There are exceptions to this trend, but this article will not be focusing on those exceptions.

Hook ‘Em Like a Pro

The secret to grabbing attention? Start strong. Open with a sentence that raises eyebrows—or blood pressure. Think of it like a Tinder bio: you’ve got one line to make them swipe right.

For instance, instead of:

“On a cloudy Monday morning, Sarah walked to work thinking about her overdue rent,”

try:

“By the time Sarah reached the office, she’d already Googled ‘how to fake your death.’” Curiosity piqued? Exactly.

The Next Step

Once you’ve got them, don’t let up. Use short, punchy sentences to build momentum. Throw in surprises. Keep the stakes high. People love a good cliffhanger, even in the middle of a paragraph. It’s all about maintaining that mental tug-of-war: “What happens next?” vs. “Should I check my phone?”

Now, here’s the tricky part: keeping things tight without sacrificing depth. Because yes, people want brevity—but they also crave meaning. The trick is to make every word pull double duty. Don’t just describe; evoke. Don’t explain; imply. This also means cutting the fluff. Your story doesn’t need a thousand words when 500 will do.

Modern Storytelling That Works

Need proof this approach can work? Look at Twitter (or X or whatever Elon’s calling it now). Microfiction thrives there—complete stories in 280 characters. Or consider Netflix’s obsession with limited series: tightly plotted, emotionally packed episodes that beg to be binged. And let’s not forget podcasts, where even meandering conversations are shaped into narratives with precision editing.

Take someone like Emily Varga, whose debut novel “For She is Wrath” stands out with a lovers-to-enemies storyline wrapped in forbidden Jinn magic. It navigates betrayal, revenge, and lingering love in a richly developed magical world, keeping readers hooked with high emotional stakes and dark secrets. Or Carissa Broadbent who is already gaining traction with her “Crowns of Nyaxia” series. Read her latest installment, “The Songbird and the Heart of Stone”, and you will find it is a well-paced rich vampire fantasy with themes of redemption and betrayal. All these make her work a perfect blend of lush settings with gripping tension. Or for that matter Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose books like “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” cut straight to the drama without losing their emotional core. These authors are the perfect examples for aspiring authors because they show how emerging voices in fantasy can captivate with dynamic characters and immersive worlds while maintaining the tension that keeps pages turning.

In Conclusion

Once I was trying hard to come up with the most captivating opening paragraph, and in doing so spent a whole day. My friend happened to put his eyes on it and commented, “Quite great. But, what is the point”? Thanks, but he had a point: I was so caught up in being literary, that I forgot to be interesting. So now, whenever I start a new piece, I ask myself, “Would my friend keep reading?” If the answer’s no, I scrap it. And really, it’s more about life than just writing. Surely, you don’t want to be the guy at a party who insists on telling a story that meanders for 15 minutes before going nowhere. It is the dignity of your readers — and yours too — that deserves better.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is primarily a Bengali poet from West Bengal, India. Writes in English from time to time. His poetry has been published in Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, FourWsixteen, Linq, Quintessence, Voicesnet, Dicey Brown, Mindfire Renewed, The Potomac, 13th Warrior, and several print and online magazines.

JMS Books is a small electronic press that focuses on publishing LGBTQ+ erotic romance, romance, and young adult romance. They publish mostly shorter work, but stories between 40,000 and 60,000 words in length are eligible (but not guaranteed) to be published in paperback if they sell 50 electronic copies within the first six months of release. Stories longer than 60,000 words will be released in eBook and print format via print on demand. They use Amazon as their printer and distributor.

They do not publish any heterosexual romance, or any work that is only erotic without a romance element.

They publish stories starting at 12,000 words, with no strict upper limit, so are a little different than most traditional manuscript publishers in that regard, where the minimum starting length is usually much higher.

They have deadlines for seasonal stories and other submission calls on their website here.

All submissions to these themes must be Adult LGBTQ+ romance, any heat level, any subgenre, over 12,000 words in length. You can learn more about the details of the themes and how they are published here. They are not published as anthologies, but as individual stories. They are also open to other stories that are Adult LGBTQ+ Romance and Erotic Romance, that don’t fit these themes.

