Write Short Fiction You Love and Get Paid Doing it in 2022

If you can’t tell, I love writing, so I naturally sought out ways to get paid for my work and passion. Until I settled on writing and self-publishing my young adult work of fiction, Getting By, a few other options came up in my research. As a fiction writer, it’s actually easier to find outlets willing to publish short stories than for most other story writers. Maybe it’s because more people are looking to escape from reality than read about factual stories and the like? Whatever the case, the point is you could get paid for your creativity, so let’s take a look
at how to write short fiction and get paid doing it.

Getting Started

If you’ve been writing for a while, you likely have an approach to generating ideas quickly. However, if you’re newer to writing, a little extra help doesn’t hurt. In my course, I share some different methods I use for coming up with story ideas, and they work great when creating short works. These include things like:

• Writing prompts
• Rewriting an established work (for inspiration – not plagiarism!)
• Observing real life all around you

Once you get your idea, it’s time to write, and you’ll want to work quickly. I say this because the more time you spend, the less the payout for your effort becomes. That’s not to say, put out sloppy work. In most cases, your name will still be on the piece, which is excellent marketing. But you’ll want to use your time wisely.

While you’re writing, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind:

• Genre: While you’re writing a work of fiction, that doesn’t mean, say, The New Yorker will publish your young adult fantasy horror story. If you have a specific publication in mind, you’ll need to know what genre of content they’re interested in publishing before you spend all your time writing something you can’t sell.

• Word count: Look into the publications you want to write for sooner rather than later, as most have a max and minimum word count you’ll need to observe, like Daily Science Fiction, which prefers content from 100-1500 words.

• Style: Nearly as important as the genre is your writing style. This one needs some more research, requiring you to do some reading to get a sense of the tone or voice in most stories a publication prints. Again, if your style doesn’t gel with theirs, it won’t sell.

• Formatting: As much as you hope the content will speak for itself, editors will likely look the other way if the formatting doesn’t come off professional and clean. While some publications will share their expectations, not all of them do, unfortunately. In most cases, you’ll want to use the accepted short story standards like:

• A basic font like Arial, Times New Roman, or something similar typed in 12-point.
• 1-inch margins and standard tab indents on your paragraphs.
• Double-spacing the manuscript but DON’T use two spaces after your punctuation.
• Including a cover page with your contact info top left, while your title and byline are centered on the page.
• An approximate word count on your first page, usually in the top right, and a header on every page with your story’s title, surname, and page numbers (again, top right.)

Where Do I Submit My Story?

So, you’ve written your short story, but now you need to get it published. That is the hardest part in many ways, and it varies between publications. Many magazines, journals, newspapers, anthologies, and more will take your story, but it’s tricky to find the right one.

What’s more, some pay better than others though they could be tougher to get into. You have to research to see what their submission guidelines entail, too. While I mentioned word count and formatting, you need to know when they accept submissions since not all are constantly looking for new content.

Some of my top recommendations, however, would be:

• The New Yorker: I grant you this one is a big swing, but the accolade of having your story printed in its pages looks stellar on the resume.

• Daily Science Fiction: If you love to explore possible futures and alien worlds through science fiction, then this is the place to try to get your stories.

• FIYAH: A black-owned magazine that focuses on speculative fiction by and about Black people is a fantastic place for the still marginalized voices of the BIPOC community to be heard.

• Write City Magazine: This publication is hosted in my home city of Chicago. It offers an excellent, accessible platform and helpful guidelines to ensure your story gets published and has ties to the Chicago Writers Association.

• Black Warrior Review: What draws me to this publication is their interest in truly unique and, as they put it, “weird” works, which is one aspect I love about specific pieces of fiction: Challenging our preconceptions.

Now, another option I suggest is similar to the self-publishing route. You can format and “print” quality copies of your stories as ebooks on your own website, selling them for a few dollars at a time. It isn’t much and requires a lot of work to market them, so people FIND your work, but it is accessible to nearly anyone with the will.

Amazon has its platform, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), and it is an excellent source for fledgling writers. It’s another accessible pseudo-self-publishing avenue and gets them onto a platform as ebooks, where they’re more likely to be seen and purchased. Note that Amazon will take a cut of the profits, but you’re still making the majority.

Finally, you can look into selling them to radio, podcasts, and even film producers who are looking for a story to tell on their shows. It also provides authors a unique perspective on their work, as it takes on a new life, in a way. Also, like magazines and online publications, you generally sell the rights first, so you don’t have to wait on prospective readers to pay the bills.

How Much Does it Pay?

It’s tough to say how much a writer can earn by submitting to publications like those I suggested above. The amount of time you put into the work, from research to writing, is a major factor.

Thankfully, when most ask for short, they mean short. One thousand words don’t take that long to type out once you get going. Again, the trick is to have that log of ideas to start from so you’re not writing from scratch each time.

Some places, like Asimov’s Science Fiction, pay by the word (8-10 cents per, in this case), while others pay for the whole piece outright, as Flash Fiction Online does (at $80 per.)

But sometimes, it’s worth it to take a lower-paying option if it means your work is more likely to get printed. Because, in the end, it’s still writing practice, something you can point to as tangible proof that you’re a published author, and you’ll still get paid something.

Get Yourself Out There

In the end, writers have a surprising amount of options to earn active or passive income by creating works of short fiction. But it does require you to hustle.

From researching the publications, their requirements, the rights, and then writing the pieces themselves, it takes a while for you to see a genuine payoff. But once you get into a routine, it can all come together, and it’s a great means of getting your authorial debut.

Maybe you want to have complete control over your work and share it with the world. If you haven’t seen it yet, I offer a great guide on how to get yourself self-published that you can download from my site.

I provide an in-depth course on the process you can check out. And I welcome questions and opportunities to connect with writers of all levels. You can follow me on social media or email me at jsims@jairesims.com.