I have been lucky enough to land a story at Factor Four Magazine (Issue 52, November of 2025). Factor Four has a decent acceptance rate and pays pro rates. The only quirk I experienced was that I didn’t get a notification of when the story was to go live. Once I received payment, I just keep checking back every couple days to see if the story was on their site. This is not completely uncommon in short fiction markets, so I wanted to mention it for any budding writers out there who haven’t experienced that yet.
Please check out my story, We don’t like to use that term, when you have a chance. It is a quick 700 word read and, I think, a fun one.
It’s important to think about what a reader is really looking for when they search for a book or look for the next short story to read. Their need is the demand that we are looking to supply. If we can align with that in what we write, our stories will always find a home.
Here are a few things I came up with. See if you agree:
1. Surprise: The Unexpected and the Inevitable
David Mamet, the legendary playwright, once said that a great story is “unexpected and inevitable.” That seeming contradiction captures something essential about storytelling. We want to be surprised but in a way that makes perfect sense once it happens. Not random or gimmicky but with a twist that feels like the only possible outcome.
Think of the best stories you’ve read or watched. There’s a moment when the truth snaps into place like a puzzle piece. You didn’t see it coming but you should have. That’s the sweet spot. The Sixth Sense is one that comes to mind for me that did that very well.
Readers crave that moment, not just for the thrill, but because it affirms meaning. Surprise, when done right, is more than a twist. It’s a revelation.
2. Exploration: The Deep Human Need to Discover
We are all explorers. We read to venture into the unfamiliar: new worlds, new minds, new truths about ourselves. That’s why genres like sci-fi and fantasy endure but also why, to Matt Walter’s point in a previous post, that story is an important in nonfiction as well. All generas and types are vehicles for exploration.
3. It Has to Be Interesting
Years ago, a blogger said something that stuck with me: “The only rule to writing is that it has to be interesting.” That has stayed with me and always rung true through the years.
You can break every convention, tense, point of view, structure, grammar, and still succeed, if your writing is interesting. But “interesting” doesn’t just mean flashy or weird. It means engaging and alive. It means giving the reader something to care about and to feel.
Always remember the readers don’t owe us their time; we have to earn it, word by word.
If we can give a reader surprise, exploration and something that is interesting, we will earn that time and it will also be something editors will want to publish.
Let me know in the comments below what you think readers want.
You’ve written a story. You’ve poured your heart into it. You’ve rewritten sentences, perfected metaphors, and shaped characters you care deeply about. You’re sure it’s good, hell, maybe it’s even great. Yeah, the big names will want this one. It’s probably worthy of The Atlantic or the New Yorker. This could even be the one that finally nails the Pushcart Prize.
Then the wind goes out of your sails when the first person to read your masterpiece points out how you spelled the name of your main character differently in two places in the opening paragraph. How could you have missed that? You must have read through the story a hundred times with all the rewrites. It’s embarrassing and aggravating.
And it’s one of the most fundamental truths in writing: it’s incredibly hard for us to see the flaws in our own work. Here’s why:
We’re Too Close to the Story
Writers live inside the world they’ve created. We know every motivation, backstory, and all the subplots. The backstory that isn’t on the page lives in our heads “rent free” as the kids say. We mentally fill in all of the things we know about the story as we read through it. Your brain fills in the gaps, smoothing over inconsistencies and connecting dots that were never actually drawn and not clear to other readers.
We’re Emotionally Invested
We writers form emotional bonds with our characters and often fall in love with select scenes and phrases. This emotional attachment can make us blind to, or cause us to push back against, needed changes. Cutting scenes and characters, also known as “Killing our darlings” as the saying goes, feels like a loss to us even though it usually makes a story stronger.
Sometimes we don’t really know the Story We’re Telling
We often begin writing with an idea but no clear theme. Or we have a theme but it gets lost in the logistics of plot development. The result is a story that meanders or contradicts itself. I also tend to see a lot of what I call “lopsided stories” where way too many words are spent on things that do not advance the plot or develop the character.
