Writing Guidelines
Every Day Fiction is looking for very short (flash) fiction, of up to 1000 words. There’s no such thing as too short — if you can do the job in 50 words, have at it! — but our readers prefer pieces that tell or at least hint at a complete story (some sort of action or tension rising to a moment of climax, and at least a clue toward a resolution, though it doesn’t have to be all spelled out).
All fiction genres are acceptable, and stories that don’t fit neatly into any genre are welcome too. While personal experiences and other non-fiction can be great sources of inspiration, please turn them into fiction for us, or send them elsewhere.
Our readership is adult, so children’s stories are unlikely to be accepted unless they are relevant to adults as well. On the other hand, we are not impressed by gratuitous sex and violence, or pointlessly foul language; edgy content should be necessary and appropriate to the plot and characters. Please consider that our readers may be at work or enjoying our stories over a meal, so we tend to avoid explicit erotica and stomach-churning gore.
It ought to go without saying that any story submitted to Every Day Fiction must be your own unpublished original creation. If you publish a story on a blog, even your own personal blog, or any website accessible to the general public (i.e., if the story can be found and read online without a password or friend status or other limitation), it is considered published and therefore inappropriate for our market.
Since we do not have the time or resources to manage copyright permissions, please do not send us works with quoted song lyrics. You may use song titles and the names of composers, lyricists, and/or performers, and you may paraphrase or refer to the song lyrics, but we are unable to publish stories with directly quoted song lyrics unless they are in the public domain (written before 1920).
We will not publish stories which feature living public figures as characters, although referencing them (e.g., in terms of a concert/event/sighting) is acceptable. Historical/deceased public figures are acceptable as characters. We do not publish fan fiction and will not publish stories which feature non-original characters, although referencing them (e.g., in a film, as a toy, etc.) is fine, and historical/cultural/legendary characters which are clearly not the property of a single creator (e.g., Santa Claus, King Arthur) are also permissible.
Submission Process
All stories must be submitted through Submittable — we cannot accept stories via email or snail mail.
Our maximum response time is 90 days. If for any reason you believe that we have held your story without a response past 90 days, please contact us so we can look into it. We will, of course, do our best to keep our average response time as low as possible.
PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO OUR PUBLISHING SCHEDULE AND SOMETIMES-RAPID TURNAROUND TIMES, WE ASK YOU TO AGREE TO THE PUBLICATION CONTRACT AS PART OF THE SUBMISSION PROCESS; BY SUBMITTING YOUR STORY TO EDF, YOU ARE GIVING US PERMISSION TO PUBLISH IT IF ACCEPTED. PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR STORY IF YOU DO NOT WANT US TO PUBLISH IT.
Multiple Submissions & Simultaneous Submissions
We ask that you have no more than three stories in our submission process at any one time. If you have three stories submitted to the regular queue and wish to submit an additional one to the calendar-specific queue for the upcoming month, please query first.
Unfortunately, we do not take simultaneous submissions; please give us 90 days' exclusive consideration of your story.
Compensation
We believe in the importance of being paid for your writing, even if it’s only a token amount. At this time, we are able to offer three dollars (US$3) for each published story, to be paid via PayPal, with the option to donate it back to Every Day Fiction if you are so inclined.
More importantly, publication also includes an opportunity to promote your writing beyond Every Day Fiction. We will gladly provide a link to your blog or website, and if you have a book on Amazon, we can link to that as well.
This is the ongoing submissions queue for regular submissions to Every Day Fiction (not targeted at a specific month or occasion).
Please note that if you've already submitted a story to a month-specific queue, you do NOT need to resubmit it here. We will consider all stories from those targeted queues for other dates as well, at our discretion.