As I type this the first round edit is done. Did some rearranging, some altering, some rewording, and now I'm printing out the document to review it again. It's been trimmed to just around 5100 words...still more cutting to do.
Here's an interesting question...from what I have found on manuscript formatting, you're not supposed to do things like italicize words and bold words and such, so how do you express certain ideas as thoughts if you don't? I could probably get away with doing that, but in this story I just used quotes as if the character were speaking for now. I don't know what format it's "supposed" to be in.
If I were asked this question by my daughter I'd tell her to look for the rules and see if there was clarification in the rules, but I didn't see anything at the Writing Show's website. I guess Paula's either looking for the standard manuscript formatting rules or she doesn't mind liberties with formatting...I'm toying with the idea of just emailing the show to ask her.
It's probably not a big deal but I'd prefer to do whatever makes it easier for the judges to get through their pile of entries. I know that little things can really make a difference if you hit that little annoyance fifteen times a day.
What I'll probably end up doing is digging around for my standard manuscript formatting notes and see if I can rework it that way. The thing is that last time I researched this topic I could have sworn that the SMF was actually more like "suggested manuscript format", and the rule of thumb was to fall back on those suggestions (or close to them) only if there wasn't a stated preference by agents and publishers for the submission you're making to their particular taste. Ugh.
I'll first concern myself with getting the story polished a little then worry about formatting, I suppose.
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