If you’ve a passion for writing fiction and you would LOVE getting paid for it, consider writing short stories! As an aid to those writers, published or not, who want to earn some revenue for their work, here is a list of short story publishers that pay right around $500 (and some, more) for an accepted submission. Here’s my “Super Seven” list of publishers: Heroes and Heartbreakers is a branch of McMillan, a major publishing house. Short story submissions should be 15k-30k words long and they pay $1,000 to $2,000. As an advance against a 25% royalty offer. You can find their submission guidelines, HERE. Fireside is a short story magazine that loves publishing great stories for which the writers are well paid. More than normal rates for their category of magazine, Fireside pays 12.5 cents/word, up to 5,000 words and they like to publish 10,000 new words of fiction each and every month! Learn about their submission guidelines, HERE. Cicada Magazine is a YA mag with a large teenage audience. They pay $0.25 / word, up to 9,000 words which means their max pay-out is $2,250. Submission guidelines are HERE. If writing fiction for the younger half of the YA audience is your thing, Cricket Magazine targets ages 9 – 14, paying $0.25/word for between 1,200 and 1,800 words / submission. Once in a great while, they’ll accept a serialized story that maxes out at 6,000 words. Their submission guidelines are HERE. Sci-Fy and Fantasy are genres that many love to write; if this is you, Fantasy and Science Fiction is one of the major magazines for you to consider. They pay a generous 7 – 12 cents/word, up to 25,000 words which means you could have a payout of up to $3,000. If you’ve a story line that would appeal to all fantasy and sci-fy readers (if it has some humor in it, even better), then their submission guidelines are HERE. Clarkesworld is another science fiction mag that has won many awards, including 3 Hugo’s. This mag pays $0.10/word for the first 5,000 words, and $0.08/for each word after that. So if you have a longer piece of fiction (up to 16,000 words, max), you could receive up to a $1,380. Payout for your fiction! That’s not peanuts, pal! For submission guidelines, CLICK HERE. Last but not least, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Harper’s Magazine. They’re “the oldest general-interest monthly in America” and usually publish thought-provoking articles about contemporary issues. So if you’ve written something along those lines you can expect payment to be VERY GOOD. They also accept unsolicited fiction submissions!! Here are their submission guidelines. List not long enough for ya? Don’t worry; there’s more to come. But THIS LIST is my best. As with anything, please do your due diligence: check out their submission guidelines, READ some of the work they’ve published in the past, if you want to submit to them, SPELL / GRAMMAR CHECK your work, first!! In a few days from now, I’ll post some additional options you can check out, as well. Until then … Happy Writing! ~ Gail
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If you’re like me, you’ve got ideas aplenty and you just can’t resist writing them down … and keep writing. After all, great plots and characters don’t drop in to visit that often! But somewhere between Chapters 1 and 3 my motivation starts to wane, and I’m left with yet another storyline gathering digital dust on my hard drive. I read countless blogs and articles on the craft of writing fiction (or any genre, for that matter), take tons of notes, then – once in a while – I find a gem lying in my laptop’s rubble. This is one of those “gems”.
FIRST PERSON POV … PRESENT TENSE … PAST TENSE … Oh, MY! Let’s be real. Most of us probably write in third-person point-of-view because it’s just plain easy. Every book I’ve ever read (with exception of YA fiction) has been written this way. But there IS something to be said for writing in first-person perspective. Here’s the skinny: first person point-of-view is like a journal entry; the reader sees this character through his or her eyes, as opposed to watching the character. As a reader, you’ll see, hear, taste, feel, what the character does as it’s happening in real time. You (the reader) and the character are “one”. First-person point-of-view can be written two ways:
This was college? I stood and stared at all the people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I didn’t like crowds; I felt like this was some kind of set-up to make me more anxious than usual. I could see the delta kappa phi house sitting at the top of the hill, like a palatial mansion and I could hear voices of students shouting across campus, as if the last football game had never ended. Here it is with the filter words removed: This was college? I stood and stared at all the people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I didn’t like crowds; it was like some kind of set-up to make me more anxious than usual. Delta Kappa Phi was at the top of the hill, sitting like a palatial, unapproachable mansion and voices of students shouted incessantly across campus, as if the last football game had never ended. What did I remove? I felt, I saw, I could see, I could hear. In other words, I removed all words that had the reader being SHOWN what the character was seeing and feeling, as opposed to seeing and feeling it along with the character. First-person is being behind the character’s eyes … being in their head … doing what they’re doing, WHEN they’re doing it. How to "Filter Out" Your Filter Words Filter words are hard to spot – at least for me. But if I really put my mind to it, I can do it. It’s all about replacing “outside” with “inside”. EXAMPLE: “I saw the cat puke up a slimy hairball.” You’re watching the character watching the cat. “The cat puked up a slimy hairball.” Now you’re seeing it as the character is seeing it. REMEMBER:
What about tense shifts, you might ask? Present tense shifts to past tense can be awkward, as one is focused on what’s happening now to what has happened in the past, what’s going to happen in the future on to what might or might not happen, ever. This is why I’ve always written solely in past tense; it gives me as an author more flexibility when it comes to navigating through time. So…Combining Tenses … The best way is to KISS (keep it simple, sweetie): Use the past tense for actions hat have happened and are done and over with; use the present tense for things that continue to be in progress or motion. Is your character DOING IT NOW? Use present tense. Has your character ALREADY DONE IT, SEEN IT, HEARD IT, FELT IT? Use past tense. Is it clear as mud, yet? Happy writing. ~Gail Things Writers Need to Consider about Young Adult Fiction First of all, thanks to terribleminds.com, I’ve learned something I didn’t know about Young Adult Fiction, and that is: it’s not actually a GENRE unto itself, like dystopian or romance, but an age range of readers. Of course we all know this, but I just thought I’d clarify that it’s not a genre … because I’ve been calling it that just like most authors/writers I know! Having said that, I’ve realized that writing for YA’s is very liberating. If you’ve ever picked up any YA book and flipped through the pages (or better yet, read it), you know that no matter what the setting, it runs amuck over many other genres, mixing up the lingo of the time and place with somewhat a modern paintbrush so that the way we, as writers, normally think a story should be written can be (literally) thrown out the window. So don’t think you can’t write YA because you’re not a teenager – that would be like thinking you can’t write crime novels because you’re not a New York precinct detective. The next thing we, as writers, need to realize is that, while the protagonist/s and antagonist/s are mostly teens, it’s ok to have other characters of varying age ranges in and about … unless the work is solely written in a world where no one lives beyond age twenty (I’m actually working on one like that). What happens in a teenager’s life now, I’m certain happened in whatever timeframe you’ve chosen. For example, if the timeframe is medieval, do be complicit with what the towns, commerce, etc. was like back then … but remember it’s all from a teen’s point of view. Just sayin’. I was once a teenager. You were, too. Teen protagonists should suffer from teen problems. While I’m sure that goes without saying, I found that, when writing a chapter of a current WIP of mine that was aimed at the YA audience, I found my teen protagonist a bit morally out-of-character for her age … and had to re-write. She wasn’t sixteen going on sixty! I had to think about what her problems were – and begin, there. I read a post called The Teenage Brain Is a Work-In-Progress that emphasized a teen’s brain is still in development, so one really can’t be certain how a teen will react to something. Like terrribleminds.com stated: “their brains ain’t done “cooking”; they are “an unfinished masterpiece that’s pliable in some ways, rigid in others, and whose emotional and intellectual development is driven by a drunken chimpanzee whacked-out on a cocktail of high-octane hormones.” Even though my over-protected teen years wasn’t nearly like that, all this means is – the teen psyche is a really weird piece of equipment. FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW is an author’s nightmare – well, it’s my nightmare as a writer; but YA fiction is predominately written in first-person point-of-view for a very good reason: it reads faster, reads more like a journal than a book, and it’s focused on self. You know a teen, right? It’s all about me, mine, my, and I. PRESENT TENSE is also a biggie for most authors to handle. YA books are mostly written in present tense because it’s more like viewing a movie than reading a book and, to be frank (I raise 2 teens, ages 14 and 17) I know from first-hand experience that getting them to watch the movie version of any book is so much easier than taking them to Barnes and Noble…or telling them to download it to their Kindle. Now, some good news! While a full-length novel is usually around 90,000 + words, YA books are shorter, usually hovering around the 70,000-word mark. If you can get it all said and done in 50,000 words, even better. Novellas are “in” right now. If you’re new to writing for the YA audience, don’t think, as a writer, you’re going to have to “write down” to these readers. Most YA books I’ve read have teens that sound like adults and, please don’t hit me, teens ARE capable of both wit and smarts, even though they will act out like the still-kids they are: do stupid stuff, struggle against the norm, rebel against authority, do things “their way”. This makes for what I call a risky story; and it can be so liberating for a writer! It’s writing a brave, awesome story that flows who-knows-where! Not playing to social norms has always been “cool” to me. YA stories handle some big deals, like racism, shootings, suicide, and lying ass-wipes – just like today. Ask any teen how “their day went”, and they’ll tell you so-and-so down the street is pregnant and her boyfriend isn’t the father, this dude got bullied by that dude who got beat up by another dude and everyone “hates me because I didn’t want to smoke pot at the