There is nothing quite like the joy of seeing your words in print. Getting your poetry and short stories published takes effort and persistence. But if you take the right approach with the composition and submissions process, you’ll have a better chance of finding a home for your poetry and prose.
But first …
Share your work with other writers.
Before you send your work out into the world of editors and publishers, workshop or share your writing for feedback. We all need suggestions for improvement. You don’t need to agree with everyone, just listen and decide what feels right to you.
A finely crafted piece has the best chance for publication.
Reach out to fellow writer friends or acquaintances and ask for their feedback. Remember to return the favor with an offer to critique their writing.
Consider joining a local writers’ group.
Writers meet at a variety of places:
libraries,
coffee shops,
restaurants,
community centers.
Check online groups via Google searches and Social Media sites. I’ve had good luck with Facebook writers’ groups as well as MeetUp.
When I moved to a new town and couldn’t find a local writers’ group, I joined the local Arts Guild and started a critique group.
Just like Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”
Read literary journals and magazines.
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King
If you’d like to be published in literary magazines, you should read literary magazines. Look for online and print magazines with a strong focus on your area of interest.
For poets, there are publications dedicated entirely to poetry.
Writers who have a strong interest in short stories can explore these publications.
Reading these publications will help you have a better idea of the kinds and styles of poetry and prose that editors are looking for and being published in different markets now. You can use your research to find niche markets your poetry fits best.
Buying and reading literary magazines helps support and keep these publications running. Also, the fewer places there are for you to submit, the fewer chances you have of getting your poetry published.
Research submission possibilities
Reading a variety of poetry and short story publications will help you begin the research side of the submissions process.
Finding a publication that is a good fit.
Think about the publications you’ve read where you can picture your work fitting in perfectly.
If you write using a specific genre or poetry style, submit to publications that cater to your niche. You’re more likely to be accepted in these magazines than if you choose places that publish a broader range of works.
This advice also applies to calls for themed submissions. In this case a magazine produces an issue in which all pieces focus on a certain topic, word or theme. Writers have an opportunity to submit works that fit the theme.
Poetry anthologies—collections of poems from different writers, often published by small presses—are largely based around themes. Search for anthology calls for submissions too.
Submitting your work
After finding the publications you feel are the best fit for you work:
Check the guidelines.
Each magazine and publisher have different rules for how to submit your work.
Read the guidelines with care to make sure your writing makes it to the proper channels.
Format as requested.
Your writing should stand out, not the font.
Follow the formatting guidelines to a “T” or it may end up in the trash.
The goal here is to make life easier on the editor.
Proofread and then proofread again.
Make sure that your work is error-free.
Ask others to read your work. Extra eyes-on never hurts.
Be at peace with rejection.
Don’t give up!
Everyone who sends out their work suffers rejection. Everyone.
Many famous writers spent years submitting work before they found success.
Always be courteous and gracious. If your work is not accepted this time, there will always be opportunities in the future.
The following links may help you find a place to submit your poems and stories:
Magazines send out calls for themed writing. Look here to find announcements:
A few words of caution.
Be careful when publishing work on a personal blog, discussion forum or other online publications.
Magazines generally only accept submissions that have not been previously published, and count blogs or other websites as publications.
If you post to a website that invites you to publish your writing for feedback, you may risk the work being considered previously published—therefore unacceptable.
Have you published your writing in a magazine or journal? What advice do you have for writers who want to get their work out into the world?
* * * * * *
About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi.
Ah, the euphoria of holding one’s own book. Nothing compares, does it? In that moment, the months (or years) of writing, revising, editing, polishing, and finally publishing are in the rearview mirror. All we know is the joy of seeing our hard work compressed into pages and fitted with a stunning cover.
We dream of happy readers, bestseller lists, and maybe even awards.
And we can have these things...if we haven't broken the cardinal rule of publishing.
As someone who studies storytelling from all angles, I can spot quickly when the cardinal rule has been broken, and every time, it guts me. Each book starts with untapped potential, ripe with the imagination of its creator, ready to bring something new and fresh to readers. But this one rule, when it's broken, limits a book's potential, keeping it from being all it can be.
So, what is this cardinal rule that stands above all others?
Don't Rush.
Stories take time to write, and even longer to refine, especially as we're all developing writers. We each have strengths and weaknesses and are building our skills as we go. Sometimes we don't know what we don't know, and so may not be the best judge as to whether a story is ready to move forward.
And yet, I see writers rush toward publication, skipping some of the necessary steps to ensure their book is as strong as it can be. And unfortunately, it ends the same way - a book that wasn't ready, and the author feeling disappointment and disillusionment when their novel fails to gain traction with readers.
