So, You’ve Written a Short Story… Now What?

Part 1 of the definitive guide to making your work brilliant and finding it a home

Publisher’s Note: I’m over-the-moon to bring you a new guest writer, Charlie Fish, fearless leader of FictionOnTheWeb. Charlie says he once got stung by a lionfish, worked in a prison, travelled faster than the speed of sound, has three passports, and is mentioned in Wikipedia entries for Gabe Newell and Sologamy. Charlie nurtures his delusions of exceptionality. As for FictionOnTheWeb? A veritable treasure trove of his unceasing work to empower short story writers. You MUST browse that site!

---

Hi, I’m Charlie Fish, editor of UK-based online literary magazine Fiction on the Web. Maryan very kindly invited me to submit a guest post to Pen2Profit, so I’m going to talk about what I know best: short stories. Specifically, how to get them published.

I started Fiction on the Web in 1996. For me, it’s a real labour of love. Every single one of the 1,800 stories on there was hand-picked and carefully copyedited by me over the course of the last 29 years. I do this because I believe in the power and joy of short stories, I want to give authors a chance to get their work out there, and I love sharing great stories with the world.

In this article, I will assume you’ve written a short story and want to know what to do with it. I’m going to tell you everything. We’re going to cover who, what, where, why, and how. And I'm going to reveal a few big secrets along the way.

Why do you write?

First of all: Why do you write?

If the answer is for money or for fame, these are probably not good reasons. Let me explain by telling you a story that’s not specifically about short stories, but about the publishing industry as a whole.

In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. Those two publishing houses, between them, made up 48 percent of the market share. This triggered an antitrust case, and the merger was prevented – but the transcript of the trial was eye-opening. The depositions, from the heads of every major publishing house and literary agency, gave a brutally honest picture of the publishing industry as it is today.

The big headline is that 96% of books published by the Big Five publishing houses sell fewer than 1,000 copies.

Publishing houses rely on celebrities like Britney Spears, franchise authors like James Patterson, and back catalogues of repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, but for most of the books they publish, they lose money, which means the author will never see a penny beyond their advance. Think about that. 96% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. So, if 1,000 people read your story, you’ve done incredibly well. The good news is, I can help you achieve that.

Putting aside money or fame, there are a bunch of other perfectly good reasons to write, such as:

• Exploration of ideas.

• Skill building.

• Creative expression.

• Community engagement.

• Ego.

• Personal fulfillment.

• Therapy.

• Escapism.

• Compulsion.

• Growing empathy.

• Fun.

• Validation.

• Prestige.

• Sonder. (Wow, Charlie got me with a word I don’t know. The feeling of realizing that every other person you see has a life as vivid and complex as your own—tremendous word!) —ed.

• Masochism.

• Connecting with readers.

• Personal growth.

• Credibility.

• Résumé building.

• Self-promotion.

You can imagine the list continuing forever. Do any of these apply to you?

It’s worth thinking about, because it will influence what you might do with that story you’ve written. You might decide that writing the story is enough; it has served its purpose, and trying to get it published is unnecessary. In which case, the article ends here, thank you very much!

But I suspect for many of you, the act of writing a story is not complete until someone actually reads it. So maybe a more relevant question is, why do you want to be published? Being rejected is demoralising. And if you want to get published, you will, 100% will, get rejected a lot more than you get published. So why do you do it? Your reasons will influence which markets you want to target for publication.

Let’s pick out one possible reason from that list: Community engagement.

You could, of course, publish your story on your own blog and build your own community. But a lot of literary magazines are passion projects by small groups of dedicated people who have spent years building great communities, and you can tap into that pre-built community by getting published there. They often have workshops, live readings, events, newsletters, and supportive internal communities for writers to help them succeed. Here, I’ve listed some of the most community-oriented lit mags I know of. If you want community engagement, you might want to target one of these markets to get your story published.

I’ve listed them here in order of acceptance rate. You can see at the top, there are a couple that publish maybe two-fifths of what gets sent to them, and at the bottom, it’s almost zero.

• Roi Fainéant Press (varies) – 41%.

• Stanchion (varies) – 20%.

• Cosmic Daffodil Journal (varies) – 15%.

• Total Quality Reading (varies) – 10%.

• Points In Case (humour) – 10%.

• Variant Literature (diverse voices) – 7%.

• Fiction on the Web (varies) – 6%.

• After Dinner Conversation (ethics) – 4%.

• HAD (varies) – 5%.

• Barrelhouse (pop culture) – 4%.

• trampset (varies) – 2%.

• Fractured Lit (flash) – 2%.

• Flash Frog (flash) – 2%.

• Intrepidus Ink (spec/fantasy) – 1%.

• Split Lip (pop culture) – 0.3%.

• SmokeLong Quarterly (flash) – 0.1%.

Let’s pick out another reason from the list. What if your motivation is to get feedback? Here are a bunch of venues that will give you a personalised response, again, sorted by acceptance rate. These acceptance rates are an estimate, and for various reasons are probably a bit higher than reality.

• BULL (modern masculinity) – 45%.

