‘Fictions’ Guidelines
Who we are and what we’re looking for
Fictions is a publication started by Danielle Loewen, Paul Combs, and Eric Pierce to give quality fiction a place to shine.
We are, first and foremost, lovers of the written word. We want to be bowled over by thunderous prose; catapulted into foreign lands; hoodwinked into cavorting with gods and kings and peasants.
Fiction is the purest form of storytelling. So tell us a story.
Our publishing philosophy
We vet potential writers upfront in order to ensure a certain level of quality to every story we run, and we only publish a few stories a day. Our goal is to give each piece the most exposure possible by not having it compete with a dozen other stories in the same publication.
What we’re looking for
- Strong writing.
- Fiction only. No poetry, though we love poetic prose!
- Stories that are at least a 5-minute read.
- We encourage genre fiction but will accept literature if the writing is strong.
- Long-form stories serialized across multiple posts.
Write for us
We’re always looking for talented writers to add to our team! Leave a comment with a sample of your best work. If it fits what we’re looking for, we will add you as a writer. Response time is typically one week.
Helpful resources to take your craft to the next level
Eric has a column at Writing Cooperative; here are a few selected entries to get you started:
- Good Writing is Having Something to Say,
- Dialogue Lessons from TV’s Justified
- Unconventional Protagonists
Danielle’s piece To Level Up Your Writing, Listen to the Music of Your Words is a masterclass in language and sentence construction.
Melissa Balick wrote a short and sweet how-to-guide for punctuating dialogue that we love.
Thoughtfully deployed metaphors can take a story from bare-bones narrative to fully fleshed reality. We recommend Melissa Coffey’s “On the Enigma of Metaphor” as a refresher.
Submission guidelines
- We only accept previously unpublished drafts, unless otherwise requested.
- Your story must comply with Medium’s guidelines.
- All stories must use the Fiction tag. We also recommend ‘Short Story’ and one of the tags that align with our site navigation: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime, Horror, History.
- All stories should include a title, subtitle, and header image immediately following the subtitle.
- All images should be credited.
- Only submit final drafts. Sloppy submissions will result in your removal from Fictions.
- Metered stories are encouraged but not required.
- You may use a brief (1–3 sentence) call to action at the end of your article, so long as it complies with Medium’s guidelines. You may also link to up to two other pieces of fiction.