Rushing Burns Bridges
With more books than people on the planet, readers have endless choice. So, the very best thing we can do is give them an amazing experience when they pick up our book, because when we do, they'll be back for more. But if we rush and the quality isn't there, readers notice. Not only is it unlikely they'll stick with us as an author, but they may also leave poor reviews that dissuade others from taking a chance on our book, too.
Rushing also hurts if we're on the hunt for an agent or publisher. If we submit something that's clearly not ready, that's the end of the road with that agent or editor. And what if they remember us and our rushed manuscript if we submit to them down the road...will they be less inclined to ask for sample pages?
Rushing Can Be Expensive
When we rush, we seek out editing before a story is ready for it, meaning costs go up as there's more to fix. A reputable editor should let the writer know if the project is not ready before they get in too deep, but this is an ethical line that you can’t count on everyone to follow. And if a writer doesn't carefully vet their editor, they might end up with someone who isn't skilled enough to offer the level of help needed yet is happy to keep billing round after editing round.
Most of us must budget carefully when it comes to our writing, and editing costs that balloon can fill us with frustration and guilt and may cause us to question our choice of pursuing this path.
Rushing Can Open Us to Scams
All careers require time, effort, and training to become great at them. But unfortunately, we can forget this when it comes to writing. Maybe we think having an abundance of imagination and our creativity will carry us through, or a past career where we wrote a lot on the job makes us believe we can zip through the learning curve. Here's the thing - imagination requires craft to apply it well, and writing and storytelling are two different skill sets. Believing there's an easy route to publishing opens us to scams.
There are plenty of vanity publishers and other "assisted publishing" businesses that make big promises to do all the work that the writer doesn't want to do. Because their business model is to make money from writers, not the sale of books, they don't care about the product. Writers end up shelling out huge dollars for something subpar and are often locked into contracts where they are required to also purchase a large quantity of their books themselves.
Bottom line: there is no easy button when it comes to a quality book and successful career. Prepare to work hard and open yourself to learning all you can.
Rushing Can Damage Self-Esteem
When we query or self-publish process before we're ready, the results won't be what we hoped for, and this can cause us to feel inadequate. When our self-belief plummets, it can steal our energy and make it harder for us to pivot or rebound from mistakes and failures. And even when we write great books, mistakes and failures come with the territory, so we need to learn how to process these moments and learn from them.
If we're always beating ourselves up for every misstep, we'll eventually decide we aren't cut out for this career. And we are! Each of us is capable of learning what we need to know to write amazing stories and steer ourselves toward a fulfilling career.
Pressure to rush is something we all understand but must resist.
When other writers are pounding out stories and getting them out into the world, we think we need to be doing the same, forgetting that we're all in different stages of development, and our journey to publication will be unique.
Yet, when we give ourselves the space and time to write the strongest story we can, it may take longer, but our chances of pleasing readers will go way up. And we grow through the process, gaining new knowledge and refining our abilities, which will help us become masterful storytellers.
So, embrace the learning curve and enjoy the journey! It’s there to help, not stand in your way.
Have any lessons to share about rushing, or tips on how we can rein in the urge to do so? Let me know in the comments!
About Angela
Angela Ackerman is a story coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, and its many sequels. Available in nine languages, her guides are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over a million copies.
We’ve been telling stories way before we started writing them down.
The structures they follow are embodied within us.
There’s much we can learn about story—and about ourselves—from analysing the patterns that stories follow.
But how?
Tracing the Path of Story
My approach is to trace the patterns that each character in a story follows. Characters experience events. The events are related and follow in chronological order. The events, when whittled down to their bare minimum, form sequences which are recognisable as story structures.
To analyse the story structure(s) in a given character’s story line, I mark the opening of their story line with a mark of recursion (r) and identify the character in their initial situation using Spencer-Brown’s mark of indication (m) drawn from his Laws of Form (1969).
I then reduce the events to a series of ‘bare bones’ events—the minimum number needed for the story to be meaningfully related and arrange them in chronological order.
Following that, I map the events qualitatively according to whether they either impel or delay the character in their attempt to reach their goal using a forward barb (⇀) or a backward barb (↽) respectively.
At the end of their story line, the mark of indication is again used to denote the character in their final situation (m) and the story’s close is symbolised using another mark of recursion (r).
Outline Example from Metamorphoses
Here’s the most compressed story structure I’ve found—which is also the most impressive. It’s the structure which the gods’ story lines typically follow in stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
At step 5, while Cornix undergoes a metamorphosis, Minerva remains unchanged.
