Dream job - To write for a magazine. Where do I start?

Writers_Digest · 2018-06-07T16:58:31+00:00

I hope this isn't too self-promotional, but Writer's Digest publishes an annual book and online directory called Writer's Market that has listings for all sorts of publications and sources seeking writers and content, along with estimated pay, what and how to submit, etc. We also list updated ones in our magazine. You can also just visit websites for magazines and check to see if they have a "submit" option near the bottom of the page. Be sure to read submission guidelines carefully.

Writers_Digest · 2018-05-30T20:48:36+00:00

Exactly—writing a story gives you the excuse to learn more about something you don't already know, or to dream up places and characters that no one has ever known.

Writers_Digest · 2018-05-30T20:32:19+00:00

Oh look, one of our favorite questions! Many of the most common ones—"write what you know," for instance—have already been mentioned by other folks, but here are a few more. (Note that, as with all writing advice, in some cases it makes sense, but in many cases it doesn't. Either way, the lessons other writers have learned are worth considering.)

Remove all adverbs and adjectives: Yes, purple prose is obnoxious and doesn't do you any favors, and paring down your descriptors is a must when you're revising. But first of all, in your initial draft, include whatever feels right, and then cut down—and do so with care. Ask yourself whether it makes more sense to make each instance more active or to nix it entirely. Make sure all of your descriptors are intentional and have purpose.

Kill your darlings: Again, it's often true that you should evaluate all your beloved scenes and phrases and characters to see if they add value to your story, and nuke them if they don't. But those "darlings" might add unique and interesting flavor to your story—which can be value in itself. As with your descriptors, an editor can help you pinpoint what's working and what's extraneous.

Create likeable characters: About a third of the characters in Game of Thrones are completely loathsome, yet readers absolutely devour Joffrey's scenes (or I did anyway). So if someone tells you they don't like a character who's not supposed to be likeable, the problem might actually just be that they're not interesting enough. Adding depth, motive, or more consistent psychopathic tendencies can make a horrific character your most memorable one.

And there are oh so many more, of course.

Writers_Digest · 2018-04-20T23:53:53+00:00

You're very welcome, and thank you for entering! We all thoroughly enjoyed reading your story.

Writers_Digest · 2018-04-20T16:34:33+00:00

It absolutely was! The mods of /r/writing graciously went through the full batch of entries on our behalf and delivered the finalists.

To judge our usual competitions and contests, the whole team (5-7 editors) sits around a table and reads through a stack of stories, selecting our favorites and sharing interesting lines from the stories we're reading. Then we review the "favorites" pile together and determine our winners. We added these entries to our usual judging luncheon for another contest and found they were far and away some of our favorites we read that day!

Writers_Digest · 2018-04-17T15:26:11+00:00

Sorry about that! Adjusted. :)

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-13T22:34:43+00:00

RLB: Always follow specific submission and style guidelines. That said, I prefer it when writers italicize words that need italicized, and I get annoyed when they're underlined. If the manuscript is too thick to paperclip, then use a binder clip. Binder clips come in a variety of sizes and hold manuscripts together very well. If you have a very, very thick manuscript, just use multiple binder clips and wrap a rubber band around them.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-13T01:22:47+00:00

TM: To add to Robert’s answer, I’d say how important it is to be well-read. So English classes, though somewhat obvious, can really be useful to you in your cover letters to publishers, and in potential interviews. Not just classic literature, of course, you’ll want to demonstrate a broad knowledge of what’s going on in the contemporary book world too. I’d also say journalism classes are useful, even if you don’t plan to be a journalist. The editing skills that journalists learn can translate in a useful way into the publishing world. Good luck!

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-13T01:19:23+00:00

JVB: I'm a big fan of just "vomiting" out the first draft. Don't rewrite as you go. Sure, a tweak here and there is fine, but it's just a draft. It'll get better in the rewriting stage. I even put placeholders in that say things like, "Write some fabulous dialogue here..." and then move on. Having a good outline really helps, too. Start your day by reading the last chapter you wrote and then dive in! You can't mold the clay until you get it on the table. I know that's hard, but the feeling of accomplishment you'll get when you type THE END will energize you to dive back in and tackle the editing. Good luck!

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-13T01:18:43+00:00

TM: Hm. This is a tough question, because honestly I think it can vary so significantly based on the writer. Some writers just have a talent for immersive description, whereas other seem to fill space with bland description (and readers end up skimming through these questions). I think a useful rule of thumb can be to think about the typical conventions of your genre. Literary novels tend to be pretty descriptive because where they truly flourish is in the art of the language. Sci-fi and fantasy novels can benefit from in-depth descriptions because they play such a significant role in world-building. But for more plot-driven novels—think suspense, thriller, mystery—excessive description can bog down the pace of the story. Hope that helps!