Hard Work Doesn’t Make It Good
We sometimes confuse “I worked hard on this” with “This is the best it can be.” But hard work doesn’t guarantee a polished end result. Rewriting, re-envisioning, and sometimes throwing everything out and rethinking it from the ground up, often lead to better storytelling.
Our Brains Want to Be Done
Writing is hard. Getting through that first draft is a triumph. So when we type “The End,” part of our brain wants it to be done. The desire to move on and submit makes us less critical of our work. We stop interrogating where the story doesn’t work.
So What Can You Do?
Time: Step away from your draft. A few weeks or even months can give you enough distance to see it with fresh eyes. Sometimes when I go through my “false starts” that I haven’t touched in years, I am surprised at what I see. It often feels like someone else wrote the words I am seeing. (and I mean that in both in a good and bad way). This is the ideal kind of distance you want from your work, where you have forgotten about the story entirely and are coming at it completely fresh. Unfortunately that isn’t always practical.
Read your work out loud: A more immediate solution is reading your story out loud. In Steve Martin’s Masterclass he talked about how he reads his work to his cat. I will even record myself reading a story so I can play it back later and really listen. Hearing your story often reveals awkward pacing, unclear dialogue, or tonal shifts you might miss otherwise.
Re-outline: After the first draft, take the time to outline what you actually wrote. It often differs from your plan and can reveal plot holes. One trick I have learned, especially if if I have “pantsered” a story is to force chapter breaks and title those breaks in the story as though they were chapter headings. I do this even though I am mainly writing short stories, which don’t usually have chapter titles. It really helps me to see the plot progression and where I have sections that repeat information previously covered. It also really helps me to see where I can cut.
Get feedback from others: Other people have a fresh set of eyes and the advantage of knowing nothing about the story. No preconceived notions, no biases (other than these people are likely your friends so they might be softer on you than you need). Issues we tend to read past will stand out to them like a neon sign.
Recognizing that we have literary blind spots is the first step toward better writing. Every great story was once a messy draft, written by someone who couldn’t see the flaws, until they eventually found a way to work through them, often by giving a story time and/or getting feedback from others.
We often talk about the craft of writing as if the words on the page are the story. But that’s not quite true.
What you write isn’t the story, it’s the framework used to trigger an imaginative experience inside the reader’s mind. The real story happens inside the reader’s head.
Every reader brings their own experiences, biases, memories, and emotional context to your work. When two different people read the same story, they don’t actually experience the same story. One reader might see a character’s silence as deep introspection, another might read it as passive aggression. A setting described as “dusty and quiet” might evoke peaceful nostalgia for one reader and tension or dread for another.
It’s one of the challenges of storytelling. You have to structure what you write so that your readers fill in the blanks with their own intelligence and intuition in the way that provides the experience and emotion you intend.
This is where reading is very different from going to see a movie. When watching a movie, all of the images and sounds are pushed to us, predefined with little room for our own creative interpretation. Because of this, the story inside the head of every member of the audience will be very similar.
When reading, a story only happens when a reader engages with your words and transforms them into sights, sounds, feelings, and meaning.
I subscribe to the theory that most of what we are trying to do when we tell a story is get people to feel. Emotion is what makes people care about what happens to the characters in the story and that keeps the pages turning.
I also like to think of it in terms of writing to create an experience.
Be intentional, but not controlling. You can guide the experience, but you shouldn’t dictate every detail. The reader is your collaborator.
Embrace slight ambiguity. Sometimes, the most powerful moments are the ones left just a little open-ended, allowing the reader to land on their own truth. Be careful here, clarity is still king, don’t omit too much and leave the reader confused. Confusion makes the reader put down the story and walk away.
Revise with the reader’s interpretation in mind. Ask yourself: Will this paragraph spark the right images and emotions? Or am I over-explaining and closing down possibilities for the reader to work with my words to make the story their own?
A story only lives when someone interprets in within the context of themselves.
You will write a lot of words that never, ever get read.
