CASHING IN ON TRUE LIFE TALES
My husband kept his under aged mistress prisoner in our coal cellar! Or Devil worshipping grandmother turns lesbian at 80! Pretty shocking hey? Well it is supposed to be! These stories attract huge payouts from tabloid magazines and newspapers so it is no wonder a lot of writers have turned their attention to this area of magazine writing.
Payment for these kinds of magazine articles far out strips anything else on offer, typically anywhere from a thousand pounds upwards and the additional prospect of a byline in a magazine with a circulation of many thousands is a further attraction.
So how difficult is it to break into this area of magazine writing? Assuming you have a devil worshipping grandmother or something similar, not very! There are agencies and brokers which will welcome you with open arms if you have a story of this type sell.
These are industry professionals with good contacts. For a percentage of the fee, they will negotiate the best price for the story on your behalf, a little like a book publishing agent, but there the similarity ends because unlike the world of book publishing, it is highly unlikely that you will be allowed to write your story!
The big snag is and it is a big one for anyone who is serious about launching a writing career is it is very unlikely that you will be doing any writing! Tabloid magazines and newspapers employ their own in house staff trained to milk each story for every drop of lurid, sensational tidbit.
For this reason you will be well advised to leave this area of magazine writing alone. A further warning should be given at this point. Should you decide to pursue this avenue, be prepared to have your story substantially altered even to the point where much of it is down right lies!
Fortunatly, you do not have to dabble in these somewhat murky waters to make a reasonable living writing for magazines.
If you have a reasonably good command of the English language, some basic research skills and the ability to writing in a clear and entertaining way, there are hundreds and hundreds of magazines and websites willing to pay realistic fees for your work.
Give yourself a good grounding in the basic skills of writing magazine articles and take on board the fact that writing is a business and you will soon begin to make sales.
You will find there is a lot of help available so do plenty of back ground reading on writing for magazinesbefore you start submitting your articles.
You will quickly find that the two main requisites you need are a ready supply of paying markets for magazine articlesand a clear understanding of the submission process. A good, creative writing community will almost certainly have an up to date markets database while
Mags & Rags, a free eworkshop on writing for magazines,is an excellent introduction to writing and selling magazine articles.