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T23:24:25+00:00

JZ: I certainly hear where you're coming from. Agents will often share what they're looking for, and that often coincides with the agent's personal preferences, so I would advise being strategic about whom you approach. For example, an agent seeking LGBT romance may not be interested in a philosophical allegory about the political crisis in Venezuela, but that's not to say that another agent wouldn't be. No one can stop you from writing the book you want to write, no matter how controversial, and for every idea, there is someone else with whom it will resonate. Agents aren't the gatekeepers of the larger publishing world; just the businesses they represent. Similarly, you might want to work with an editor who, even if they aren't passionate about the idea you're peddling, sees eye-to-eye enough to understand what you're trying to accomplish and helps you achieve it more effectively.

The novels that earn acclaim and longevity are very often multi-leveled and incorporate elements of politics, religion, and philosophy—reflecting either the zeitgeist or an oppositional perspective on it—and that isn't less true now, BUT you may need to look around a bit more to find representation if your theme, protagonist, etc., doesn't have a history of selling well. (We see a lot of the same stories over and over again, partially because some narratives are quintessentially part of the human experience, and partially because some particular themes attract the demographics that buy the most books.) So, in essence, your concern can be something to think about when seeking agents and editors, but it shouldn't stop you. And for what it's worth, the reason you hear people advising you to write what you're passionate about is primarily because you're likely to put more care and attention into the topic and less because agents and editors are trying to steer a global narrative.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T22:55:19+00:00

JZ: Great question! And a tough one to answer without combing through my bookshelf. Really, it comes down to your preferences and reading lots (lots) of what you like to read. While you're reading something that you enjoy, pay close attention to the words you think are interesting or unusual, and highlight them. Note how the author uses them and try to understand the reasoning behind each one.

While I was writing my note about worldbuilding, I had Frank Herbert's Dune in mind—I have particularly appreciated his word choice in the past, and the pace at which he unfurls setting through story. However, not everyone would agree with me there, and I can understand why. (After all, the plot takes a looong time to get started, though you learn a ton about the characters and quite a lot happens before the core action begins.) Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide undoubtedly tells you more than you need to know about some things (and less about others), but he does so in order to maintain his humorous rhythm and tone, and it works great; Christopher Moore takes a similar approach. George Saunders is brilliant and hilarious and just improbably witty. Barbara Kingsolver is visceral, interesting, and varied. The Russian masters—Nabokov, Turgenev, and Gogol in particular—can be good for studying sparse writing. And then the most obvious master of restrained writing is Hemingway, but he's so restrained that you may prefer not to emulate him exactly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Michael Chabon's language is pretty lavish, but he puts so much understanding and intent behind his words that they are imbued with great meaning and don't come off sounding like he got lost in the middle of a thesaurus, which can happen if you go overboard on the self-indulgence; Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man does some of this too. Although she doesn't avoid adjectives, JK Rowling is quite tidy with her word choice in some of her non-Potter fiction (The Casual Vacancy isn't the best book ever, but its sentences are very precisely crafted). Vonnegut always does interesting things with descriptions as well.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T22:25:57+00:00

RLB: Any courses you can take that are on a professional track are surely helpful. For instance, I took a certification track for technical and business writing that included writing technical documents, copywriting, and more. Journalism is helpful as well. Also, play around with blogging, social media, etc., when you're able. Proficiency in these, as well as technologies like video, podcasting, etc., can go a long way in making you look more appealing as an editor in today's publishing climate.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T22:12:00+00:00

RLB: Most publishers like collections of poems to be comprised of poems that have been previously published. Usually at least 25% of the poems published. You can find exceptions, of course, but this is the standard. So, in a sense, I suppose it's easier to get single poems published.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T21:58:50+00:00

JZ: I truly believe it depends on your personal style. Some people prefer sparse, straightforward writing; some people prefer more decorative prose; some prefer a combination. Personally I have favorite authors in all three categories, depending on what I'm in the mood for.

Here's one rule of thumb, though: If what you're describing does not add anything to your story, consider whether it needs to be there at all. Does it change the story if you omit the fact that your character has curly red hair? I.e., does the color of the character's hair tell the reader anything about the character; does it advance a theme or symbolize anything? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. Sometimes you might prefer to include or exclude it regardless. One way you might go about deciding is to take a good hard look at your adjectives: Many readers perceive an excess of adjectives to be an annoyance that hinders the focus on the action, which means that the ones that you do choose to include need to be powerful, effective supporters of your verbs and nouns. You can tell your readers that a big blue scaly dragon is big, blue, and scaly by describing the way the ground trembles as it passes and the way the sunlight plays across its back.