• The Belladonna (comedy by women/genderqueer) – 40%.

• WayWords Literary Journal (varies) – 28%.

• Tales Anthology Series (varies) – 16%.

• The Woolf (varies) – 13%.

• Fiction on the Web (varies) – 6%.

• The Colored Lens (spec fiction) – 3%.

• Beneath Ceaseless Skies (fant) – 2%.

• Space and Time (spec fiction) – 2%.

• Willows Wept Review (environment) – 1%.

• Milk Candy Review – 0.6%.

• Fabula Argentea (varies) – 0.6%.

How do you make your short story better?

Ok, some of the acceptance rates for the magazines listed above are a little intimidating. If you want to get your story published, you’re going to need to make it the best version of itself.

I guarantee that the readers and editors you’re sending your story to can tell whether you’ve agonised over every word, or just knocked it out in ten minutes.

They know if you haven’t taken the time to read their submission guidelines or format it properly. If you want to give your story the best chance, here are some things you can do.

Above all, READ. Read the stories in the lit mags you’re submitting to. Read novels. Read the genre you’re writing in. Nothing will make you a better writer more effectively than reading.

Number two. Hone your craft. There’s tons of pedagogy out there to help you become a better writer. For example, there are online courses on creative writing like MasterClass or BBC Maestro or Faber Academy. There are books, like Stephen King’s On Writing, or Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, or the Save the Cat series by Blake Snyder.

Next. Avoid cliché. I see some stories again and again and again. I’ve listed some of the worst offenders here: it was all a dream, punchline twists, fan fiction, stories with Important Concepts in Capital Letters. Another common one is where the whole story is a patient talking to their psychiatrist, or confessor to priest, or cop to suspect, or whatever situation that means that instead of telling the story, the characters are telling us ABOUT the story, one step removed. If you’re writing one of those, consider the bar twice as high.

You also need to beware of clichés in the text of your story. Can you think of a more creative way to say “pain in the neck” or “a drop in the ocean” or “bite the bullet” or “clear as mud” or “wild goose chase,” or whatever?

Another pitfall is overwriting. Can you trim out unnecessary words? Unnecessary paragraphs? A couple of things I always do when I’ve written a short story, which might not work for you but they definitely work for me: I do a search for “ly” and that helps me find all the adverbs I’ve put into the story – for me, usually way too many. Cutting most of them out tends to make the story stronger, but it also challenges me to make sure I’m communicating the feel of the piece and the state of mind of the characters organically without relying on telling the reader that he said it “angrily” or the t-shirt was “disgustingly” dirty.

As soon as I’ve finished the story, I go back and cut the first paragraph or two. Just to see if it works better that way. Nine times out of ten, it does. Or at least there are some bits I need to trim out from the start, because I was still writing myself into the story, the characters, the scene.

Clean the story up, polish it to a shine, and get some feedback

Alright, so you think your story is in pretty good shape? Time to polish it up. First of all, it seems obvious, but please use your word processor’s spelling and grammar check! Reading your story aloud, to yourself or others, is another great way to slow yourself down and spot any areas that need fixing.

Getting other people to read your story and tell you what they think is fantastic. You could look for writing groups near you on Meetup.com.

Or there’s an excellent website I want to tell you about: CritiqueCircle.com. You can post your story on there and basically get it workshopped for free. It works on a reciprocity system, so you’ll do a couple of critiques of other people’s stories – which by itself will make you a better writer – and that earns you a credit so that you can submit your own piece to get a bunch of critiques.

Some of the critiques are narrative, some are line by line, most of them are incredibly helpful, and because you get multiple perspectives, you get a better idea of whether a particular comment is something you can ignore or if it’s something you really need to pay attention to because three different people said the same thing.

Finally, your story is perfect. Congratulations, now you need to make sure to present it properly. Not all lit mags are fussy about presentation, but when they’re getting many submissions every day, chucking out the ugly ones because “if the authors couldn’t be bothered neither can I”, makes sense.

So I suggest using Shunn Modern Manuscript Format, whether the lit mag asks for it or not. It’s just a neat way to format and present your piece that shows your respect for the readers’ and editor’s time.

But above all, what you need to do before you submit your story somewhere is to read the submission guidelines.

• If the magazine only accepts stories by women and you’re a man, don’t submit.

• If they have a 1,000 word limit, don’t submit your 2,000 word story.

• If they ask for the manuscript to be anonymised, anonymise it.

• If they don’t accept simultaneous submissions, it means you can’t submit there if you’ve already submitted elsewhere and are still waiting for a response.

• If they don’t accept reprints, don’t submit a story that you’ve already published on your own blog.

• If they’re closed for submissions, don’t submit.

• If the glove doesn’t fit, don’t submit.

In the 8-13-2025 edition of Pen2Profit, you'll get part 2 of this strategy-packed story from our fantastic guest writer, Charlie Fish. Don't miss the specifics about where to submit your short stories and how to package them. Non-fiction writers: Charlie's suggestions can be adapted to your needs, as well, so stay tuned!

---