My husband kept his under aged mistress prisoner in our coal cellar! Or Devil worshipping grandmother turns lesbian at 80! Pretty shocking hey? Well it is supposed to be! These stories attract huge payouts from tabloid magazines and newspapers so it is no wonder a lot of writers have turned their attention to this area of magazine writing.
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 industry professionals with good contacts. For a percentage of the fee, they will negotiate the best price for the story on your behalf, a little like a book publishing agent, but there the similarity ends because unlike the world of book publishing, it is highly unlikely that you will be allowed to write your story!
This is not a problem if you are only interested in the cash and have no real writing aspirations, but if you are seriously interested in writing for magazines, you will want to do your own writing and build a portfolio of creditable clips.
For this reason you will be well advised to leave this area of magazine writing alone. A further warning should be given at this point. Should you decide to pursue this avenue, be prepared to have your story substantially altered even to the point where much of it is down right lies!
The good news is, you can earn a reasonably good living writing for magazines without having to paddle in these somewhat murky waters!
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.
Neither is it hard to begin making sales. The reason why most new writers struggle is they simply do not understand the business side of writing and how to provide the types of articles that will sell magazines.
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.
Get started by joining a good creative writing community. These very often carry market listings which pay for magazine articlesand are also a pillar of support for the emerging writer. You should also sign up for Mags & Rags, a superb ecourse on writing for magazines.This is currently free and will give you a good grounding in all aspects of magazine writing.