I often wonder how much content writers like Stephen King have that will never see the light of day. We tend to measure how prolific a writer is by what makes it to print, but how many drafts and failed attempts are sitting back there in his creepy Victorian home that will never make it to print? I can only imagine it is double or three times what he has had published, probably even a lot more.
Chances are the vast majority of your words will go unread by anyone other than yourself. Even if you do manage to get published, the number of eyeballs parsing your prose is likely far fewer than you think.
I recall hearing the majority of traditionally published books sell between 200 and 2,000 copies over their entire lifetime and self-published books often fare even worse, with many selling fewer than 100 copies total.
Those numbers might make you want to stop. Why write if no one is going to read it? Why struggle with plot, voice, pacing, or character arcs when no one will see it?
We say we write for others, but we actually write for ourselves.
It’s like working out. The final physique might be for the world. But the daily discipline of exercise is ours alone. The early mornings, the sore muscles, the days when you show up just to keep the streak alive, few see that (nor do we want them to) yet it is essential.
Writing is the same. Every word you write teaches you something. Every awkward paragraph, every overwrought metaphor, every false start are all part of the mental muscle-building.
Those words we throw out are the reps needed to get to the words we keep.
I’m not an expert on how to get there. Honestly, I’m probably a better example of what not to do. This very Blog is a great example. As of this writing, there is not a lot of daily traffic. I can blame it on the SEO algorithm, but it’s probably comes down to me not be writing what people want to read.
But still, I write. Ignoring the stats and pushing through because, while I hope people find value in what I have to say, the truth is these words are mostly for me.
If you’re a writer who feels unseen, just know that you’re not alone. Even if your words don’t find a large audience, they still matter. Words that are thrown away are essential. They are needed to get to the words we keep; the ones that end up being foundational elements for the strange and beautiful craft of turning thoughts into language and language into story.
So keep writing the words that don’t get read until you get to the ones that do.
“Andy knew this was his last chance to make things right with Cindy.”
With just one sentence, we’re already leaning in. The stakes are clear; there’s a relationship on the line. We don’t know the details yet, but we already care.
This is the power of starting with stakes.
When readers pick up a story, they’re subconsciously asking, “Why should I care?”
That doesn’t mean you need a car chase on page one. It means the story must immediately communicate that something is at risk, and that it matters deeply to someone. Stakes create tension.
Early Conflict = Early Investment
Going back to our opening line:
“Andy knew this was his last chance to make things right with Cindy.”
From this, we immediately understand:
There’s a broken relationship.
There’s urgency: a last chance.
There’s emotional weight: he wants to “make things right.”
We don’t know what Andy did and we don’t know if Cindy will forgive him, but we already want to see what happens.
The Mistake to Avoid
Too many stories start with background instead of conflict. A little background is fine. It helps to orient us as to what is going on and color in tone and setting. But often times I see stories where the author goes on for pages describing the setting or a scene before for we get to anything that matters to the character. The quicker you can get to the core conflict or stakes, the better.
Try This Exercise
Take the first paragraph of any story you are currently working on. Ask yourself:
What’s at risk here?
Does the character know it?
Will the reader care?
If the answer to any of those is “not yet,” consider revising to make sure these questions are answered.
Stakes are a promise to the reader
Keep in mind that starting with stakes is a promise to the reader. When we mention Andy’s situation in the opening line in the way we did, we are committing to our reader that by the end of the story there will be answers as to how Andy got into that situation and what the outcome will be for him.
Stakes make us care what happens and that keeps us reading.
When I think about the vast landscape of what I haven’t written yet it feels daunting. There are so many authors out there writing way more than me. I can picture them writing away at this very moment outpacing me word by word.
It takes a lot of stories and a lot of submitting for authors to gain even a small presence. Having had some success, I also know that you have to write a lot of bad stories before you finally unearth the good ones.
It’s a lot like the feeling I get when I have a big TODO list. it’d daunting, I just know I will never get through it all.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
That mindset has helped me, no only with my TODO lists, but with writing as well. There is a power to realizing that I really only need to focus on the very next story. After that, I really only need to focus on submitting it. After that, move onto the next one. We eat the cow one hamburger at a time, as the saying goes.