The approach allows for almost indefinite expansion and contraction, following simple rules.
Common Sequences in Story
Sequences of different step types can expand and contract as follows:
Using Sequences to Produce a Transformational Twist in Story
Where an encounter between two characters involves (i) an active intention to dupe (ii) a comic outcome, or (iii) a surprising outcome (Huh?!), I use a double barb (⇌).
When one character intends to dupe another, they invariably have the tables turned on them—the dupe ends up tricking the trickster and the status quo is reset. When there’s a comic outcome, there’s often a transformational twist. And for every ‘Huh?!’ there’s usually a balancing ‘Ah!’
While double barbs tend to come in pairs, they only seem to expand and contract in a 1:3 or 3:1 proportion.
The Quest Structure
A common structure is the Quest structure, which the three little pigs follow in the well-known story. The version below was collected by Hamish Henderson from Bella Higgins who heard it from her mother.
The two story structures depicted above can be compared and analysed. In the table below, step 3 in the Transformation structure symbolises a problematic (negative) 'transgression against the natural order'. It expands, giving rise to the first (positive) meeting (step 5 in the Quest structure) which will be with a friend or helper. The seed of the positive is contained within the negative. You can follow the implications of the expansion of step 4 in the Transformation structure yourself.
Two Dynamic Story Structures
The two structures analysed above are linear structures. But how and why are the events in them linked? This is where I see dynamic structures coming in. Dynamic structures map the qualitative change in the relationship between knower and known in a character’s story line. They symbiotically underpin Linear story structures.
I’ve identified two dynamic story structures to date:
The Revelation Structure
The Revelation structure follows a ‘veni, vidi, vici’ pattern (I came, I saw, I conquered). It’s typically found in sequences which build suspense leading to a dénouement. Marie Louise von Franz sees this as a ‘1,2,3,Bang!’ sequence.
It’s mapped as follows:
The Chinese Circular Structure
The Chinese Circular Structure, as I call it, is based on the interplay between yin and yang energies through the yearly cycle and the five-element system visualised in the Wu Xing arrangement.
In Chapter 18 of Story and Structure, I describe how the Chinese Circular Structure can be seen underpinning every one of the linear story structures identified to date. The approaches are informed by close reading of early Chinese texts which clearly map to the structure.
Three Classifications of Story Structures
First event in the story line
The 18 structures I've identified to date (16 linear and 2 dynamic) can be classified in three ways relating to what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a story structure. The nature of the first event in a character’s story line gives rise to the following classification:
Middle Events in the Story Line
The ‘middle’ classification is based on whether or not a character crosses a threshold between transcendent (metaphysical or supernatural) and immanent (physical) dimensions of being. The Creation Myth structure straddles both conditions:
Ending Events in the Story Line
And the ‘ending’ classification gives the following:
We can learn a lot by looking at story structures. We can’t avoid the metaphysical, the transcendent. Story gives rise to embodied story structures. Story has a sacred dimension (as language does—especially when used in sacred chant). It shows how these simple patterns tell a universal story: a quest to find balance and harmony individually and universally. It highlights the important of us finding balance and harmony in the larger cosmos of which we are a part. Isn’t this ultimately why we tell stories?
How do you use story structure to write a novel? Tell us your a-ha moments and how you have analysed your writing to improve it.
About Leon
Leon Conrad was born in London, UK, to a Polish father and Coptic Egyptian mother. He moved to Alexandria at age 6, and grew up in a multilingual environment there, among the souks and bazaars of Egypt. He is currently based out of London.
As a writer, Leon sees the written word as sound on the page. Why else do we call nouns and verbs 'parts of speech'? He has written plays, and have published articles, poetry, and books.
As an editor, he offers in-depth proofreading, editing and review of manuscripts, focusing on a work’s structure, the reader’s journey, the narrative presentation, the style of a work, the sound, rhythm, musicality and the flow of a piece of writing.
Find out about his various projects, awards, and services at his website: LeonConrad.com.
Want more information on his writing method? Download a free sample of his book below today.
Story and Structure: What’s in it for YOU?
Be inspired
Learn new things about story that we’ve not realised despite the fact that we’ve literally been telling stories for millennia
Use what you learn to perform more effectively in your life and work
Improve your writing, storytelling, communication
In Story and Structure, I’ve outlined a new approach to story structure analysis inspired by six simple symbols drawn from George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form (1969).
I was Spencer-Brown’s last student and he guided me through the work himself. This is the first time his work (which has been successfully applied in both mathematics, computing, and logic) has been comprehensively applied to the analysis of story structure.
