[maureen-grier Posts: 2 Status: Offline I love kids' books!]

 Hello, I have written several short stories and I have always double-spaced per the guidelines. However, I have created a very short picture book and this format doesn't seem to work for this book. I researched online and discovered that some writers (of very short picture books)  put each sentence on a separate line and use single, rather than double-spacing.  Is this also correct?  Could you point me in the direction of a website that addresses alternative formats that are acceptable? If manuscripts always have to be double-spaced please let me know. I am writing one sentence per line because this seems to work. By the way, this is not a rhyming book. Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

[RebeccaL-G Posts: 1,478 Status: Offline RA SCBWI Cen-Cal WWW]

Perhaps the SCBWI resource The Book would be helpful? It's available free to SCBWI members to download.  Here is a link https://www.scbwi.org/online-resources/the-book/
If the link isn't clickable, copy and paste it into your browser. If it shows no access make sure you are logged in to the SCBWI site first.

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,945 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

If you are writing a poem, even a non-rhyming poem, you can write it as you would for any other poetry submission. Some authors also write a paginated manuscript, where they submit like this:

Page 5
text

Pages 6-7
text

Other than these two things, double spaced is the standard. It can seem awkward when every sentence is its own paragraph, but it is what's expected and an industry professional will understand this.  Note that some people love to see a paginated manuscript while others don't.

SCBWI's The Book is a great resource for questions like this.

[JodyJS Posts: 1,310 Status: Offline Who you gonna call? EMERGENCY KITTENS! WWW]

I often write one sentence per line on my manuscripts. I always double-space. Good luck!