Enhancing Readability with White Space
"White space isn’t just aesthetic nonsense."
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
In screenwriting, opening with more than a few Hemingway-esque sentences is practically a death sentence.
A screenplay is not short fiction. A screenplay is not a movie. A screenplay, as a document, lives and dies by one feature: readability.
This might sound foreign—or even offensive—to us inhabiting the world of literary short fiction. We’re not screenwriters. We don’t write for profit—in fact, most of us do the opposite, dwindling our bank accounts $3.50 at a time on submission fees. So the idea of compromising our art for something as basic as readability may seem like selling out. But I believe it’s worth reconsidering, especially for those of us—most of us—who are not being solicited and are reliant on the dreaded slush pile.
Recently, while reading submissions at the magazine where I serve as Fiction Editor, I came across two stories that crystallized the benefits and drawbacks of white space. The first was a 44-page piece that readers were raving about—most praising the narrative momentum. I opened it and was startled. Due to what I assume was a formatting error (or perhaps a stroke of genius), the story was quadruple spaced. Maybe 100 words per page. It read like a breeze, and sure enough, I found myself admiring its momentum… until I caught myself. I had to ask: was I enjoying the writing—or, could I really be this dumb—the formatting?
And, as if by fate, the perfect counterexample arrived in the next batch of submissions. The author was seemingly impervious to spacing. Nine pages only but packed to the brim with dense, single-spaced blocks. Maybe 1,000 words per page. No quotation marks. No respect for my sanity. I tried five times to read it, always gave up, always pushed it to the end of my pile. Eventually, I fought through it—and to my surprise, buried inside that intimidating mass was a brilliant story.
As a writer myself, I try to give every piece in my queue a full, attentive read. I hope all editors do. But I have to wonder.
Editors are human — humans working on deadlines. Humans reading ungodly amounts of text in ridiculously short windows — and I’m sure, no matter what is said in the submission guidelines, there are editors and readers out there making snap decisions on the very first page. And here’s the hard truth: if your first paragraph is unreadable, if your formatting is too challenging, they may just skip the rest.
No matter what is said in the submission guidelines, there are editors and readers out there making snap decisions on the very first page.
I recently experimented with white space myself, editing an oft-rejected story of mine under these principles. This particular story languished for more than year before finally being accepted. Here is its original opening:
The screenplay arrived at noon with two sticky-notes on its cover page. The first read: “All the dragons in our lives are princesses waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.” —Rilke. And the second: “They are waiting to see me act.” —Randall. By five, the entire agency was jammed into the seventh-floor conference room.
Here is how it appeared when it was finally published—an acceptance praising, of all things, its pace:
The screenplay arrived at noon with two sticky-notes on its cover page.
The first read:
“All the dragons in our lives are princesses waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”
—Rilke.
And the second:
“They are waiting to see me act.”
—Randall.
By five, the entire agency was jammed into the seventh-floor conference room.
Now, do I think the extra white space get my story published?
No.
Do I think it helped?
Maybe.
The new opening has a rhythm. It dictates how the reader reads. The space after the first line creates mystery and a tension. The bizarre quotations, both offset, furthers this mystery and the final line now, like a screenplay, acts as an introduction to the setting which the following scene will take place. This is a lot of impact for an edit that boiled down to hitting ‘enter’ five extra times.
White space isn’t just aesthetic nonsense. It’s not just a way for development executives to read without actually reading anything. It’s psychological, yes — but it’s also a creative act in itself.
White space can —
—if you want it to—
—slow things down.
Or, it can speed things up.
It also controls momentum, tells the reader exactly how to read what it is you’ve written. It can add emphasis or give extra significance to a line that otherwise would not contain any.
Like this, this very useless line right here just reiterating what I wrote above. Look how important it looks now isolated here, all on its own.
And let us not forget clarity. It’s important. Especially in dialogue. Sure, Sally Rooney can get away without quotation marks but for every Salley Rooney, there are dozens of submissions I come across with sections like this:
I said, where are we going. We’re going here, she said. I didn’t understand. This is so stupid. Is it? Now I’m confused. Is anyone talking? Is this a thought of mine? Is this dialogue? I don’t even know anymore.
Now, I’m not saying we should all water down our work for the sake of readability. Some stories need to be dense. Claustrophobia, tension, psychological intensity—these can be heightened by density. But it’s worth asking: is this right for my story? That earlier story I referenced, the one allergic to spacing, it wasn’t doing anything innovative with its structure. It was just a good, conventional story buried under a punishing wall of text. And that’s the case for a lot of work I read with difficult structures. The simple truth is very few stories are made better by being difficult to look at.
When you tackle your next revision, keep readability in mind. A little white space goes a long way—helping pace your story, highlighting key moments. Break up long paragraphs and give your editor a break. Hit enter and give dialogue room to breathe.
Be conscious of rhythm and pace.
If you find a dense chunk of text take a break and ask yourself, creatively, why did I do that? Remember, enhancing readability isn’t selling out: it’s giving your work the best chance to be read.
White space won’t save a bad story. But it just might save a good one.
 | A guest post by
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I couldn't agree with you more, Michael. I considerr myself a pretty serious reader, but have read very little Jose Saramago and no other no-paraagraph-break novels for precisely this reason. I can't be bothered to read lumps of 1,000-word flash either. I look at such novels/pieces and feel thoroughly claustrophobic. There's far more to read than I'll ever get round to, and I'm happy to read stuff that's 'difficult' in other ways, I'm just not prepared to wade through that sort of stuff.
The punctuation issues you raise are a bit different. I don't mind quotations marks being dispensed with if who's speaking, etc. is made clear in other ways (and not because I'm a fan of Sally Rooney).
As an editor who reads a lot of submissions, I can absolutely say that formatting and white space matter. Some of it is that not following guidelines automatically puts doubt in the reading editor's mind (and you don't want to lead with doubt), but it's honestly mostly mechanical, and down to the eyes' abilities to parse and latch onto type while reading a high volume of prose. I will absolutely give my best attempt at reading fairly, regardless of formatting, but tightly packed prose puts work at a disadvantage from the get-go.