skate park” – boohoo, yell, pout, stomp. Don’t think that young adults are the only ones going to read your story. YA plots, written in first-person point-of-view and present tense are easy reads for older folks, too. Some of the bravest and awesome storytelling I’ve read was in YA fiction. Maybe it’s because when I was a teen I was so – middle class and uptight, instead of acting how I really felt (flip the bird to trends and rules). I hate to admit it, but I was a teenage snob, raised by upper-middle class parents who lived in the “nice” neighborhood of the 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t flip people off and moon the driver in the car behind mine (while someone else was driving, of course). But my younger brother did! How awesome was that?? Last but not least, if you’re going to write a YA fiction, read it. Get your hands on a couple of YA books and see for yourself how “all over the place” they are; how liberating it can be for you, an author, when you sit down to start writing. Now that this informative rant of mine is over, all I have left to say is “just write – and enjoy the journey.” It will be a bumpy, grueling, wonderful write, but as long as you make it a great story … well, that’s all that matters! hat is one of the most difficult hurdles and significant challenges you face as a writer? I’ll tell you what it is; it’s the “creative process” – and everyone has their own way of being creative. BUT – it’s still a big challenge to a lot of us. Like many of you, for the longest time I thought my creative process must be “just mine” – that I must face it and “do” it all alone. Many of us just don’t want to share the creative juices once they get flowing; but most writers I know and work with love to share and learn and listen; and they do that by something called “brainstorming”. Brainstorming is what a writer does when their creativity isn’t at an all-time high; it’s what he or she does to get those creative juices flowing, again; it’s what all great authors have done at one time or another. Brainstorming with a creativity group – writers who all want to move forward to “publish” – is THE MOST HELPFUL thing a writer can do for him or herself. And that’s not all. There are about eight very helpful but practical habits you as a writer can learn to improve your unique, creative process.
So, what can you do whenever you get into a bind creating something new? You get to brainstorming with a creative group (like the Round Robin Writers!) and embrace some (or all) of the above eight practical habits (or at least those of the eight that speak to you & your situation). That’s it. But “it” is a biggie. Now go forth and be the creative writer you were meant to be! ~ Gail You're walking down the street and you stop; there on the corner of First and Second
is the most stunning woman dressed in red you've ever seen. DILEMMA: How can we help our readers to "see" this woman like we do? One of the biggest hurdles for writers new and seasoned alike, is getting the reader to "see" the Protagonist and Antagonist ... and every other character we create within a story, like we see them. Whenever a new character is introduced into the story, there are MUSTS a reader needs for seeing that character like we want them to see him or her. Our reader wants to know:
This is so much better than just telling your reader "she was so beautiful, dressed in red, auburn hair flowing down her back. TRY THIS EXPERIMENT: Write a very short story and let a friend or family member read it. Then ask them to tell you what the character looks like. Did they describe him or her just like YOU see the character? If not, this is something you need to work on. On the other hand, if they can describe the character in some detail, you've written a winning description. The point is, a character's physical description isn't the best way to give your reader a mental pic of your character; it's only important if it adds to the story line ... like the fellow that walks with a severe limp but insists on running in the local marathon. The next best thing you must do is give your characters depth and individuality. That doesn't mean your character can't be shallow - he or she can be! But you must show your reader, by what your characters choose to do, how they feel and think, and how they respond (or not) to outside influences that they are real flesh and blood people, not just words on a page. Here's a little example of something I wrote to begin a short story ... let's see if you think it does a good job of being "descriptive." THE ONE-OFF Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs. We aren't always the person we appear to be at our nine to five's or at writer's club. Sometimes, we really are a mess with all kinds of privacy issues ... and hidden agendas, as well. Like me; I'm slouching on a bench in the dog park - and I don't even care for canines, much less own one. I'm more of a cat person, someone who "waits it out", praying for a sign that this isn't to be my last day alive. My wardrobe is like my attitude; all cut-offs and bad-ass looking shoes. Whoever insisted "blondes have more fun" hasn't walked a mile in my work boots. My patience with humanity has grown thin like me; every day I thank God it's only me, myself and I on the job. As far as I can tell, people are a lot like the boob reduction I got last year; not very painful to loose and once gone, not missed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Okay, now tell me - what does this character look like to you? Put it in the comments, if you dare! :) |
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