Bill Shunn not long ago released a piece on manuscript format due to what seems to have been a dearth in standardization at the time. His guide has come to be known as Shunn Manuscript format. Some, for whatever reason, found his guide hard to find — or hard to follow — so I’m writing my own in deference to his.

Table of Contents

• What is Shunn manuscript format?
• How do I use Shunn manuscript format?
• A sample:
• A downloadable template for the format guide:

What is Shunn manuscript format?

Considering how much editors make, Shunn manuscript format is a way of simplifying and cleaning up your manuscript to make it easy for slush readers and editors. Easy to do what? To first compare merely the writing (and nothing else) with other pieces under consideration. It’ll remove distractions like typos and weird fonts. It also helps standardize manuscripts to help them envision column space, payout, and — ultimately — to give them space for the eventual edits.

Knowing how to use it is not only helpful to your writing career, it’s absolutely essential. So get used to figure it out now.

And honestly, it’s not that hard to figure it out. It’s way, way easier than the guidelines for your average academic journal.

How do I use Shunn manuscript format?

Shunn manuscript format has some simple guidelines like double spaced, one inch margins, name and address in top left, word count rounded up to the nearest hundred (unless it’s a novella), byline, and other tricks and tips. It’s only a 7-minute read total, so go ahead and download the template.

If you want a sample, I include it below, but yeah: download the template and you can see what he’s talking about. My hope was that folks would just google his name but for some reason, people are lazy. So I included my riff on it here. I’m not selling it or anything, you can just download it with the widget below.

It’s easiest in Scrivener, honestly, to get the template right. Scrivener auto-compiles in for me every time and I barely tweak it at all. And no, I’m not a Scrivener salesman, it’s at this point ubiquitous, something like saying, “Why are you doing carpentry without a hammer in your toolbox?” But if you don’t have Scrivener, I’ve made a simple guide.

A sample:

Lancelot Schaubert	                     2,100 words
5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11232
634-5789
lanceschaubert@gmail.com
[membership of guilds / agent name goes here]


              Shunn Manuscript Format
                          by 
                 Lancelot Schaubert

Bill Shunn not long ago released a piece on manuscript format due to what seems to have been a dearth in standardization. It has come to be known as Shunn Manuscript format. Some, for whatever reason, found his guide hard to find — or hard to follow — so I’m writing my own in deference to his. If you’d like to see his, just follow this link. But in hopes that I might help keep your story from auto-rejection due to gross format taboos, I’ve riffed off of his piece here. His is obviously better; mine simply has updates and stylistic quirks. Regardless, as Shunn said, if your manuscript comes off as clean as a fresh pressed white Italian shirt, well it’s at least possible the writer behind it takes their prose seriously as well. But pull the through line and unravel that a bit: what makes a clean pressed white shirt in terms of your manuscript?

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A downloadable template for the format guide:

That’s a sample. For the whole template, drop your email in here:

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash