If someone says "We do not accept stories that have already been published in other magazines, blogs, or websites"... what exactly does that mean? What if you used roughly the same story, but wrote it in a different way, or changed some of the details, language choices, etc?
Personally, I don't think changing the title, location and character names would be enough – that's something we might choose to do to make a story more suitable for a different market but, in my opinion, that would still be the same story.
I do think a complete rewrite might be possible. If the viewpoint character was changed for example, the events might be broadly similar, but those would impact on the character differently and therefore might create a very different story.
What do you think? Can you rewrite a story and submit it as something new? And if so, how far do you have to go?
(Just to be clear, we're only talking about rewriting our own work, not that of anyone else.)
Womag news
The People's Friend are 'looking for shorter stories, 1000 words and 1200 words. All genres and from summer onwards!'
Free entry competition news
Thanks to Ruth for sharing the link to the latest On The Premises competition. They want short stories of between 1,000 and 5,000 words. The prompt is 'somewhere else*' and the prize $250.
And further thanks to Ruth for the link to the latest Irish Country Magazine short story competition. They want between 500 and 1,200 words, the theme is motherhood and the prize €200.
*Which is my excuse for using photos of places I've visited in this post.
My news
The third book in my cosy crime series is now available to pre order.
My recent radio interview was fun! If you missed it and would like to listen, you can do that here.
Writing challenge
If anyone has questions or suggestions they feel might make an interesting subject for discussion on the blog, feel free to let me know. I can either raise them anonymously, or you could create a guest post if you prefer.
2 comments:
That’s an interesting idea Patsy, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable trying to alter one of my published stories and send elsewhere. Could maybe set it in a different era and make a lot of changes, but I’d rather spend my time working on a completely new story and feel confident that I was meeting the submission rules.
Glad your radio interview went well - hope to listen to it later today.
And thanks to Ruth and Sarah for the links and info.
Thank you for the competitions, Patsy. I think you've got a typo on the On The Premises though, they accept stories up to 5,000 words.
On the matter of changing stories I do use the same ideas sometimes but as you suggest I make a lot of changes so I don't think they would be recognisable really. On the whole I prefer to start with a fresh idea completely though.
Alyson
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