They have been around for a while and have mostly received positive feedback for a small press on the Water Cooler, except for one post in 2019 that strongly implied their authors had to help with work usually reserved for the publisher including helping find keywords for Amazon and cover art image options. You can read the details here.

On their website they do state that they assign all books an ISBN an editor and cover art. But they also say “Before you submit, make sure your story is well-written, free of errors, and checked for grammar. Submissions with extensive problems, including those of plot and character, will not be accepted.” Which makes it clear to me that the editor is not doing much in-depth work, if any.

There are a number of minor typos on their site and some out of date information is still there.

They have a note that says explicitly “Please realize the large majority of our audience are women. This means we are looking for M/M romance and erotic romance, and not merely gay fiction. If you don’t understand those terms, research the genres before submitting your story to us to make sure we are the right publisher for you.”

They do have a readers rewards programs and seem to generally understand their audience over all. Their website is focused on readers over writers.

They have a long list of what sells best for them and what they don’t publish if you scroll down on the submission guidelines. We can not cover all the formatting and submission details here, so please read the full submission guidelines before submitting and please only submit if you feel like your work is a good fit for the publisher.

They do not pay advances but authors earn 50% royalties on all electronic and print sales from their website and distributors. They do not specify if that is off gross or net.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2024 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.

The Gilded Weathervane is produced by FarmGirl Press, a new small press founded by “two farmgirls with deep-rooted ties to rural life.” They hope to showcase and celebrate rural landscapes and the transformative experiences that happen there.

FarmGirl Press plans to publish two issues of The Gilded Weathervane each year, in the fall and spring. They accept submissions year-round.

Poets may submit four to six poems. Authors of short stories and creative nonfiction essays may submit one piece, 6,000 words or fewer. The Gilded Weathervane also accepts flash writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Authors of flashes may submit three to four flash-length pieces. They are especially interested in flash memoire and flash-length personal essays. They don’t accept genre fiction (such as science fiction, horror, and fantasy) of any kind.

The Gilded Weathervane is also seeking artwork and photography depicting rural landscapes and lives. They do not accept AI images.

The Gilded Weathervane accepts submission online using Google Forms, not via email or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that authors withdraw writing published elsewhere. They do not accept previously published work.

The Gilded Weathervane only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to The Gilded Weathervane, please visit their website here.

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

When I decided to pursue writing and enrolled in a writing course, one of the teachers advised me to translate anything I could lay my hands on. She believed that it would make my expressions blossom. “Words change their form with context,” she told me, “‘See’ becomes observe, scan, gaze, scrutinize, depending on the intent of the characters. It is the word choice that decides what the readers feel when they read your words. Inadequate vocabulary limits the effectiveness of writing.”

To date, this is one of the best writing tips I ever received.

Translating a text is tiring, for some, it can be boring as well. However, searching for the correct verbs and adjectives evolves vocabulary. For bilingual writers like me, who cherish the desire to pen stories and essays in a second language, translation is an effective exercise to understand expressions. Finding the exact word to substitute for the meaning, tone, and mood while maintaining the originality of the text can be mind-numbing and stimulating at the same time.

Descriptions in the works of master narrators are flooded with symbolism, exposing characters’ traits, biases, train of thoughts, observations, and reactions. Translating Rangbhoomi by Munshi Premchand, a revered Hindi writer, helped me comprehend how to expose the core of my characters using descriptions instead of dialogues. Looking for words to depict the settings through the eyes of the characters taught me exactitude. I combed through dictionaries, thesaurus, and the internet, and landed on phrases I hadn’t heard before. Discovering the right way to use those words in the sentence, while preserving the spirit of the paragraph and the story at large, opened new vistas.

Anyone familiar with the works of Harivansh Rai Bachchan recognizes how his words are stringed into poetic prose. Maintaining the lyricism, focusing on every syllable of the translated word, another backbreaking exercise, carved me into a crafty writer.

