How a lack of the usual structure helped me get over 40 published stories within my initial three years of writing flash fiction.

Pick up any book on “how to write…” and they will tell you there are three kinds of writers: outlines, plotters, and pantsers. The first two are perfectly appropriate for anyone wishing to produce literature of any type, whether it be flash fiction, short story, novella, or novels, but probably not non-fiction works. Then, they tell you all about outlining and the three things you need or the formulas that are most helpful for neophyte riders.

How many of you have read “Kill the Cat,” “Understanding Show, Don’t Tell,” “The Hero’s Journey,” or any of the other dozens of books that claim to have those secret sauce ingredients that can turn you into a professional writer? OK, let’s amend that to “turn you into a writer.”

And let’s not forget “beats,” which are supposed to move the story along. I don’t think about beats because I write as Stephen King does, by visualizing the story.

Then there are all of those courses that you could take, the conferences you can attend, the weekend seminars, the videos, or whatever else there is where someone can make a buck on you because you have that writing bug. I’ve tried some of them (not the seminars or conferences), and I’ve tried reading some of the books, and I didn’t find them very helpful. For that reason, I am and will forever be a pantser.

For some, pantser is a throwaway term used to describe people they might see as lazy, uncommitted, or lacking in true talent. Why would they think that? Well, the pantser goes on that internal push that they find in some element that begins a story and then takes off.

I felt a little put off and almost hid the fact that I was a pantser, even though I have had my flash fiction stories published over 40 times during the last three years when I first began writing flash fiction. In fact, in the next few months, I will have three different stories published in three different publications and one publication only takes between 1–2% of stories submitted. That fact, alone, tends to give me not pause, but a reason to continue my pantser activity.

Today, in fact, I received the effect of an emotional massage or bit of additional resolve in what I do and how I do it. Where did I get it from? It came from the incredibly talented and hugely successful writer Stephen King. When King was interviewed and asked how he writes and if he was a pantser, he admitted he was.

In fact, King said that sometimes story ideas hit him at the oddest moment. For example, when he got up one day and started getting dressed, he had a thought about something, and in the middle of putting his pants on, he had almost the entire story in his head. By the time he had finished dressing, he had the whole thing in his head. In fact, he said, he visualizes the story in his head as a film, and then he sits down and writes it. I find that the easiest way to write dialogue is to either speak it out or run it in your head.

According to King, the story progresses at its own pace and pushes itself along. There is no predetermined destination; he just follows it as it goes along.

I believe conflict in the middle would drive the story toward an ending, but he didn’t confirm if that was his intention. It ends for him, where it ends. He is undoubtedly very successful with this formula and has produced and sold hundreds of millions of copies of his novels, which have been turned into highly successful films.

For me, after reading and watching videos about writing, it’s a simple one, two, three process: beginning, conflict, and ending. The beginnings come to me so easily that it’s almost laughable, and then I have to find the conflict that will give this beginning some interest for the reader. And I have to make that beginning something that draws them into the story.

Today, I began writing a flash fiction story where the idea was something I had observed over 30 years ago in Los Angeles. The graphic imprinted into my memory was so intense that it cried out to be a story, not just a still image in my mind. From that, I am now progressing into a fully fleshed-out flash fiction story. And I found a way to draw the reader in, and I have my conflict.

As I learned long ago, by simply sitting down and writing articles for a trade publication, your first sentence is the key to everything. They should emphasize that to all writers. Make that first sentence a home run, and then run with it.

Am I suggesting that you break the rules that others seem to believe are cardinal and must be followed? No, what I am saying is that you must follow what feels best for you and understand that, while some recommendations may be useful, rigidity in anything is not the way to go.

You must be free to express yourself and one area where I found someone, incredibly successful, who did EXPRESS himself was William Faulkner. If you’ve read the writing books or you use some of the programs that help you write, they insist that your typical sentence not be longer than a specific number of words. One of mine always indicates less than 30 words in one sentence. Well, if they looked at what Faulkner wrote, they would be bowled over because he went on for pages with one sentence. I don’t know how anybody reads this easily, but obviously Faulkner felt this was the way his stories needed to be told. There’s the nugget you want; write the way you want your stories to be told.

Where Can You Submit?

Once you’ve decided that, and you’re on your way to writing an essay or a short story or a novella or even a novel (I am not a novel writer), you’ll need to begin or you should have begun looking into sources that might be suitable for submission and that are seeking your type of stories.

