Fun For the Whole Family

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

I'm reading the submission guidelines for a zine that wants 100-word stories. I sometimes write 100-word stories. The guidelines seem pretty reasonable, until I get to the part explaining that they want only "family friendly" stories, stories that you'd be comfortable reading out loud to a 12-year-old.

I'm not writing shocking stuff with a lot of violence and gore. I definitely don't include explicit sex scenes. Even so, I think of myself as writing for adults. Looking back over a list of recently published pieces, I'd say several of them fit the family-friendly definition, but others don't come close. When I want to tell a story, I tell that story, and I don't stop to ask who might be offended.

Could I just write something specifically for that zine? Maybe. My past attempts to write to some else's specifications have not been especially effective. My incliniation is to write something and then look for a suitable publisher. Some people go the other way. They pick a publisher and then write a suitable story. I knew a guy who had some success writing flash stories for a zine that provided photos as prompts. The problem was that most of the stories didn't make sense without the photo.

What I'd like to do is place the stories I've already written. Then maybe I can try conforming to someone else's prompt, theme, or keyword.