Formatting

[JulieRichUK]

Is there a way to keep the formatting in a story?
If not what is the best way to separate two distinct voices ie a narrator of a tale within a story.

 

[sr71plt]

Lit has standard formatting across its collection. That's what an anthology-like collection does to keep from confusing readers. Lit. determines font and margins, and all paragraphs are set flush left with an extra carriage return between them. It allows the authors a few format functions, but the less of them you use the better it is for readers following the content of your story. It allows for italics, set as <i> begin and </i> end in the text, which should be rarely used, and bolding, set as <b> begin and </b>, which should be even more rarely used. American publishers genral only use bolding for headlines for fiction. Lit. allows centering, but that's starting to get into nonstandard and unnecessary formatting that distracts, so no example of that. Section breaks are most commonly rendered as "* * * *" set flush left with line returns above and below.

On the question of alternate narrators, there's no real way to do this from paragraph to paragraph because there's no real way to make this clear to the reader. Longer sections of separate point of view can be handled by clearly sectioning them off (use of the "* * * *" section breaks).

You're not a book designer when you write a short story or trying to produce an eye-catching wall ad on a subway. You should want the reader to be able to concentrate on the content of your story, not on a lot of comic book style bells and whistles jazzy designing.