If you are like me and often feel buried under the weight of what you haven’t written, step back from the overwhelming wide view and narrow it down.
It’s not: look at all I have to do!
But rather
What’s next?
Let me know in the comments below what’s next for you.
If you’re a writer of fiction with limited publishing success, consider writing nonfiction.
Why would you want to do that? Because it will make you a better writer.
The elements that make good fiction are the same for nonfiction. You need to tell a story. If you think about it, most stories are nonfiction. “Did you hear about what happened to Bill and Susie?”
You also have a better chance of getting published and getting paid.
There is a continual demand for nonfiction and there is money involved, primarily due to advertising revenue. If a magazine publishes monthly, with the ads already sold, when the first of the month rolls around you can be damn sure they will be putting out a magazine. And what do they place around and among all the ads? Nonfiction writing! Original words! Your story!
If you start getting published and receive positive feedback, it will inspire you to continue your writing journey. Writing is difficult and lonely. Making a connection with readers makes it less difficult and lonely.
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Hello Breaking Into The Craft readers. I’m Matthew Walter, friends since first grade with your BITC creator, James Miller. Besides our friendship, we support each other’s writing and discuss the craft.
When James told me his idea for a new direction for BITC, I said, “Go for it! When you look at the supply and demand of fiction, there has to be tons of good stories that never see the light of day.” I’m glad to see his weekly posts and read some good fiction.
I love reading fiction and writing fiction. However, I’m primarily a writer of nonfiction. I respect you writers of fiction, because writing fiction is a struggle for me. But if your goal is to get published, try writing some targeted nonfiction.
For ideas, turn to your work and interests. If you’ve spent any time in a workplace, I’m sure you’ve been struck with an idea about how to make something better. See if there is a trade magazine that would publish your ideas.
If you have a hobby, chances are there is a magazine or website looking for content. I’m an avid disc golfer and I published a humorous piece on some of the disc golf forums. I received overwhelmingly positive responses, with a few negative (You have to take the good with the bad.)
Your local newspaper would almost certainly accept good writing on pertinent topics. Look for a question no one is answering. Do your research and become a reporter. Even Stephen King started out writing for his school newspaper.
Get writing and see what you can accomplish. You may surprise yourself.
I’ve been writing and selling my nonfiction writing for the past fifteen years. I started my blog, Curiousfarmer, in 2009. I had never written much before that. I liked the challenge of crafting an interesting story, and it was a way of capturing my thoughts and questions as I farmed.
Without ever proclaiming myself an expert, my blog quietly proclaimed it for me. It wasn’t long before an editor at Successful Farmingfound me and asked if I would contribute. I said sure. I was honored, as my family has been reading that magazine forever.
I wrote and sold three articles to Successful Farming. They pay well. When an editor suggests changes, I always have the revision back to them within 24 hours. They pay enough; I’m not about to argue my work is too precious to edit.
Successful Farming is in the commodity agriculture business and I’m a regenerative farmer, so ultimately we weren’t a good fit. If I could go back in time, with the writing experience I have now, I may try to pitch different ideas to work with them. But I let it go at the time.
I kept posting to my blog. I received some positive feedback, but was mostly internally driven, which is a great character trait for a writer. I had no real writing goals, but I just kept posting, building my body of work.
I partnered with another couple to market our products in Madison, Wisconsin under the brand name Jordandal Farms. When their marriage ended, the partnership dissolved and I didn’t want to pay what they wanted for their share of our brand name.
Voila! I started over as Curiousfarmer, with an online presence dating back nearly ten years and hundreds of posts. When potential customers wanted to check us out, I could direct them to Curiousfarmer.com. This thing I had been doing for no compensation other than the joy of doing it, was now valuable to me.
A couple years later, Covid hit, and when our farmer’s market was shut down, I was forced to pivot again. I had been assembling a small email list. I sent an email to all our customers asking if they would like to meet in Madison for a contactless meat drop off. Many of them wanted to!