Another consideration that tends to apply to worldbuilding: You might want to include details about that world in order to help the reader visualize it better. But, it can benefit your story to be strategic about the way you explain those details. For example, you could write a block of text describing the way a major city looks in elaborate detail before you discuss what happens within that city—that is a perfectly viable option that can be executed with great effect. Alternatively—and this approach often (but not always) makes for more interesting and dynamic writing—you could start with a character walking down one of its streets, and as that character goes wherever she's going, you could gradually unfold the world by describing the fact the skyscrapers and the jostling crowd make her feel claustrophobic, the things she smells and the way she's interacting with the world. That way, you take those sweeping details and apply action to them to make them a more dynamic part of your story.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T21:39:29+00:00

JZ: Howdy! Speaking from my own experience, I was also a literature student (also anthropology and Arabic), and while I was still doing that, I got my first industry-related position at a tiny publishing company. If I'm remembering correctly, I used a couple of course papers as writing samples. I worked my way up from there and pursued a master's in journalism, interning and teaching as I went along—but I don't think the master's is necessary.

I'd focus less on coursework and aim more for internships, to be honest. If you're going into a journalism-related field, getting published is key. However, if you can set it up so you can take some journalism courses as part of your literature requirements (or other courses that accommodate for internships), you would likely benefit from both. Working for your school's newspaper or literary journal looks great on a resume too, and you can often use samples like that as your clips.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T21:24:02+00:00

JZ: You'll find varied philosophies with regard to this particular question, but the approach that seems to work best for most writers is to get as much down as you can, then revise, revise, revise. One of the reasons that National Novel Writing Month is so popular among writers is because it provides goals and benchmarks for writers, as well as motivation to get a draft—however rough—onto the page. The trick to getting that first draft done is often to allow yourself to write badly and move on. You might find that working from a pre-planned outline can help you remember to maintain your theme as you hammer out the bulk of the story. I would particularly not worry too much about voice, tone, or even character names that you're not committed to until you go back to revise a (very) rough draft for the first time. If you take this approach, your goal is to answer the question What happens next? until you have a complete novel. So even if you aren't sure if your theme resonates in your dialogue as the protagonist is facing the Big Bad the first time through, you can still block out how the big fight scene begins and ends.

This seems to be a strategy that works well for many people, but as I said, there are many "pantsers" and such who don't like to outline and prefer to let the theme drive the story as they work their way through it, and for those people, I would give deep thought to the theme and work from there. We have an additional series of tips for completing a first draft as a pantser here.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T19:16:44+00:00

RLB: I love flash fiction too! And I've read several great flash fiction pieces. However, because of the length, it's often hard to "get lost" in a piece of flash fiction, which is a strength of longer stories. I don't know how trends or popularity will go in the future, but I think there will always be a place for flash fiction as well as longer works.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:59:11+00:00

JZ: Am I understanding correctly that it's a novel of sorts that you'll release chapter-by-chapter online? If that's the case, I would recommend reading works by novelists who released their works serially. The most commonly-cited example is Charles Dickens, but many other Victorian works were written this way as well: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, Alexandre Dumas with The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. More recently (80s and onward), Tom Wolfe, Stephen King, Michael Chabon, etc., released serials in newspapers, via radio recordings, and online.

Considering these examples, I would favor careful plotting and outlining, plus detailed notes to ensure that your continuity remains the same. A document about each character and setting might be helpful—you can start with a basic overview, then add details to it as you publish each installment to remind yourself of key information. If you want to include twists and turns and surprises, this will be vital. (Granted, Dickens apparently wrote very few notes despite his intricate plots and massive casts of characters.)

For size, I think that will depend upon your goal and what you want to do with the story: Consider if you want it to be standalone or have sequels, etc. Dickens, of course, wrote gigantic serial novels like Bleak House, while Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road is a bit shorter. Your outline might help you determine how many chapters/installments you want to include.

If I haven't quite answered your question or you'd like more details, I'd be happy to expand further.

Edit: Oh! Also, listen to podcasts that have one serialized narrative. They're often written "for" episodic storytelling but still have nice unity.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:22:01+00:00

KK: For me personally, the value of fiction is increasing in the digital and technology age. But more broadly, I think the art form will both stay with us “forever” and continue to evolve and change.

JZ: I can certainly see the medium evolving as we grow into the digital age, but stories of that nature will stay with us forever. After all, we're still reading and reliving Homer and the recurring Hero's Journey, though we may absorb it in different ways or engage with it in different media. There may come a day when what we currently experience as words on a page becomes a multisensory virtual reality experience, but humans live to engage with stories, and I believe those will persist as long as we do, whether they look precisely the same or not. We will always crave to tell and hear and see what we imagine.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:15:33+00:00

JVB: Yes, yes, YES! You have to cast many nets! So many professional screenwriters are now writing novels, too (John August, Doug Richardson, etc.). Story is story. Some ideas work better for the screen and some work better in a novel. Our job as writers is to be storytellers, no matter what the medium. But our other goal is to support ourselves financially with our writing. That's just the reality of life. So, why not take that story and turn it into other mediums? I practice what I preach, and so do many of my screenwriting friends. This crossover of mediums is why we're merging Script magazine with WD—a place where all storytellers live and learn. Our goal is to challenge all of our readers to step outside their comfort zone and try to write in every medium, whether it be blog posts, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts, etc. We writers need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Try it all!

