So, you want to write for Vocal

So, you wish to write a story for Vocal, it is not a hard thing to do, there are so many stories that haven’t been told, that can be told, that need to be told. There are endless genres and subgenres it allows you to write it in the style you wish. Is it a children’s story? Write it. Is it a letter to your departed mother you want to place on her grave on a day you both share…Mother’s Day? I’ve done that. Or maybe you want to write some adult only story…you can do that too. Oh, how I personally know you can do that. The case is the possibilities are endless.

But the questions arise in how long the story can be, 600 words is the minimum, 5,000 words is usually the maximum, and the story needs to be well written and uncomplicated to read with as few errors as possible.

OK, so you wrote your story, and it falls within the word limit range. Let’s say you wrote a 3,000-word story, you can put it right up and it will appear, right? Here’s where some people seem to have a problem, they come in and put it right up, and it is rejected right away.

What you need to go along with the story are two other ingredients, a story caption, usually a 3 to 10-word comment. But it can be something cocky like “Doctor Who in the Star Trek Universe with dragons… enough said.” Whatever, as long as it fills in that blank. Informational “Part 1 of 13”

You’re still not ready to put it up, you need one more element, and doing this is almost as hard as writing the story. Because it’s not only finding something that corresponds to the story, but {Duh-duh-duh-duh}it must be of a certain size, 500 pixels wide or higher. Fortunately, the height doesn’t matter, although I try to make it all even, and you can usually edit the size of the original image, especially through your Word Document.

And as an extra step, I do suggest writing your story through the Word Document, as it will almost automatically correct those mistakes you may miss, and I also like to have the AI voice read it out to me to see how it sounds, but that extra step is just me.

OK, so you have the story. You have a corresponding picture. You have your caption, now you can put it all together and you can put it up, but wait--, what’s this? You have 101 choices of where you want to put it, and you have to race through your head to figure out where to put it. OK, easy fix, just select the series of drop-down boxes that best fit the description of your story.

Now, your story has been submitted, but it is yet to be published. Uh-ho. Keep in mind that the story has to be approved and has to go through a specific editor, and while I’ve been lucky enough to get a story published within an hour because I hit the right editor at the right time; typically, it takes 2 – 3 days for the right editor to shuffle through all of the submissions and get to yours.

Another hitch, on rare occasions they reject it, but it’s usually for a mistake that is an easy fix. OK, so you made your fix, it’s up and running and…millions of people are swarming to read your story, right? Not so fast my friend, you may only be lucky enough have one or two readers.

But don’t distress, this won’t be the only story you submit, in fact most of my early stories, I wish could make disappear. But as you write you find your style, and one day you’ll be lucky enough to find your story on a list of hand-picked features the editors put up, and if you are very lucky, you can find your story winning one of the contest prizes.

Also, it is not your only source of making money on here, the more stories/ articles/ poems you submit, the more chances you are to be seen. Another way to generate attention to your story, is to read and like other people’s stories all of a sudden, you’ll be noticed, and chances are if you read and like someone else’s story, then they'll most likely in turn read and like your story.