New Writer's Crash Course

Learn to turn daydreams into action by finding submissions, formatting manuscripts, generating ideas, and networking to build an audience and market your work.

Kick off the new writer's crash course by covering a lot of ground fast, encouraging you to pause, replay, and practice to make concepts stick.

Discover practical steps to submit short stories, craft cover letters and bios, understand submission guidelines, find magazines and submission calls, and even self-publish while tracking real-world results.

Explore how to find open submission calls, read guidelines for format, payment, and response timelines, and use tools to submit your short story, serial fiction, or poetry.

Discover submission grinder to find places to submit horror stories, track submissions, and learn guidelines; create a free account and explore advanced search, response times, and simultaneous submissions.

Explore how to navigate magazine submission guidelines, including standard manuscript format, word limits up to 7500, six-cent pay, and submission platforms, with notes on rights and reading periods.

Learn how to use submittal to manage magazine submissions, from creating a free account and signing in to attaching your story, writing a cover letter, and following up-to-date guidelines.

Create a free submittal account, use the discovery tab to find calls, upload manuscripts via the form, and track submissions with email notifications while building your bio and cover letter.

Set up a professional Gmail account, use Google Drive and Google Docs for cloud backups, share and edit in real time, and streamline manuscript submission.

Leverage social media to start your writing career by joining open submission calls and writers groups, building an audience before publishing. Follow guidelines, share small details, and seek peer support.

Build your writer brand on facebook by growing a personal page and an author page, posting regularly, sharing work, and supporting fellow writers.

Learn how to engage fellow writers on social media by posting positive, relatable updates about writing progress, books, and reviews to grow a supportive audience.

Connect with fellow writers, editors, producers, voice actors, and fans in horror groups to promote published work and build an author network; use Morbid Wonderland campaigns to boost author page.

Apply Facebook strategies to Twitter and Instagram to grow a multi-platform writer brand through interactive posts, personal and writing life updates, hashtags, and community promotion.

Discover how selective posting of your writing on social media builds buzz and engagement. The instructor shares an experiment with micro fiction and explains why large chunks can hurt professionalism.

Explore how to network, find open submissions, and craft cover letters while the instructor shares personal stories about the craft, with exercises and written assignments to jumpstart your writing career.

Explore Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing: root for a character, reveal or advance action in every sentence, write for one person, and share information quickly, not for everyone.

Explore how weird news serves as inspiration for flash fiction and short stories, as a man drags road kill into a convenience store and a memorable story unfolds.

Draw on personal experience to create authentic horror fiction, shaping real characters and emotions from trauma, addiction, and resilience, as the author demonstrates through heirloom and other stories.

Reading current issues of magazines you want to publish in motivates you, reveals editors’ tastes, and guides your own writing. Read peers’ work online to research fit and start writing.

Master practical storytelling tips: start with action, balance concise research, and revise line by line with peers. Learn to craft authentic setting, dialogue, and tension for stories and novels.

Practice rapid ideation by writing 200 ideas in two minutes, generating settings, characters, and plot lines to surface one or two usable story ideas.

Write every day, even if it's just a sentence, to build a habit. Journal train-of-thought notes, jot words that come to mind, and let ideas grow into stories.

Format your stories in the Shunn manuscript format, bookmark shunn.net, apply header rules (word count, title, byline, pen name), and mark story breaks with a pound sign.

Explore the added video on voice and style to complement the course's focus on editors, networking, and submitting work, and share feedback for ongoing improvement.

Write a clear, concise bio for submissions, pair it with a photo, and keep a simple blog or links page so editors can find your published work.

Navigate the submission grinder to find open calls, compare per-word vs flat-rate pay, and submit to outlets like Clarkes World via Google Docs.

Learn how to craft professional cover letters for submissions, including wording, subject lines, and publication status, plus how to handle withdrawal notices and payment timelines.

Accept rejection letters as a normal part of writing and keep submitting multiple stories to publications to stay productive toward publication.

learn how to announce your publication, post the link and cover image on author and personal pages, tag collaborators, and drive traffic on social media.

Compare per-word rates, stipends, and flat fees to choose professional markets with fair pay. Don't work for free; submit high-quality stories to paying outlets and expect to get paid.

Embrace rejection letters as an initiation into professional writing, revise with trusted feedback, and send stories to multiple magazines to maintain momentum.

Apply the lessons from this course to build a writing community, share work, and navigate rejections and acceptances. Consult resources like the grammar handbook, grammar tools, and submission round up.

Final thoughts on promoting a published work through social media, including one-post-per-page, Facebook ads, and using StumbleUpon and Miles Bakker guidance.