Submission Guidelines for Syndicating your Articles on Rules of Engagement
What we’re looking for is great writing. All we ask is that your piece is, on some level, about relationships.
Before you send us your work, though, please read the guidelines below.
General.
1) How to send us your work. If you are already a writer with a Medium publication, then you know how this works: once you have a draft or story that you’d like for us to publish, click on the three little dots beside the Publish icon in the right-hand corner of your Draft page. Select Rules of Engagement, and send it our way.
If you’re a new writer and we’re open for new writer applications, send a link to your draft (along with an introduction, your Medium username, and links to previously published works) to Jocelyn at Happy Partners Project — happypartnersproject@gmail.com.
NOTE: If you’ve been curated or published in Medium pubs, please make mention of that in your email.
NOTE pt. 2: We strongly encourage writers to submit Medium member-only (gated paywall) pieces. This ensures that you get paid for your writing and you reach more readers via Medium topics.
NOTE pt. 3: This is a reminder: you’ll only hear back from us if we’re interested in adding you as a writer and/or publishing your piece.
2) Send us focused, interesting work that makes a point. If any kind of submission is rambling, unfocused, or seems more like a journal entry than an actual story, it’s not likely to meet this bar.
Generally, we’re looking for well-developed stories with solid structure and a clear point or resolution. Consider what Medium Staff says about this:
In short, curators are looking for thoughtful, clearly written pieces that tell a compelling story, convey an interesting idea, or share a smart point of view. These can take many forms …We explicitly do not want to distribute misinformation, stories with clickbait headlines, stories that are primarily marketing a product or service, stories that use photos that the author doesn’t have the rights to use, or stories with excessive typos and errors.
This about sums up how we feel.
3) Edit and revise thoroughly before sending us your draft. This should be semi-obvious, but if you send us what is obviously a first or second draft — meaning there are typos, grammatical mistakes, or a general lack of structure or purpose — we will send it back.
Please note: we may revise the title or change the feature image to better fit our editorial guidelines.
4). Avoid using multiple images, videos, gifs and excessive stylized text. Often this has the unintended effect of distracting readers from the most important thing: the substance of the writing itself. Per feedback we’ve gotten from Medium, as well as lessons learned from publishing/editing all around the web, we think that cleaner pieces look more professional, read cleaner, and are thus generally more effective.
5) The purpose of your piece cannot be to spread hate, disparage, elicit outrage or otherwise cause harm. We are not in the business of censoring art, but we won’t provide a platform for writers whose work is clearly malicious or intent on drawing negative attention.
6) We only accept unpublished drafts. Remember that Medium uses the publication date on your story to determine its visibility, so fresh, new drafts will get more face time on the homepage than older stories.
7) Use appropriate tags that designate the genre and content. This helps readers find your story, and helps us publish it in the correct tab.
8) Have a colorful, beautiful featured image either above or below the headline, with the source credited underneath the image. You can find free images on Pixabay, Unsplash, and numerous other sites. If it’s your own photo or graphic, please indicate that.
If you don’t include attribution, we won’t publish the piece. Artists should always be credited for their work — as writers, this is a point we all understand well.
9) No selling. The purpose of your piece cannot be to sell something. It must be interesting in and of itself. We will not accept stories that serve no purpose other than to advertise a third-party product.
As for CTAs at the bottom of a given piece, we advise against it. You are welcome to include a link to your website, new book, or email list in your profile bio. Why your profile bio? Medium asks that authors don’t include CTAs at the bottom of the articles themselves. If you absolutely must include a CTA at the bottom of your post, we ask that you keep it to one sentence. And probably also no clap requests, if you don’t mind.
Poetry-Specific Guidelines
We are now publishing poetry once a week for our feature
Poetry Sunday. When you submit your poem, tag it “Poetry Sunday.” We will only accept drafts and only one poem per writer.
To submit in time for the Sunday showcase, get your poems in by Friday at 8:00 AM PST. Otherwise, we’ll hold your poem for the following week.
We will publish the very best of the submissions.
1) Content. Modern poetry is a wide open space, but it maintains its poetic roots in rhythm, rhyme, playful, inventive, and concentrated language, and evocative imagery. Well-constructed poetry reveals emotional depth. It shows us something without telling us directly. It uses imagery well without becoming cliche, melodramatic, or going too far. Choose the right words, say more with less. Be magical. Be inventive. Write from your heart. Write from your soul.
2) Form or Free Verse. Poetry can be in form or free verse. Use modern language. DON’T RHYME MERELY FOR THE SAKE OF RHYMING. Concentrate more on rhythm and being inventive and avoiding poetic cliches. Please do not include narrative explanations, or descriptions of your creative process. Note: We are no longer accepting Haiku or very short poetry at this time.
4) Formatting. Content featured here is read on phones, tablets, and computers; for that reason, we have some preferences. Regular or italic type is preferred.
Single-spaced lines are preferred. To get a single space instead of a double space, hold the shift key at the same time as you hit the enter key (shift + enter = single space) This requires less scrolling and is usually the clearest and easiest to read.
