How to Write for Magazines

by Bill Vossler

You can write for magazines. It's not simple, but neither is it supremely difficult. Breaking into  magazines is the same for the beginning writer as for the professional writer familiar with other formats. It requires discipline and hard work. In 18 months I've broken into more than two dozen new magazines, and I'm not an exceptional writer.

Can you sell to magazines? YES! Here's how:

• Choose a magazine you like. It should fit your lifestyle and you should enjoy reading it. But make sure the magazine is within your writing capability. If you're unpublished or have only published a few pieces, don't target Reader's Digest, The New Yorker, or Redbook (unless you're collecting form rejection slips). Only the very best writers publish in these magazines, and your chances for an acceptance are almost nil in the beginning. Those publications will come later. To increase your odds, choose lower paying, more receptive magazines such as Grit, Lefthander Magazine, or Good Old Days.

• Study the magazine. Pick up at least six recent back issues from the library, your own back copies, or request sample copies (these you'll have to pay for). See the Writer's Market or The Writer's Handbook from the bookstore or local library. Then study the magazine in great detail. Start with the masthead (or list of editors), and compare those names with article bylines. The fewer written by editors, the better your chance of selling to the magazine.

• Next, advertising. Who is featured: families, children, seniors, teens? And what is being advertised: Cadillacs or Chevies, Rolexes or Timexes, suit coats or diapers? This nudges you toward the type of piece you'll write for the magazine. For instance, a magazine whose ads feature families, Chevies, Timexes and diapers would be much more amenable to an article about a family vacation to the South Dakota Badlands than a magazine featuring ads selling mostly products for lefthanders. Unless you pitched an idea on lefthanders vacationing in the South Dakota Badlands. You see, each magazine targets an intended audience, and that intended audience possesses, for the most part, certain buying powers, predilections, needs, and wishes. So it would be foolish to pitch an idea on saving $20 a week on groceries to a magazine like Travel & Leisure, not only because it targets affluent people, but because it's a travel magazine, uninterested in mundane things like grocery bills.

• Next, move on to the articles. How many per issue? How long? What kind -- how-to, service, roundup (what the stars eat) -- what? Written in first or third person? What kinds of beginnings-anecdote, question, quote, action, surprise/ shocker? How many quotes buttress the ideas in the article? From experts or non-experts? How many people are quoted per article? How many points are made? How long are the sentences? Ratio of long to short sentences? Kinds of words used-long, short, easy, difficult? Kinds of verbs-being (be, am, is, are, was, were, been) or unusual or powerful verbs (cajoled, simpered, skittered). And what about endings? Humorous, wry, circle back to the beginning? Sidebars? How many? How long? Pictures/illustrations? How many and by whom? Letters to the editors, and especially the editor's writing, if any.

Every magazine possesses distinct tendencies. Figure them out, and give the editor more of the same (with a new lively slant, of course.)

Choose the Topic You're Going to Pitch. Perhaps you have a concept: solitude, winter camping, future trains, eyes -- whatever sustains your interest. Writing is difficult enough without assembling your own roadblocks.

Create the Slant. Using your magazine information, and your topic, create your slant. The slant is the narrow focus of the topic, the arrowhead instead of the chunk of flint (e.g.: The Joys of Winter Camping; Eight Ways to Prevent Pollution). Use the title-types from articles in the target magazine: "Five (Eight, Three, whatever) Ways to...” “How to...” And so on. It's perfectly legal, and the editor has already shelled out green stuff for a different article with the same title type.

Even without research, you can sniff out a slant to give you direction. Some writers research completely before formulating their slant. No matter; you'll re-examine the slant as you do research. It may change, or it may not; most of mine don't, perhaps because, if I'm interested in something, I usually know something about it.

Dig up Research. Magazines, books, libraries, CD- Roms, computer bulletin boards, wherever -- get enough to make you knowledgeable on your topic.

Query Your Chosen Magazine. Using the research, write a query letter to the magazine of your choice. While you're waiting for an answer, study other non-competing magazines (not in the same field: if you've queried a gardening magazine, then a general-interest magazine or a woman's magazine wouldn't be competing). Now pitch the same topic -- why waste your research effort? Or choose a new topic, follow the procedures, and send off queries. When queries are rejected, go to the next magazine in that field, study it, reslant the query, and send it out again. The process gets much easier with practice.

Write the Article. Sometimes the concept is so compelling you're going to write it anyway. If so, do it, especially early in your magazine-writing career, because writing practice is always useful. When you get a go-ahead, ferret out sources, if needed, marshal the rest of your research, and write the article to the specifications in the go-ahead.

Write a Sidebar. Not every article has a sidebar (i.e., peripheral material that doesn't quite fit in the main body of the article). I usually try to find one or two because editors like them, and it enhances the chance of a sale.

Find Photos or Illustrations. Most editors hate digging up photos; if you do it, you've increased your chances of selling to a magazine, and of getting extra money. Take your own, use tourism or other public sources, or buy them from stock agencies.

Package It up and Send It in. You won't sell every article you write, simply because magazines fold, editors move, ideas don't always work as editors or you think they will.

But if you choose your magazines carefully, study them and absorb them thoroughly, then produce a well-thought-out, crafted product, you're bound to have many more hits than misses with old familiar magazines -- or new ones.

-- BV
© Bill Vossler
First published 1995 in Writers' Journal Magazine. Appears here with permission of the author.

Bill Vossler has published more than 2,200 articles in 160 different magazines during 17 years of fulltime writing, as well as four books, including Burma-Shave: The Rhymes, The Signs, The Times, and his latest one, Cars, Trucks, and Buses Made by Tractor Companies. Vossler lives in Rockville, Minnesota, with his wife Nicolyn Rajala (who is writing her own book on saunas) and their cat, Mittens. Email Bill Vossler at bvossler@juno.com.