What Magazines Taught Me (About Writing)
I worked in women’s magazines for over twenty years. Some of my old skills have gone the way of many magazines themselves, but I’ve found that other lessons learnt are proving useful when it comes to trying my hand at commercial fiction..
Embrace the edit. When I began writing long-form at my second magazine job, every submitted article was sent back to me practically covered in red strike-throughs, exclamation marks and requested amendments. I made it my personal mission to have a first draft accepted without a single red-ink change. It took two years, and I still remember the high of that moment. When you write for a magazine, you write for that magazine’s voice, so you might not be honing your own authorial voice, but you do learn the importance of drafting. And re-drafting. Again and again.
Resilience. We would have regular features meetings where ideas would be met with either a ‘Love!’ or a ‘Hate!’ – usually the latter. (Magazine people can be dramatic types!) I learnt to wrap up my ego before each meeting, but came to quite enjoy this part of the process, because it’s a challenge to do better. Even now, if a track-change tells me something isn’t right (although book people are usually much more polite about it!), I just chuckle and attempt another version.
Know your market. At one magazine I worked at, our average reader was named Pam. We knew all about her – her job, her house, her dreams … During our ideas meetings, we would often ask, ‘WWPT?’ And if we decided that Pam would think a certain idea interesting, in it would go to the next issue. Pam helped us keep focussed on our readers, thinking outwards rather than lolling about in our own heads and bubble of a world. I do think, as an author, that you should ultimately write the book you’d love to read yourself, but I also believe it helps to visualise your reader … whether you give her a name or not.
Think of the hook. In each features meeting, our editor would ask for ideas to be pitched along with potential coverlines. If we could sell the story in a few snappy words, and in a way that made everyone’s eyes sparkle a little, it usually got a green tick. Same goes, I think, for capturing a publisher’s interest. Is your story ‘hooky?’ Try pitching it to a few friends, and see if their eyes sparkle too.
Think of the look. At heart, of course, books are about the words, the story. But working in magazines teaches you that publishing is a package. As a magazine writer or editor, you often work to some degree with the photo editor, a fashion editor and the art department on the aesthetic side of things. You see how certain fonts can change the mood, how white space can be just as important as black ink, how particular cover elements make for sales magic … As an author, you only have so much say in how your book will look, but it still helps, I think, to reflect on how you might like it to look. At the very least, this gets you thinking about your genre and market trends, and shows publishers you can be commercially minded.
Make your words count. Magazines taught me the importance of delivering information in a limited space. As an aspiring author I thought that, after having mostly written 1500-word articles, coming up with tens of thousands of them would prove too much of a stretch for me. But it was actually quite liberating – like being freed from a box! That said, I still appreciate the need for quality over quantity. Especially now, in a world where there’s too much information. You’d think this would mean we don’t need more words. But when there is so much slop out there, we need beautiful, thoughtful, helpful and considered words more than ever.