The more time I spent translating texts from Hindi to English, the less time it took me to write my own stories. Words, synonyms, antonyms, phrases, and idioms sprang into my mind. My meandering around the words reduced; I knew exactly what to say. The expressions came from muscle memory.

It does not matter which second language you know. If you are lucky enough to be bilingual, translate texts. Study how the prolific writers have explored the thoughts of the characters, walk through the labyrinth that has already been created, learn how they weave stories, foreshadow secrets, and then expose them – writing is writing, language does not matter. Pick a book, something you read as a child in school or while on a train ride, and start writing.

You may be tempted to write the literal translation that comes to your mind as soon as you read a sentence – don’t do that. Ask yourself, is this what the character means? Is this the best way to describe the settings from the perspective of the narrator? Delve deep into the personality of the characters – what expressions would they use? The words are already penned down, all you need to do is find the perfect translation.

Write several translations of a single sentence and then compare them with one another – which one expresses the context the best. Ask yourself if you are preserving the authenticity of the text. Arrange and rearrange the words in a sentence and then the sentences in the paragraph. Slog over each word, each sentence, and each punctuation.

You may never publish the translations of the short stories or the voluminous novel that you slogged through, but the beauty it lends you your writing cannot be denied.

Nazia Kamali: Born and raised in Dehradun, a small valley on the foothills of the Himalayas, Nazia fell in love with writing at a young age. Her work can be read on FemAsia, Rigorous, CafeLit, and other online journals. Her novella, Multicoloured Muffler was published in the Anthology by Running Wild Press. She had also published her novel Beyond the Interregnum recently.

The reasons for this are threefold:

We have a lot more subscribers than we did when we starting out.

When we started out, our reviews made little impact on the number of manuscripts a publisher received. Over the years as our readership has grown, the submission influx from a review has grown truly massive. Some publishers don’t mind this, but for a lot of them this is overwhelming.

Many of our subscribers mass submit to the publishers we review.

You can read one of our articles on what mass submitting is and why it a problem here, but it basically boils down to this: Publishers receiving tons of submissions of work they would never ever publish and aren’t open to submissions for, such as a children’s book publisher receiving adult romance novels.

These mass submissions never result in success, but they do encourage publishers to close their doors to unsolicited submissions or have more limited windows.

We have published a lot of warnings in our articles, and in text next to our articles, to try and prevent these mass submissions. We’ve published a LOT of educational articles about submitting appropriately.

As far as we can tell, none of the efforts we have made have helped actually decrease these mass submissions.

Our goal is to make publishing more equitable and approachable, but causing publishers to close to submissions is not supporting that.

AI has only complicated the issues.

Before AI became commonplace and more adaptable, at least all of the submissions these publishers were received were written by humans. Now they are not. Science fiction publishers have borne the brunt of this, but even here at Authors Publish it has caused significant issues in terms of our inbox.

Because of the three previous points, more publishers are closing to submissions or asking to be delisted.

This is still very much the exception not the rule, but we do not plan to continue down this path. We want to support equitable and approachable publishing.

I will still be reviewing about 52 publishers and their imprints a year and I will use this information to update the Guide to Manuscript Publishers twice a year as well as special issues articles that round up 20 or more publishers. Our monthly list for underrepresented authors will still contain manuscript publishers as well.

These longer lists and the guide have never caused the same issues, because people do not use them to mass submit the same way and submissions tend to be dispersed over all the publishers, so it’s more like a heavy storm than a waterfall.

We still have a few more scheduled manuscript publishers to go, but by June we will have fully shifted away from them.

We’ll see if this strategy works over time and there might end up being other ways to bring more regular reviews back over time. This isn’t the route forward we would have chosen for ourselves, but it seems like the only way given the circumstances.

We will still publish a review of one literary journal a week, as that has been less of an issue. Moving forward we will focus more on list articles, even in the issues themselves, as well as covering publishing industry news more consistently, something we have already been working towards.

In the meantime please keep supporting indie publishers by buying books directly from them, or local bookstores as much as you can.

We already have some options for replacement articles but we are always open to hearing more, and if you have any feedback on any of this, please feel encouraged to send us an email at suppot@authorspublish.com.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2024 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.