Having sold almost 30 short
stories to woman’s magazines (small potatoes compared to some of their writers,
and I’m still learning), I might be in a position to offer some advice, on how
to break into this market. However, I suspect anyone who regularly reads this
blog realises, by now, that the key ingredients to success for getting
published in any area of writing are mostly:
Hard work
Determination
Perseverance
And,
of course, an unlimited supply of your particular poison - caramel Tunnocks bars are my latest – to see
you through the good and bad times.
More
specifically for the womag market (that’s what it’s called) I would add:
Always
carry a notebook – you never know when an idea might strike
Read
the tabloids – I am often inspired by their tales and surveys
And,
of course, get to know the market. A brief summary of the various magazines,
according to my opinion is:
Take-a-Break
Fiction Feast – interested in a diverse range of stories – crime, humour,
twist-in-the-tail, romance, supernatural
Woman’s
Weekly – slightly more literary, often deal with ‘issues’ – the 2 stories I’ve
sold them touch upon bereavement and mental health.
The
People’s Friend – cosy, moral, uplifting family stories, about the young and
old, nostalgia, romance, inoffensive in every way.
The
Weekly News - will take the quirkier stories, likes twists-in-the-tail, plus
from the male POV as their readers are from both sexes.
Perhaps
it might be more useful, though, if I take you through some of my rejections
and what I actually think they mean, when an editor has said that my story is…
Too flat/level – whilst
the scene and characters don’t need to be big, the story mustn’t be too slight.
What are the stakes? Is there any conflict? What revelation is there by the
end? Does the main character change?
Not engaging enough –
do we care enough about the characters? Is the story visual? Does the plot suck
us in so that we want to read on?
Too stilted – read your
story out loud, especially sections of dialogue that run to more than a
sentence – would a real person actually say that?
Too real – if the story
is in anyway based on your own experience, don’t make it sound too
autobiographical. Perhaps write it in the 3rd person instead of the
1st. Remember, it is fiction, not a memoir.
Finally,
there will always be what I’d call random reasons, for rejection.
- we’ve just
bought a story like that
- our
readers don’t like pretend characters (huh? No one told me Father Christmas
wasn’t real!)
- our publisher
owns Friends Reunited and wouldn’t like the number of times you’ve mentioned
Facebook.
I guess sometimes, you just can’t win!
Womag writing is rewarding, fun and an excellent way
of earning money from short stories. Whilst it’s a shrinking market, with many
of the magazines now preferring celebrity gossip stories to fiction, the
magazine fiction specials have their fanbase and fingers crossed, will ride out
the recession.
For anyone interested,
there is a Woman’s Weekly roadshow 13-15th September 2012, near the Trafford
Centre in Manchester,
where you can book yourself into seminars on how to write fiction for them:
Best of luck!
Samantha Tonge has sold short stories to Take-a-Break
Fiction Feast, Woman’s Weekly, The People’s Friend and The Weekly News.
Currently, she has stories appearing in the 1st Sept and 8th Sept 2012
issues of The People’s Friend.
Also, Samantha writes romantic comedy novels and her
agent is currently seeking homes for Doubting
Abbey and Must Love Ghosts. She
has two children, two kittens, two rabbits, and, um, just one husband.
