CASH IN ON TABLOID REAL LIFE STORIES
Lured by the huge payouts offered by the tabloid magazines and newspapers, it is no wonder that many writers turn their attention to writing sensational true life stories. Present an editor with, My grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday by becoming a devil worshipping lesbian and he will practically smack you in the face with his cheque book!
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 usually journalists who know the industry inside out. They have excellent contacts and have a good command of payment rates so will know exactly what your story is worth.
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.
Your attempts to hold to the truth will largely go unheeded and it is very likely that you will also have to agree to photographs of yourself being spread all over the centre pages.
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.
To point you in the right direction, you will find the two main provisos are a listing of marketswhich pay for magazine articlesand a good understanding of how to submit and make appropriate queries. Many creative writing communities compile frequently updated databases of paying markets while you can get a free copy of Mags & Rags, an excellent, course on writing for magazines which will ground you in all the basics of selling articles to magazines.
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