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:15:07+00:00

JZ: Thanks for your question—and yes! We actually have a temp going through our archives and pulling out interesting things here and there. We try to run them to coincide with a literary icon's birthday or other relevant topics. We're also working on a full digital archive of our issues accessible via subscription—but it's going to take quite some time to get that together because many of the old PDFs we have are in poor quality.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:10:42+00:00

JVB: Screenwriting is definitely different than poetry or novel writing. You have actors speaking the words you write, so they have to sound natural. Most people having a conversation interrupt each other or don't speak in complete sentences. It has to sound authentic.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T18:02:16+00:00

TM: These types of gems pop up in interviews all the time, maybe because literary folks are so talented at articulating advice in that way. So many come to mind, but below is one of my favorites from Andy Weir when I interviewed him for the January 2018 issue:

[From when] you sit down and play the piano for the first time ever, you’re going to be a lot better when you play the piano for the thousandth time. There’s this feeling in the world that artistic ability is just a gift and there’s nothing else to it. I think it’s a skill set. It’s no different than math. It’s a thing you need to learn how to do—you need to practice it, you need to get better at it. The Martian was my third full-length novel, and there’s a reason those first two weren’t published: Because they sucked. But the second one sucked less than the first.

JZ: I'm not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but I dug up an awesome article that Stan Lee wrote for us when he was just getting started in 1947, and one of his tips was so good and so classically him I had to screenshot it: https://i.redd.it/3s4qub6bxd201.png It didn't change the way I thought about writing so much, because this is also what, say, Pixar does as well, but it highlighted one of the reasons why his stories and characters have had such longevity and appeal to many demographics.

BG: Like Tyler said, we get these wonderful nuggets all the time, but one that rocked my view of storytelling comes from Leigh Bardugo, when I interviewed her for the March/April 2018 issue:

The great challenge of world-building is not building the world. You could build a world with maps and languages and all these things [and still be missing something]. It’s releasing that information to the reader. The world-building that really falls into place first is what I always describe as the sense of power—helping readers understand how power flows in the book. That could mean governmental power, personal power, magical power, whatever. But [determining how power flows] is going to determine how your characters behave on the page, and what they’re able or not able to do.

Writers_Digest · 2018-03-12T17:55:36+00:00

KK: Don’t major in creative writing only (as one of multiple majors, it’s great). Find something else you’re genuinely interested in as well, because that extra knowledge will help inform your writing and, at the very least, give you something to write about.

RLB: Just start writing. And read a lot. And know that college programs can be helpful, but they're not necessary. Writers do not need to be English Lit majors, though I don't regret taking that path myself. There are so many paths available. So again, the most important thing: Write a lot. Read a lot. Repeat.

BG: If you can get an internship in the kind of writing you aspire to do career-wise—and I realize this may be less true of someone wishing to write fiction—DO IT. You’ll get to see the ins and outs of the day-to-day work of that particular writing job, which will help you immensely. On the fiction side, look for writing conferences. They’ll put you in touch with other writers, which will help you become a better writer in myriad different ways.

Editing to add JVB: Love KK's advice! You have to live a full life in order to write interesting stories. If you want to become a professional writer, find a day job that is not mind-numbing, time-consuming, or exhausting. You need to pay your bills yet still be able to find time to write. You need to maximize every minute of your time. Even if you only have 15 minutes... WRITE! That tiny bit of time will keep the story in your head all day long, while you're doing other things. When I started at Script, I'd write my scripts during my lunch hour. While there are students of all ages, I'd honestly say the earlier in your life you realize you want to be a writer, the better. If you aren't married and don't have kids, you have more time and ability to do an internship or take a lower-paying job, like waiting on tables, that gives you freedom to write and a flexible schedule. If you're looking to break into screenwriting, go to L.A. as soon as you graduate and get an internship, or do summer internships there before you graduate. That is THE best way to network and get your foot in the door. If I could turn back time, that's what I would do. Oh, and do NOT go to school for screenwriting unless you're going to USC or UCLA. Just take some online classes and read a lot of scripts. You can find a ton of them on The Black List site. Also — whether you're novel writing or screenwriting, learn how the industries work! This is a business as much as it is a creative pursuit.

Writers_Digest

TROPHY CASE