How To Write An Article For Your Favorite Magazine

How To Write An Article For Your Favorite Magazine

by Greg Lewis

Most magazines don't have staff writers. They get the bulk of their content from outside sources — freelancers, syndicates or contract contributors, and the magazine’s own readers. If there’s a topic you’d like to see in your favorite hobby magazine and you’re tired of waiting to find it there, write it up yourself and send it in. If you don't know enough about the topic to write it on your own, become a journalist and find someone you can interview for your story. It's a buzz to see your name in print and get a little cash in your pocket besides.

Here are some tips on how to become a journalist:

Do:


 * Study a year's worth of issues of the publication you want to write for.
 * Send a query letter to the editor outlining your idea before you start to write.
 * Specify the rights you are offering.
 * Give the editor at least six weeks to respond to your query.
 * Ask for any authors' guidelines handouts the editor might have available.
 * Ask about file formats for photos and cad drawings.
 * Write as though you were penning a letter to a friend.
 * Write tight and to the point.
 * Avoid long windy introductions or digressions.
 * Keep paragraphs short.
 * Have a friend read over your piece before sending it off, and listen carefully to his or her comments.
 * Provide sharp, well-lit photos.
 * Meet the agreed-upon deadline.

Don’t:


 * Annoy the editor with too many phone calls or emails.
 * Write using a colloquial or other affected style.
 * Use the ponderous writing styles of some professions.
 * Worry to much about your writing ability. Part of the editor's job is to fix bumpy grammar and disjointed sentences.
 * Try to manipulate the photos in image processing software.
 * Add graphic formatting to your copy.
 * Complain about editing unless it has affected factual accuracy.
 * Expect the editor to maintain an on-going correspondence with you.
 * Expect the story to be printed in less than a year after submission.
 * Send the same idea or article to two competing publications at the same time.

Here's a detailed explanation of the above:

1. Study the publication you'd like to write for. Look at least a year's worth of back issues. See what types of pieces they publish. Do they run how-to, personality profiles, or product overviews? You'd think a prospective author wouldn't send a piece on building doll houses to a model railroad magazine, but it happens.

Give some thought to what they haven't run within the context of what they do. For example, Live Steam and Outdoor Railroading magazine runs pieces on outdoor railroads in gauges large enough to ride on. You'll also see how-to articles and stories about prototypes that would make good ride-on models. They also like stationary steam and steam boat stories. It's unlikely that they'd be interested in a G-scale electric powered garden railroad.

Check to see how long a typical article is. A long, extended work is less interesting to an editor than one that will fit into three or four pages. And every editor I've known loves shorter works that can fill a half- or full-page of left-over space at the end of a longer piece. (And consider that about half of the page space is needed for photos, headlines and such.)

2. Query the editor. This is extremely important. Don't skip this step. Never submit a completed work, or even start writing, without some clue from the editor that he or she is interested in your idea. If you're off-target for the needs of the publication, you've wasted your time and the editor's as well. And editors are not obligated to return or even acknowledge unsolicited material.

The best way to find out if your idea has a chance is with a query letter. A phone call to an editor who is backed up against a deadline (which is most of the time) doesn't give that person a chance to think about your proposal and, if you reach him at a bad moment, he may cut you off and you won't get a second chance. Besides, a letter shows that you can at least string a few words together into coherent sentences. Email is the communications medium of the 21st century, but keep in mind that editors’ email boxes are usually cluttered with all sorts of things. I suggest you simply use “Story idea” as your subject line. This will help the busy person who is trying to separate the spam from the good stuff.

In spite of that, I still prefer the USPS for queries. A letter, neatly typed on decent paper just has a bit of substance to it that its electronic counterpart doesn't have. And it will stand out more than just another email in the digital onslaught. I use a buff colored stationery with matching envelope, and print it out at the highest quality. I’ll then follow-up with an email after I’m reasonably sure my letter has been received.

Your query letter, regardless of email or snail-mail, should be one page or one screen’s worth, no more than three paragraphs, and state quickly what you have in mind. Editors are busy people and they don't have time to read long tomes or digressions. A good way to open a query letter is with the lead paragraph of the article, which should tell the readers what they can expect and provide a little hook to draw them in. I've attached a sample query letter below. Note that the last paragraph closes with a few sentences about what you can supply and what terms you offer. The term "one-time rights" is an industry standard that tells the editor you offer the work for use once in the publication. Since professional writers earn their living from selling their work, this sentence protects that work and its income potential. Even though you may not aspire to professional status, you should adhere to the same standard. The details of rights and rates are more than can be discussed here; there are books on the market that deal with this aspect of authorship in depth.

