Curious Submission Guidelines

Our new streamlined guidelines. Essential reading for new and existing contributors looking to submit to us in 2022.

Curious is a self-improvement publication for those who are eager to find out what others have already figured out. We publish on a wide range of topics including:

relationships;
personal growth;
psychology;
mental health;
and productivity.

There are two types of stories we accept:

1. Personal stories

First-hand experience that is reader-focused. In other words, how you would offer advice to a friend based on your own knowledge and experiences.

We are looking for positive and compassionate articles that make the reader feel better equipped to face the world and inspired to follow your advice. Therefore, derision, negativity, tough love, or exploiting the readers’ insecurities is not acceptable.

In addition, we are not looking for diary-entry style reads that are only written to offload your thoughts and feelings on a subject and don’t offer any clear advice or actionable takeaways.

2. Research pieces

Second-hand experience. What eye-opening insights can you pass onto our readers that you’ve thoroughly researched? We’re looking for articles that are objective and based on facts. We’re not looking for anything that a quick Google search can tell us or that has been copied verbatim from another article or website. In this same vein, we won’t accept book reviews/summaries or key takeaways from a TedTalk or YouTube video.

Titles

We love positive titles that explain exactly what our readers can expect to learn from your article. For example:

How to Fall in Love with the Human Race Again
5 Strategies That Help Me Avoid Social Depletion as an Introvert
The Beauty of Imperfection and How You Can Use It as an Advantage in Life

Often we see negative titles where the article itself actually offers helpful and positive advice, therefore, you would need to rethink the title to match the article. For example, rather than ‘9 Signs You Need to Dump Your Toxic Friends’ a more suitable title would be ‘How to Recognise When to Let Go of Unfulfilling Relationships’.

In addition, titles should not be over-reaching with hyperbolic claims or absolutes that are not verifiable. For example, ‘This One Secret Will Change Your Life’, or ‘This Is the Only Way to a Have a Happy Relationship’. Instead, we want honest titles that do not withhold information from the reader and respect the fact there are multiple ways to approach improving ourselves and our lives.

Topics

Topics that fall under the self-improvement category that we do not accept include:

Work — Our readers prefer advice that is applicable to their growth and goals outside of the workplace.
Physical health and fitness — There are lots of other publications on this platform that publish on these topics, for this reason, we won’t accept articles on these topics.
Writing/creativity — Being a writing platform, we receive a lot of articles on these topics, and most of them, unfortunately, repeat common advice. If you believe you have written something from a very fresh perspective or unique angle and the advice is aimed specifically at creators, freelancers entrepreneurs, or side hustlers then we’d recommend sending it to our other publication Start it up.
Money/finances — There are lots of other publications on this platform that publish on these topics, for this reason, we won’t accept articles on these topics.

Only submit to Curious if you can answer yes to these 4 questions:

Does it have broad appeal? When assessing submissions we ask ourselves would most people benefit from this? Therefore, we’re not looking for advice only aimed at a niche audience. For example, ‘How to Organize Your Guest Room’ is only going to be beneficial to those who have a spare room for guests so is, therefore, too niche, whereas ‘How to Organize Your Bedroom to Promote Relaxation’ is more likely to have mass-appeal.

Is it at least 4 minutes in length? Articles under 4 minutes in length are often not valuable enough as they have only discussed their subject matter at a rudimentary level. Ensuring your article is 4 minutes or longer makes it more likely to be valuable to our readers and increases your chances of curation.

Is it fresh advice or from a unique perspective? As you can imagine, we see a lot of the same advice on a daily basis. Reading our publication regularly will help you avoid repeating the same thing someone else has already said.

In addition, please consider how old or how popular the advice is that you are giving. For example, The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) was first developed in the 19th century, therefore, you can assume that everyone has heard of it and is not considered fresh advice. The same rule applies if you are talking about a technique from a very popular writer like Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins. Please assume that if you have heard of them then many others have also.

Remember, we prefer first-hand advice, so we’d rather you tell us about your own strategies and techniques for thriving in life. This will be the best way to ensure you are offering fresh advice or at the least, a unique perspective.

Is it an unpublished draft? If you’ve already published your story in another publication or you’ve self-published it then we won’t accept it.

Formatting

All articles should be formatted as followed:

Title — Chicago Title Case
Subtitle — sentence case
Image — Should be bright and positive, and the source must be cited under the image even if it’s from a free site or you’ve taken/created it yourself.
Main body (text) of the article — Formatted using appropriate headers, sub-headers, and paragraphs of a suitable length. One-sentence paragraphs are not allowed.

If you haven’t read Medium’s guide to formatting articles, please do that now.

Let’s make a deal

Time is precious and we know you’re eager to get your stories out there for everyone to see so let’s make a deal — If you don’t hear from us within 48-hours, from the moment you submit, then please consider your story not accepted. That goes for both new and approved writers.

Please don’t let this discourage you from submitting future stories to us, though. We would, however, recommend you re-read our guidelines before sending any future work to us just in case you’ve missed something important.

Ready to submit?

If you’ve read our guidelines in full and think you have an amazing story that our readers will love then please complete the below submission form.

*And one last point. Submitting to us means you agree to us making any edits to your photos, title, or copy without further notice.*

We can’t wait to read your stories!

The Curious team