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It ought to go without saying that any story submitted to Every Day Fiction must be your own unpublished original creation.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 We do not publish fan fiction and  will not publish stories which feature non-original characters, although  referencing them (e.g., in a film, as a toy, etc.)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.