So you’ve written a science fiction short story. Where are you going to send it?
The good news is a lot of markets exist for your story – far more than if you’d written a western or a mystery tale. The bad news is that you probably won’t get paid much (if at all) for your story. In addition, science fiction magazines go in and out of print faster than Jupiter rotates on its axis, so sometimes a story gets sent back marked “We’re no longer taking submissions” or “Out of business.”
Whenever submitting to a magazine, there are some general rules to follow:
n Know your magazine - Reading a few copies of the magazine so you’re familiar with the editor’s tastes always is a sound strategy. After all, you don’t want to send a hard SF magazine a character-oriented story. You also don’t want to send an editor a story similar to one he’s just published.
n Follow manuscript form - One of the quickest routes to the rejection pile is sending a manuscript that makes an editor’s eyes go buggy: handwritten, type too small (or large), typed on both sides of the paper, lacking pages numbers …...
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fan fiction, getting published, manuscript form, reading period, reprint, sase, simultaneous submission, word count
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You’re at a coffee shop or a party or a writer’s workshop, and someone asks you what you are writing - a short story or a novel? You pause for a moment, wondering if what you’re really writing is a novella. So what is it?
There’s no hard or fast rule about what is a short story, what is a novella and what is a novel. It’s largely a subjective matter for which editors and publishers assign arbitrary numbers based on their needs and available space. To avoid confusion, this site follows the word counts used in the Hugo and Nebula contests:
n Short story - 7,500 words or less
n Novelette - 7,501-17,500 words (many editors simply lump this category into either the short story or the novella groupings)
n Novella - 17,501-40,000 words
n Novel - 40,001 or more words
Some stories are better told in one category rather than another. So when deciding how long your story will be, think about the advantages and disadvantages of each category and which one best serves your tale.
Short stories and novelettes
Advantages:
n Easier for author to maintain consistency of purpose as there are fewer characters and settings,...
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getting started, novelettes, novellas, novels, short stories, word count
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