how to submit fiction to broken pencil
So you want to submit fiction to Broken Pencil.
Great! We'd love to see it. As an Associate Fiction Editor -- the first line of defense, charged with the task of assuring that only the very best of the submissions get through to the next level -- I'm going to be reading what you write, therefore it's probably in your best interest, as a writer, to know what we're looking for and what we're not looking for, so that your story will have its best face on when it gets to us. So pay close attention!
Email Only:
We're no longer going to be accepting fiction submissions by snail mail; it just gets too overwhelming. So email your story to fiction@brokenpencil.com instead. You'll save on stamps and we'll save on Band-Aids from all the paper cuts. Everyone wins! And when you're sending your story, it's best to format the subject line of the email like so: "Fiction Submission -- 'Story Title'".
Format:
Your story has got to be between 50 and 3,000 words. Unless it's really, really good. But don't count on that. We've published longer stories, but rarely; if it's over that word limit, you're seriously harming your chances of getting it printed. If you're trying to decide between sending us a shorter story and a longer story, the shorter story is your best bet, unless the longer story is really fantastic. It's your call.
In the body of the email, all you need is your name, contact info, story title and word count, and a short bio. Please send the story itself as an attachment in Microsoft Word format, not in the body of the email. Your name, the title of the story, and approximate word-count should also be written at the top of at least the first page of the story, if not on every page. My favourite font size and style is 12-point Times New Roman. It's just easiest on my eyes. Courier is fine too. And for God's sake, double-space. Oh, and this is very important: be sure that you actually attach the file when you send the email. Seriously. It's happened more than once that I've got an email ostensibly submitting a story to us, but there's just no story there. That's disappointing for me, and detrimental to your literary dreams, so be scrupulous in reviewing your email before you click "Send."
Publishing History:
Weirdly, I've found that the submissions that come from people who mention that they've already been published a lot elsewhere tend to be, on the average, less good than the ones that come from writers who don't mention any previous publishing history. I'm really not sure what that's about. Maybe it's just that our tastes at Broken Pencil are more outside the mainstream -- well, there's no "maybe" about that, actually, our tastes are outside the mainstream. That's sort of our whole deal. But still, it's not easy to get published even in the non-alternative media. So it's kind of puzzling. That's not to say you shouldn't mention your publishing history in your bio, if you have one; if your story is good, then it's good, and knowing that you have or haven't been published elsewhere doesn't affect my decision one way or the other. Maybe all the best of you are just too modest to let us know your last story was printed in the New Yorker's "New and Brilliant Writers of the Twenty-First Century" issue. That's cool. I understand. But at the same time, we're looking for exciting new voices just as much as more established ones. If you haven't been published anywhere else before, don't worry. We can be your first.
The Waiting Game:
If it seems to take forever to hear back from us, it's usually because I go through every story in that crop of submissions before I make a decision about any of them. It's sometimes also because I feel like such an asshole for having to send you a rejection and I'm trying to summon the inner strength necessary to tell you that the little slice of your soul that you carved off and emailed to us isn't quite what we're looking for. I don't like crushing people's spirits. I write too. We're sensitive people. I know how upsetting a rejection can be. I've got a drawer full of them in my bedroom, right next to all the empty bottles of Bombay Sapphire. Anyway, you can expect to wait 6-8 months before hearing from us. Please don't email us asking for an update on the status of your story unless 8 months have passed and you haven't heard from us.
Dealing With Rejection:
If you get a rejection, please don't take it personally. It's probably not because your story sucks. I've read a lot of submissions, and only a small handful have been genuinely bad. I evaluate stories on a scale of one to ten. Anything that scores an 8.5 or above -- and, admittedly, this is an utterly subjective judgment so you can totally blame my lame, bourgeois taste if you don't get accepted -- gets the green light from me and moves up to the next editorial level, to Hal the Fiction Editor, who makes the final decision. Most of the stories I've read from you guys tend to be in the 7-8 range, which is surprisingly high for unsolicited submissions. Very few are lower than 7; most of you who are submitting to us are already pretty good and confident writers, which makes it that much harder to choose. We only publish a few stories per year in the mag, so we only have space for the very best of the best. That said, I also haven't yet had a Perfect 10 cross my path. A couple have come really close. If your story is that elusive Perfect 10, submit it right now. I can't wait to read it.
Dealing With Acceptance:
But some of you are going to impress us enough with your talent that we'll want to publish your story in the mag. We have very limited space in the physical magazine for fiction, so even if we decide to run your story you might have to wait a long time to see it in print. However, in addition to the magazine we're also going to be putting original fiction up on the website as Online Exclusives. This means that we'll be increasing the number of stories we can accept per issue. When we contact you that your story has been accepted, we'll let you know whether it will be coming out in the print mag or on the website in the Online Fiction Section, as well as asking for any additional info and permissions we'll need from you. We pay a minimum of $30 for a story that we publish in the magazine -- more, if we can afford it at the time -- but unfortunately we can't pay for any story that gets accepted as an Online Exclusive just now.
Make Your Story Shine:
What it comes down to is, your story needs to be not only awesome but also fit the style and theme of Broken Pencil. We like it weird. We want it to mean something -- if we can see that it meant something to you when you wrote it, then it's going to mean something to us when we read it. We want to taste your blood on the page. We want your story to hurt us when we read it, we want to see that it hurt you to write it; we're a bit sadomasochistic in our literary tastes here at BP, apparently. Maybe that's why we take such perverse pleasure in encouraging all you writers out there to take a chance and submit to us!