3 Easy-to-Fix Mistakes That Lead to Rejection

How to convert a rejected story into a curated story

We have all suffered through getting our story rejected. Many times we are left asking why our stories were rejected and how we can improve them. After a recent rejection experience, I attempted to analyze my story and found three easy-to-fix mistakes I had made.

My story was rejected from every publication that I submitted it to, including Better Marketing, The Startup, Blank Page, Post-Grad Survival Guide. I thought that I had a great story idea, spent so much time working on the story, and really wanted the story to do well. After submitting to multiple publications and being rejected, I took a step back and let the story sit there.

When I came back to the story, I recognized three flaws in my story that likely resulted in my rejection. Therefore, I decided to rewrite my story. The rewritten story was published in my first choice — Better Marketing — and was curated. To date, it is my second best performing story. I recently published the original story in my own publication to be able to show the comparison.

The story is about how to develop content ideas for a year that will attract your ideal audience to your business. So let's discuss the three mistakes that I made and how I fixed them.

Formatting

I did not realize my formatting mistakes until after my story had been rejected. However, in the original submitted story, I had not correctly formatted the story for any of the publications. I wrote this story when I was newer on Medium and when I thought that the stories needed to be broken up similar to blog posts.

Therefore, in the original submitted story, I had photos before every heading. Even in the published version, I had toned it down. I removed many of the additional photos. A good rule of thumb is to include a feature photo and only include additional photos if they greatly contribute to the story.

Additionally, I used too many bold and italics in the story. I realized that it makes it difficult to read over formatted stories. Therefore, keeping your bold and italics to a minimum and if possible, use none at all.

Finally, make sure that you follow the publications formatting guidelines. There are simple things like the use of title and sentence case, headings, and breaks that you should ensure matches with that publication before submitting your story. This was a big mistake I made when I submitted to Better Marketing as they have a very specific formatting requirement that I did not follow.

Multiple Stories in One

The biggest mistake that I made was that I was covering too much information in my story. I now realize that my story was actually three stories:

• A system to create 52 ideas
• What are content buckets and why are they important?
• 7 types of content to build your audience

When I revisited my story, I realized the main story I wanted to tell was the types of content that can help you to build an audience. Therefore, I decided to rewrite my entire story and only focus on the types of content to build your audience.

This is a common mistake that is made in stories on medium. I have read many stories that really should be broken up into multiple stories. A great rule of thumb is to have one story to answer one question. If you can answer multiple different questions within your story, then it is likely a good idea to break your story up.

Take Time on Your Headlines

Your headlines are the most important part of your story. If you do not have a great headline, then no one will click on your story and none of the rest of your story will matter.

This is the same for editors. If they see your headline and are already not interested in your piece, they are likely to reject your story.

My story's original headline was “I Developed 52 Content Marketing Ideas in a Day. Here’s how.”. Let's break down why this headline wasn’t good:

• The whole headline was focused on me and not on the reader.
• There was not a great promise to the reader of what they gain by reading my story.
• The headline is too long.

When I published this story in my publication, I changed it to “Develop 52 Content Ideas to Grow Your Business”. This fixed several of the issues above. I removed the I’s from the original headline, gave a promise, and shortened the headline. However, there is still more that I could have done.

In the rewritten story, my headline was “7 Types of Content To Attract an Audience”. First off, this headline includes a number, which is more interesting and inviting. Then, I focus on the reader and delivered a promise: learning what types of content to create to attract an audience.

Tools to create better headlines

Since these stories were published, I have started to use two tools in creating better headlines:

So using these analyzers, I compared my initial vs. final headlines. In the first analyzer, my headlines received the same score 53. However, in the second analyzer, my initial vs. final headlines scored 27% vs. 50%, respectively. In the future, I would likely work even more on my headlines to try to increase their scores by adding in more power words.

Don’t Give Up on Rejected Stories

Rejection is a part of the writing process. While it can be very frustrating, rejection can actually help you create even better stories. There are three big mistakes made in stories that are easy to fix: formatting, too many stories in one, and underwhelming headlines. Therefore, when a story is rejected, ask yourself if your story made any of these mistakes. If you answer yes, then attempt to fix these mistakes before submitting them to a new publication.

Going through these exercises will make your stories better and develop you into a better writer.