If you remember the early months of Covid, there was a scarcity mindset but my business boomed. I added to customers to my email list weekly.
I settled on an every other week delivery schedule. On the Saturday I wasn’t delivering, I sent an email to my customers reminding them I was coming to Madison next week and to place their order if they wanted anything. I quickly got bored with the typical email, listing what we had in stock, what was good, etc. I was basically saying, “buy my bratwurst.”
I realized that besides good meat, most of my customers wanted a connection with a farmer, so I reasoned a short story about the farm might be appreciated. It was. I received even more positive feedback about my writing and felt the challenge to come up with a new story every other week. It propelled my writing to another level.
I started to really enjoy writing and the process of discovery. Not always, but sometimes, it felt like I was uncovering hidden treasure. I got busy after our outdoor farmer’s market opened back up when Covid tailed off. I decided to save my stories for the winter months when I would return to email marketing.
I’m not sure why, but I got the notion to try to sell some articles again. I was subscribing to two regenerative ag magazines, Acres USA and Stockman Grass Farmer. I submitted an article to Acres USA and was rejected. I submitted to Stockman Grass Farmer and was accepted.
I decided to concentrate my efforts on Stockman Grass Farmer as that seemed to be a better fit for my expertise. I asked the editors what they were after and then tried to shape my articles to their specs.
Its working. In the last few years I’ve published ten articles in Stockman Grass Farmer. This year is shaping up to be my best year yet, with four articles published already and four months to go.
I worked really hard last winter in my slower farming time and submitted eleven articles. Stockman Grass Farmer works a bit differently; they don’t tell you if they accepted your article, they either publish it or they don’t. The first time I know an article is accepted is when an issue comes out and I find one of mine in there. I receive a check shortly after. They usually don’t edit my articles, but when they do, they just do it themselves, sometimes in ways I don’t like, but they’re paying, so I never complain.
This is my experience with writing and selling nonfiction. Unless I become way more prolific, I’ll continue to focus on submitting to Stockman Grass Farmer as we seem to be a good fit.
In the meantime, to challenge myself, I’m working on fiction. I feel like I have a head start finding my voice because of all the nonfiction stories I’ve written. My wife sees the checks come in, so she never rolls her eyes when I say, “I’m working on my writing.”
Nonfiction has catapulted me into writing. It may do the same for you. Give it a try.
I thought I would take a moment to comment on the use of AI to write fiction. My position on it is that if you are using AI to write fiction, you are cheating yourself.
You also miss out on the opportunity to learn. Like many things, writing is about the journey rather than the destination. *
There is an in-the-moment cognitive side to writing, but there is also a muscle-memory subconscious side to it as well. As any writer can attest, when you are in the groove, or flow state it is sometimes called, you get to a point of uncertainty as to where the ideas are actually coming from. It can feel like there is place almost outside of yourself that you draw upon like a medium, allowing the words to funnel through you and onto paper. You get to the end of the tale and realize the story took on a life of its own; independent, and separate from your initial intended direction.
I do find AI to be a good educational tool when it comes to writing. For example, I noticed a lot of stories in Analog are in present tense. I don’t write in present tense very often (or very well), so I prompted ChatGPT with “Write a short fiction story in present tense” to see an example:
Title: The Elevator Stops at Floor Six
The elevator jerks to a halt.
I frown at the glowing button panel. No one pressed six. I’m alone, briefcase in hand, already late for the pitch meeting on twenty-one. The doors part with a reluctant sigh.
The hallway beyond is dark.
Not pitch-black, just… dim, like the building forgot to pay full attention here. The lights flicker weakly overhead, casting yellow puddles on the faded green carpet. It smells faintly of dust and something sharper—ozone, maybe. Like after a thunderstorm.
I shouldn’t step out. I don’t want to. But something tugs at me. Curiosity, or maybe the sense that I’ve been here before, in a dream I forgot to remember.
I cross the threshold.