Where do you look? OK, I’ve made a short list and I recommend that you explore each because I believe you will find places that may be seeking your stories. Some will have a theme for the month for a specific edition and if you have a story that meets that theme, OK. But if your story doesn’t match a theme, it makes sense to look at others that don’t have themes attached to them. Sorry to be redundant here, but I’m just trying to help.

Here’s a list with a bit of explanation on some of them. A few things that you’ll want to consider prior to submission to anyone include the following:

Payment rates

Submission guidelines

Response times

Acceptance rates

Genre preferences

Rights requirements

You also might want to check on how long each publication takes before they send you a response, see above, as well as the acceptance rate which can be quite intimidating.

And, most important of all, is that you retain all rights once they publish your story one time and that you have the right to royalties or to not permit them to use your material in other media such as in books or other online sources.

Many of them will give you some type of legal contract that indicates the story hasn’t been published any place else previously and that you are the sole author of the peace and that you did not engage in plagiarism. As in everything, we can be babes in the woods sometimes and we need to be very careful to try to protect ourselves and our material.

Now there is even a new subscription service, which I am exploring, which indicates they are going to try to collect any sources that are using my writing to train their LLM’s and where I should be provided a fee for them doing so. I have no idea if this is going to be free or not, but I have subscribed to their newsletter and once I get more information, I will pass it along. In the meantime, here’s a list of places where you might consider submission.

Literary Submission Sites

Duotrope

Lists over 7,500 active markets

Subscription: $50/year

Features detailed submission tracking

Success rate statistics

Response time reports

Professional market listings

Payment reports

Submittable

Used by 14,000+ organizations

Free for writers to use

Real-time submission status updates

Integrated payment system

Popular with major publications

The Submission Grinder

Free alternative to Duotrope

Lists approximately 5,000 markets

Response time statistics

Payment information

User-reported data

Poets & Writers Database

Lists over 1,000 literary magazines

Free to access

Focus on literary fiction and poetry

Contest listings

Grant opportunities

NewPages

Regularly updated listings

Free to access

Focus on literary magazines

Reviews of literary magazines

Educational resources

Literistic

Monthly updated submission deadlines

Premium version: $4/month

Contest deadlines

Grant opportunities

Fellowship listings

Ralan.com

Specializes in speculative fiction markets

Free to access

Professional and semi-pro markets

Contest listings

Payment information

C. Hope Clark’s Funds for Writers

Premium newsletter: $18/year

Grant opportunities

Contest listings

Paying markets

Publication opportunities

WritingCareer.com

Free access

Updated weekly

Focus on paying markets

Contest listings

Publishing opportunities

Authors Publish

Free newsletter

Manuscript submission opportunities

Publisher listings

Contest information

Writing resources

I should mention that, with many of my stories, I use an outside service that has an algorithm that matches my stories to the types of material different publishers are seeking. Yes, they charge a fee for this that is based on the type of service you want from them, and if you want to try them, go to Submititnow.com

Good luck with your writing and submissions. Remember, even very successful writers have, at times, been overwhelmed by rejections. For example, Stephen King indicated that he received over 600 rejections before he managed to get some acceptances. Initially, he joked that he had a nail on his wall where he would push the rejection slips he received (prior to the days of the Internet), and at one point, he had to get a bigger nail because he had so many rejections.

There are many reasons for a rejection. You may receive rejections for submitting to a publication that doesn’t use your specific type of writing, or they may have reached their limit of acceptances, or you may have reached what they call the “readers” desk, and you almost made it. They will encourage you to keep submitting to them, and, in fact, even many who have rejected my stories have included a reassurance that they want to see my work in the future. This is one of the nice things that some of the publications will do for writers, and it is wonderful to receive that type of encouragement.

Write what you love, keep looking around (see my article on my “crumb method” of writing) and stories will come to you, initially perhaps slowly, but then in a flood as you see the potential all around you. As I’ve said, I sometimes am unaware of the story potential that is in my mind and which has been logging on for years in my memory banks. Once one of those initial hints of a story comes to me, then I know I am ready to proceed with it and that after it will come others that are waiting in line, as it were.

You have a line waiting up there too, and you need to tap into it. Sit down and do a bit of reminiscing, and I will bet that will bring some ideas to mind that you will find interesting, useful and begin to expand on.