Deadline: January 1st, 2021
Payment: £5 per accepted story.
Theme: “Commuting” and what that means for you in Horror, Sci-Fi or Fantasy Flash Fiction
Note: So this is a completely unique opportunity. Editor Max Green is looking to expand his experience in quite an interesting way. This isn’t a publishing opportunity though it would likely mean your work would end up online as a reference which could cause it to be a reprint. Mr. Green is hoping to build a portfolio of edited stories and is willing to pay you for them. If you’re a new writer looking for feedback or have a story that just never lands, this could be a beneficial way to get insight and keep the story around for a future collection of your own or anthology which accepts reprints. Also, not every anthologist will see this available in a portfolio as a reprint.

Deadline: January 1st, 2021

Overview: An opportunity to send in a flash fiction piece and have it edited as part of a 2020 Creative Writing graduates portfolio.

Payment: £5 per accepted story. It’s for a non-profit cause so no further money will be made once approved (either for myself or for you) but you will retain all the rights to your story and receive free editing on the submission if it’s approved. This is a good chance to have your work fine-tuned by a 3rd party who has a degree in Creative Writing and offers further potential to have your work posted online. It would be a great outlet for work that hasn’t been accepted in the past, or old stories that never saw the light of day! 

Theme + Word Count: The theme or prompt for these short stories is “Commuting”. I leave this open ended for you to take it how you will, as long as it’s within the genres of Sci-Fi, Horror or Fantasy. All I ask beyond that is that every story is Flash Fiction in length. Flash Fiction being stories in the ballpark word count of 100-1,500 words. 

 

If I’ve caught your interest then yes, you read the above correctly! This is an opportunity for unpublished, recreational writers, to have their work edited by someone trained on how to do it for no cost. In fact, it’s better than that, because more so than editing your submissions for free, I will pay you to edit your work! Am I mad? I hope not, BUT I am looking to create a portfolio of edited work that will demonstrate my editing, proof reading and writing abilities. Which is the aim of this call for short stories. I’m building an editing and writing portfolio and am looking for stories written by strangers that I could improve. The only real cost is that I can showcase them on my website, with a before and an after, to demonstrate the editing that I’ve done.

Which by extension will mean of course, that you don’t even have to send me something good! I am simply looking for flash fiction stories, built from off of the prompt, that I can edit effectively and improve. And I will pay you £5 British pounds to do so. If you spend 5 minutes without a care in the world and send it to me? Who knows, it could be the easiest £5 pounds you ever make.

The prompt is “commuting”, so please take that single word and make a story from out of it in whatever way you see fit. A traffic jam leading into hell? A slasher movie villain getting ready for a hard weekends work at the nearby holiday camp? An alien caravan trip to one of Saturn’s moons? Go wild! Just make it relevant to the prompt and make sure you stick within the genres of Horror, Sci-Fi, or Fantasy.

Each author may submit a single story, I don’t want to receive multiple submissions because as a “one-man army” I will be editing and organising this by myself. With that in mind, I will delete stories from the same authors without reading them if they come after an initial submission. Also, with this being a solo venture, I won’t be emailing a response to those whose stories I don’t choose to edit. So, if I don’t respond to a submission, the chances are that I didn’t feel it was a good fit for the portfolio. But please! With the nature of this call for fiction, that really won’t reflect poorly on you. In fact, if I receive an utterly perfect story, I’m more likely to turn it away! It will really be on a story to story basis that I make my selections. On the inverse of that, if I accept your story, don’t feel like I did it because I didn’t enjoy it. I’m really just looking for stories that I can add to via editing. 

If I choose your story, I will be in contact with an edited version and you will receive your payment via PayPal. I’ll then post it to a portfolio website, with a before and an after to demonstrate the changes I made. If at any point you feel uncomfortable with this arrangement, then because this is a fairly informal interaction, you can contact me and I will either; remove your story, make it anonymous, or make further changes that you would like to see. Basically, it’s a process that you will remain in control of, and it’ll be open to discussion if I choose your piece. The only thing you should take note of, is if you send me a piece that you later market for other calls for fiction, because it is online it could be classed as a “re-print”. Again, with the nature of this opportunity, it’s easily discussed with me if that happens and you need me to discuss it with whoever you send to or even remove the piece from my portfolio. Were any complications to come later down the line, as I will make explicitly clear on the website, YOU OWN THE RIGHTS! This is not me purchasing your story, it is merely a down payment of appreciation to you forgiving me something to edit. Edited versions are not my property, merely demonstrations of my ability to make cohesive changes to a piece of writing.

At the end of the day, this is a mutually beneficial experience. I pay you £5 you have your work edited and I get to showcase the stories in an online portfolio of work. If this premise is of interest to you and you wish to make a submission, then send your story with a Title, Word Count, and your name (the name you want me to know you as, there’s no binding legal contract here) in the description to – [email protected]

• All submissions must be sent as Doc.X files.
• One submission per person.
• I won’t demand them in manuscript format, but please don’t go crazy with your stories, I won’t be keen on stylistic fonts or unconventional formatting.
• When emailing, you must put your name, the title of the story and the word count in the subject. If you have any unique requests (specific things you want to see me edit, details about you that you think I should know, worries over payment etc), you may put those in the bulk of the email itself.
• Writers of any and all backgrounds, ethnicities and demographics are welcomed to submit.
• Absolutely no, gratuitous violence, sexually explicit material, overt amounts of swearing, racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia etc. Generally, the rule of thumb will be that if you’re going to write content you wouldn’t be comfortable showcasing in a portfolio, I won’t be either. So please, be reasonable with what you send, because it will be a waste of both of our times if you send me your flash fiction piece and it’s nothing but hyper-violent torture, because I won’t be considering it. 
• If you are submitting, then you must have a PayPal account to which I can send you the money on admittance. If I accept a submission and am unable to make the payment, for obvious reasons I won’t be able to go ahead with the editing. 
• Once accepted there will be a period of time in which I am fine tuning both the work and the website. I will send edited versions of the pieces back to authors before I launch the portfolio online and will attach a link to those authors who have been accepted so they can see their pieces in an online setting. For obvious reasons the portfolio link won’t be disclosed here, not least because it isn’t filled yet with the fine work I hope you will send to me!

If all of that makes sense. Then please get in touch with the email account above. If you have any questions then you’re welcome to send your queries as well, just please take note that I am doing this alone so won’t be able to reply quickly all the time, and if I already have the number of stories I want to edit, then I won’t respond. Please don’t be disheartened or take offence if this happens! 

I hope to hear from you all shortly and look forward to seeing what you can come up with. And one last time, the email you are sending work to is – [email protected]