The doors close behind me with a metallic whisper. I turn, startled, but there’s no button, no panel—just blank wall where the elevator once stood.
The hallway stretches in both directions. Silent. Still.
I pick a direction.
The silence isn’t empty. It hums. The way an old CRT TV would hum, just on the edge of hearing. And there’s something else—a soft sound, like paper rustling. I follow it.
At the end of the corridor is a door. Pale wood, unmarked, slightly ajar.
Inside is a room with no windows and a long table surrounded by mismatched chairs. A single incandescent bulb dangles from the ceiling. On the table: a stack of manila folders. Each one has a name written in marker on the front.
Mine is on top.
I don’t want to touch it, but I do. I open it.
Inside are photos—of me. Some are recent. Others are from years ago, moments I barely remember: my eighth birthday, the night I broke my arm in college, the exact second I decided not to call my father back.
I flip deeper.
There are transcripts. Conversations I’ve had, thoughts I haven’t spoken. One page reads: He steps into the hallway, knowing he shouldn’t.
My breath catches.
I look up.
There’s someone in the chair at the far end of the table. I didn’t see him come in. He’s wearing a suit that doesn’t fit quite right and has a face that feels like it’s borrowed—familiar, but wrong. He smiles gently.
“You’re early,” he says.
“For what?”
He opens a folder of his own.
“For your reassignment.”
I stare. “I don’t work here.”
“You didn’t,” he says. “But you came to floor six.”
He gestures around the room. The walls are pulsing slightly, like they’re breathing. The air smells like memory.
“This building is a little miswired,” he continues. “Sometimes people press twenty-one and end up here.”
“What is this place?”
“A sorting room,” he says simply. “Some floors are about destinations. This one’s about decisions.”
I back toward the door. It’s no longer there.
“You can go back,” he says. “But you won’t be the same. That’s the price of seeing this place.”
“What’s the other option?”
He taps my file. “Stay. Help sort.”
I look down at the folder still in my hands. My photo stares up, mid-blink. I can’t tell if it’s asking or warning.
Behind me, the hum grows louder. The lights flicker once, then steady.
I pull out the chair beside him and sit.
Ok, that’s not too shabby. Maybe not the best short fiction I’ve ever read, but it did what I asked and gave a me respectable short fiction story in present tense.
Will I ever be tempted to submit this and feel like I was in any way the one who “created” it, just because I came up with the promp? No. Absolutely not. That is crossing my moral boundary and firmly against the rules of most markets.
(And yes, I do see the irony of publishing it on this blog, even as an example.)
Do I think AI will get even better in the future? Yes, absolutely it will.
AI will be able to emulate other writers and may even come to have a voice of its own (which is a weird and unsettling thought for me) but my voice is unique as well, and it is really up to me to put in the time and effort to build my body of work so I can be heard.
And I also think there is something cathartic about expressing ideas in your own distinct voice.
So until AI pries the keyboard from my cold dead hands, I will continue to write. I do it for the journey, for my own mental health, and just in case someone out there might read it and think, “Hey, I like what this guy has to say.”
-James
* I fully acknowledge this must sound like a bit of double-talk coming from a place with a tag line that reads: “All about getting published,”
Wow, I can’t believe it has taken me this long to find Aeryn Rudel’s wonderful site Rejectomancy
I’m a guy who landed his first published piece by blogging about the hidden meaning in all the rejection letters I was getting so it amazes me I haven’t come across Aeryn’s site earlier.
You basically score points for rejection letters, acceptance letters and the situations around them — like getting two rejections in one day or whether or not the rejection was a personal rejection or a form letter.
The XP points correlate to different levels which correlate to “spells” (which appear to be still under construction) and to Resistance levels, which have fun names like “Baby Bunny” and “Adamantium.”
I love the way Aeryn has taken something like rejection letters, a thing that can be negative on a personal and emotional level, and gamified it into something fun and motivating. This tells me a lot about how he must handle adversity. I wish I had that kind of attitude!
Breaking Into The Craft 