How To Write A Successful Short Story

Fiction Ed Lucy has three easy tips to help you write a successful short story.

1. Write For Your Reader

The first thing to consider when writing a short story is – who is my reader? Who will be reading this story?

Put simply, your story should be tailored to the audience who’ll be reading it.

If you’re writing for ‘The People’s Friend’, your story needs to appeal directly to the ‘Friend’ reader, with content, themes, characters and genres she’d be comfortable with.

So not just ‘a’ short story, or any short story, but a ‘People’s Friend’ short story.

The best way to get to know your reader, is to become familiar with the publication you’d like to write for.

2. Read The Magazine Regularly

Regularly reading the publication you’d like to submit to is crucial for short story submission success.

It helps you become familiar with the type of content our readers are comfortable with, and enjoy.

Reading our fiction helps you familiarise yourself with the word counts, genres, dialogue, characters and storylines we feature.

And studying our features, our letters page, and even our ads can all help build up a picture of our reader.

‘The Friend’ moves with the times, whilst keeping our core values.

The type of story and illustration we may have included even five years ago may be slightly different today.

So it’s important to stay up-to-date.

And another way to stay up-to-date is to…

3. Keep In Touch

For details of our requirements with regard to short story submissions, you can keep in touch via our website, guidelines, and Twitter Writing Hour at 11am on Tuesdays.

If you’ve already been published by the ‘Friend’ and have an assigned editor, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with them if you have any queries.

Always happy to help!