Many writers don’t use them, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt to use either one. These also help you format your book’s front matter, which includes the copyright and title pages, book dedication, introduction, prologue, etc. Many self-publishing platforms like Lulu, IngramSpark, and BookBaby also include ready-to-use layout templates. There are layout templates for formatting your manuscript in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Adobe InDesign, Pages, and pretty much any other word processor you might use. Freytag’s pyramid (sometimes called a plot pyramid) is easily the most famous story template: Exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement.Ī book layout template, or manuscript template, includes all the formatting and styles that affect the way your book looks on the page. Ī story template, or plot template, is essentially an outline for your book.

There are two different types of book templates: story templates and layout templates.