I double-space my stuff, use a 12 point courier-font, and have a cover page on everything. I write with Microsoft Word Starter.
I use Scrivener; it's good for planning and executing the story, and then it compiles it into a Word document. You can make all sorts of edits to the manuscript before it's even compiled, like inserting page breaks or messing around with the font, but it produces a very high-quality, standard manuscript that follows all of the correct formats. It has the headers and everything, too, and I usually just do a run-through at the end and go over everything to make it's formatted how I want.
I've never heard of Scrivener. I'll check it out. I'm trying to write my first manuscript with Microsoft Word Starter, so I was just wondering about other options. Thanks!
I have the starter on my netbook and the regular version on my laptop. Been meaning to try what Courtney suggested, but haven't gotten around to it. I guess I want to stick to an idea first. I'm all over the place when it comes to ideas. Thanks for the reminder, Courtney!
There is no standard, but for $45 Scrivener is a great choice. Write with whatever floats your boat. I use Google Docs (so that I can write draft work from any Internet-connected computer) and am experimenting with using Scrivener for final revisions (I like that I can put each scene in its own file and that I can write copious notes and add research material directly to the project).
Before that, I used the regular version of Word for many years.
As long as you can also get headers with Starter (each page after the title page should have yourname/title/pagenumber in the upper-right corner), Starter sounds fine to use.
OpenOffice is free and does everything you need.
Really, all you need is a program that lets you type words and save them in a format that is acceptable for editors, like .doc, or .rtf.