Also in that last paragraph is a sentence that sets a time limit for the rights you've granted. This gives you the opportunity to send your work elsewhere if the editor sits on it for too long. By the way, many magazines are produced three issues ahead of the current one, and have content plans farther out than that, so a year and a half is a reasonable time span before your work will be seen by readers.

In my snail-mail letter I’ll mention that I’ll follow-up by email in a few days. After about a week I’ll send an email to the editor, titled as I suggested above, mention my snail-mail letter, re-state the query, and close by writing, “If you’re interested, please let me know.” Thus the editor only has to click “reply” to give you the thumbs-up.

3. Write the article. Lead off with a short paragraph (two or three sentences) that piques the interest of your readers and gives them an idea of what's ahead. Keep paragraphs short. The paragraphing style you learned in English composition class isn't what's used here. Short paragraphs break up the mass of type on the page and make the visual presentation more inviting to the reader. And the topic sentence - body - closing sentence style espoused by your favorite high school English teacher usually doesn't work for the tight, to-the-point writing that's best for non-fiction technical or how-to writing. If your profession has a particular style, keep in mind that it may be inappropriate outside that venue. The best place to look for the type of writing you should emulate is any metropolitan newspaper.

One way to clear writing is to write as though you were crafting a letter to a friend, but pretend you're being charged by the word. Avoid long windy introductions and flamboyant prose. You’re not writing a college term paper that has to meet a minimum length requirement so there's no need to pad your work with flabby sentences and redundant thoughts.

Affected styles (dialects, use of foreign words, and so on) may seem cute or clever to you but, more than likely, they will interfere with your message by drawing attention to themselves, slow down your reader, and may even send him or her away. Those techniques are more appropriate for your local fiction writers' club.

Use active rather than passive voice. Instead of, "The locomotive is placed on the track for testing," say, "Put the locomotive on the track and test it." Use personal pronouns when appropriate. Note the number of times I have used the word "you" in this piece. I hope you feel as though I'm writing to you personally.

Remember what I mentioned above: don't be gabby. About half of the page space is needed for photos and display type.

When you're done, put your piece away for a few days and then read it again. Problems will be easier to see with a fresh read. Have a friend read it — someone who will give you honest feedback. And don't fall in love with your prose. Even Hemmingway was edited, and what may seem crystal clear to you may be confusing or redundant to someone else. Be prepared to make changes for the sake of clarity and brevity.

Above all, don't be an egoist. If you can't handle someone else's hand in your work, perhaps your time would be better spent on something else.

Run the spell check, and look for homonyms. Homonyms are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings, such as their, there and they’re.

When referring to art work, instead of naming them Photo 1, Drawing 1 and Chart 1, it's better to call all of them "figures." Thus you'd write Figure 1 (which might be a photo), Figure 2 (which could be a drawing) and Figure 3 (which could be a chart), keeping them all in sequential order.

Avoid fancy formatting including italics or bold face. The editor will have to strip most of that out anyway before the copy can be run through the magazine’s typesetting system. Use one space after a period. Don't use the spacebar to position text since the alignment will change when the work is set to the magazine's specifications. If there are specific formatting issues that are important to the reader's understanding of the work, discuss them with the editor before you submit your piece.

For questions of usage including capitalization, spelling, abbreviations and the like, The Associated Press Stylebook is the standard of the journalism industry. If you'd like a great little book filled with tips for good writing, I highly recommend The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White. You should be able to get these books from any bookstore.

4. Take the photos. Every article benefits from some sort of visual support. Even if it's only a chart or graph, visuals make the page more interesting and help your reader ingest the information in more than one way.

Digital imaging and photo editing is a whole course in itself, so those of you who are experts will have to indulge my simplifications here.

Images may look fine on your screen or print fine on your ink-jet printer, but the printing press needs high resolution photos, so set your camera for its highest quality setting. Cell phone cameras can produce acceptable results but you have to be sure that the image is exported at full resolution. I’ve seen cases where the photo’s exported resolution is downgraded without warning, so be sure to check. There are too many systems for me to tell you how to do this here, but for most cell phones there is a way.

