 12 point, which is blowing my page count sky-high (I wrote in Times Roman).

The agent is also telling me that I need to get it down below 480 pages Courier for publishers to be willing to look at it. My mansucript is 120,000 words and change, but is coming in at 730 pages Courier 12 point. Any thoughts about anything I might be doing wrong, if anything?

Is she on point? Is the page count more significant than the word count?

I hate being so close and yet feeling like I might be so far.

I'd appreciate any feedback you can offer me.

480 pages in Courier 12 is going to yield a manuscript of between 120,000 and 140,000 words, depending on your margins, so your novel should be fine as-is, without any cuts, if you can just get your formatting problems ironed out.

For the record, 120,000 words sounds about right as a cap for an average first novel, although longer ones certainly do sell and get published. Assuming for a moment that your word count is wrong and the book really is longer than your agent wants it to be, you have to weigh her advice in relation to your own instincts as a writer. Cutting a manuscript down to size is often a very effective exercise for improving a book, but it's not right for every book. Try to get your agent to offer more specific suggestions for why this book should be shorter, and for plot elements or other specifics that could be trimmed. Try to assess whether she is trying to make the book better or just trying to get you down to a target word count on general principle. She very well might be right to ask you to cut the book, but you have to make that decision yourself.

For the record, any editor worth his or her salt, especially at a major house, is going to understand that word count is what's important to the size of the published book, not the page count of your manuscript. Just a glance at the height of the stack and the size of the font will be enough for most editors to estimate a ballpark word count, which tells them how long a book they're really dealing with.

One last point. It's not necessarily a mistake to print your manuscript in Times Roman. Courier has traditionally been the accepted default, but times have changed and the editor who would reject a manuscript out of hand these days because it's printed in Times Roman is rare indeed. The best guide is still to use Courier unless an agent or editor explicitly requests a different font in his guidelines, but it's certainly not a dealbreaker to use something attractive and readable like Times Roman or Georgia. (You should definitely avoid sans-serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica, though.)