Meet Fiction Friends, AKA Why I Started This Publication

A new way to promote your fiction on Medium

Medium is home to all kinds of writing, but the truth is, I joined this site for a very specific reason.

And that reason is:

I have an unrelenting conviction that writing fiction online should be a viable side hustle or full-time career for a lot of people.

YouTuber is a household word. Web novelist should be, too.

Hence why I’m on Medium, one of the best websites around for monetizing your writing.

Since joining, however, I’ve struggled to find other fiction stories I want to read here.

I’m a big cheerleader for Medium, but the site has a lot of room to grow, especially in regards to fiction.

To start, the Recommended algorithm rarely shows me the kind of fiction I’m looking for.

Even when it does, I’m still taking a chance by clicking on the story because the title, subtitle, and primary tag is the only information I have to go on.

The search function also has its limitations: I keep searching for the genres I want to read, but often what comes up are old stories written by users that aren’t even active on the platform anymore.

Further, there’s no easy way to filter the search results based on the length of the story or how many parts it has.

Needless to say, connecting with other fiction writers on here — particularly active users who specialize in the genres that I’m interested in reading — has been an uphill battle so far.

So, what is Fiction Friends?

I’m taking matters into my own hands by creating a publication where the whole point is promoting your own fiction stories, no matter when or where they were published on Medium.

There’s no submissions process and no applying to become a writer. As long as your story abides by Medium’s rules, you’re good to go.

Here’s the short of it:

• Each week, I will post an issue containing a simple form for describing a fiction story published on Medium.
• This form will include basic info like the story’s title, the read time, the genre(s), et cetera.
• Writers can fill out this form and then post it in the comments section with the link to their story.

My hope is that this will give Medium users an easy, quick, scrollable way to find fiction they’d like to read written by other active users — who might also be interested in checking out their fiction, too.

Think of it as being like speed dating, except for finding fiction you’d like to read and writers you vibe with.

Here’s the link to the first issue:

I’ll stress that this is all very experimental — if it doesn’t provide value to the fiction writing community on Medium, then it will go by the wayside. But I’m hoping it will do a lot to help people find readers for their writing, connect with other writers who like the same kinds of stories they do, and build a stronger fiction community here.

Honestly, I’m creating this publication because I keep wishing it existed whenever I search for stories on here, so I hope other people find it helpful, too.

Looking towards the future, I think it would be great to expand to themed issues (e.g. the Fantasy edition, the Dystopian edition, et cetera) published on a monthly rotation, but for now, we’re going to stick to a really basic, catch-all approach until we build up enough readership/comments to justify that.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or feedback, please comment!

Hopefully one day the Medium algorithm will make this publication obsolete, but until then — let’s make some friends! ♥