Move in close and compose for a strong center of interest or focal point. Leave out extra space around your subject. I can't emphasize this enough. I've been teaching photography for 30 years and this is the number one beginner mistake.

Be sure the photo is well-lit. Dark or underexposed images look terrible in print if they can be used at all. And try to avoid using the built-in flash. That is a harsh, unrealistic light that creates unwanted reflections and an unnatural look.

Pictures must be sharp and today's autofocus cameras help. The center of the frame is usually where the image will be sharpest, so put your subject there. And know the close-up limits of the camera; some just won't focus closer than two or three feet even though the image may look good on the preview screen.

Don't use the lens in digital zoom mode. This is nothing more than cropping of the image on the CCD chip and results in a lower resolution photo.

Ask the editor how he or she wants the photos submitted. Some email accounts still limit file size, so you may have to send them on a thumb drive or CD. Prints are a last resort. They will have to be scanned and the results often lack quality.

In the printing of photographs on a printing press, there is a phenomenon called "dot gain", which means the image will not look the same on the printed page as it will on your screen or inkjet output. Every printing press has a different level of dot gain and some presses vary from run to run. So unless you have talked to the magazine's production staff and know exactly what you are doing, do NOT fiddle with the photos in image processing software. Just send them to the editor exactly as they came from your camera. You may be a whiz at Photoshop but the magazine staff knows just what they have to do to match the photo to their specific printing press.

CAD drawings are great but be sure to check with the editor to see how they should be prepared. The magazine may have a particular style they prefer for typeface, arrow heads, line widths and so on. Be sure the software and format you use are readable by the magazine. I have had good results by converting my CAD drawings to PDF format, which is a standard format almost every prepress department can work with.

Because the editor may need to run your drawings larger or smaller than you planned, it may be better in the long run to just sketch them out clearly and cleanly with a pencil and let the editors handle the CAD work.

5. Submit your work. When you email your story to the editor, title it with a one- or two-word slugline followed by the words, “story submission.” Again, this will help it stand out in a cluttered email inbox. Thus the email for a story on making a small stationary steam engine might be titled: “Stationary steam story submission.”

And to reiterate, be sure to submit the photos according to your pre-arranged method. Re-do the file names of the photos to match the references in your story. The camera’s file name is just a number that means little to the editor. Keep file names simple and obvious as possible so the editor can find what he or she is looking for without searching. Then sit back and wait for your masterpiece to be printed and your check to arrive. As I explained above, magazines are planned months in advance, so try to be patient. Further, part of the editor's job is to balance the content. He or she won't want to run your piece too soon after something in the same broad category has run. And don't bother the editor with phone calls or emails unless the rights you've granted are about to expire.

If the magazine pays for articles, the custom is to pay upon publication, so your check should arrive about the time the magazine is sent to readers. If you don't get your check within an additional 60 days, a polite query is in order.

Sample Query Letter

 * Mr. Joe Rice, Editor
 * Live Steam Magazine
 * 2779 Aero Park Dr.
 * Traverse City, MI 49686


 * Dear Joe:


 * When you are building a locomotive to follow a particular prototype, finding ways to match the original can be a challenge since not everything scales down directly. Such was the case with the Baldwin-style crossheads for my model of engine #26.


 * The easy solution would have been to adopt a different style, but that wouldn’t do, so I took the path less traveled: “Crossheads — The Hard Way.”


 * [The above paragraphs describe the story and become the lead for the finished piece.]


 * Would you be interested in a 1000- to 1500-word construction piece that might bear such a title? I envision the piece dealing more with the concepts and thought processes that went into solving this model-building problem rather than basic machining techniques, although step-by-step progress photos and shots of unique setups would be proper.


 * I can supply the story in Word or text format, along with half-dozen photos and some dimensioned CAD drawings in your house style, on a CD or by email.


 * [The above paragraphs describe the mechanics of the submission.]


 * Although we haven’t worked together before, I have written three books on technical subjects as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles. I am confident I can meet your requirements and deadline. I offer you one-time rights for a year-and-a-half after submission at your regular rates.


 * [Obviously, the first sentence of the above graf is for editors I haven't worked with before. The last sentence sets out the all-important business deal. Most magazines have set amounts they pay for material. After you have proven yourself to a certain editor, you can negotiate for higher rate.]


 * Yours,


 * Greg Lewis