The Writer's Directory of Periodicals. The fourth printing of this Directory-which is constantly being revised and enlarged - began in THE WRITER for July, 1922. The information for it, showing the manuscript market and the manuscript requirements of the various publications listed, is gathered directly from the editors of the periodicals. Great pains are taken to make the information ac curate and the Directory complete. Before submitting manuscripts to any publication, it is advisable to secure a sample copy. (Continued from March WRITER.) Grocers' Magazine (M), 88 Broad street, Boston. $1.50; 15C. A trade magazine for grocers, using articles giving actual flans or methods used by retail grocers in reducing expenses or increasing trade. Sets no length limit, and buys photographs. Time of payment depends on matter used. Guide to Nature (M), Arcadia, South Beach, Conn. $1.50; 15C. Edward F. Bigelow. The organ of the Agassiz Association, printing, as a clearing house, information within the scope of the Association, of interest to members and friends. Not in the market for manuscripts. Gulf Ports Magazine (M), Gulf Ports Magazine Co., 630 Common street, New Orleans, La. $1.00; 10c. The authoritative shipping journal of the South. Prints complete monthly reports of the movements of ocean freight in the Gulf; timely articles on subjects relating to the ocean trade of the South, the Mississippi Valley, and the Middle West; and gives a service of information for shipping men and shippers. and does not en Harper's Bazar (M), International Magazine Com- A high-class general magazine, using short stories, serials, general articles, poetry, humorous verse, jokes, and, rarely, novelettes and plays. Sets length limits at from 4,000 to 7,000 words. Does not buy photographs. Pays on acceptance. Haversack (W), 810 Broadway, Nashville, Tenn. E. B. Chappell, Jr., editor. to seventeen years. A Sunday-school paper for boys of from ten Uses short stories, serials, verse, and general articles, poetry, humorous stories at jokes. Sets length limit for short 3,000 words, and for serials, at eight or nine Buys chapters of from 2,500 to 3,000 words each. photographs, and pays from one-half to one cent a word on acceptance. Health Builder (M). Doubleday, Page, & Co., Gar den City, N. Y. Publication discontinued April, 1923. Health Culture (M), 140 West 58th street, New York. $2.00; 200. Elmer Lee, M.D., editor. mature Uses articles by experienced and thinkers on the health questions of the day, No articles setting length limit at 2,000 words. favoring drugs or serums accepted. Does not buy photographs, and pays on publication. Hearst's International Magazine (M), International Magazine Co., 119 West 40th street., New York. Merged with the Cosmopolitan under the title International-Cosmopolitan, beginning with the March issue. Sansome street, San Francisco. Oscar E. Werner, editor. High School Life (M), 350 Mail matter returned by the postoffice. High School Life (M-10 Nos.), 58 East Washington street, Chicago, Ill. 50c; 10c. R. Bernstein, editor, Uses short stories, novelettes, serials, general anything articles, poetry, and humorous versethat will appeal to high school or junior college students. Sets length limit for short stories at 6,000 words; for serials and novelettes, from 4,000 to 5.000 words each installment. buy photographs, and pays on publication. Highway Magazine (M), 215 N. Michigan ave., Chicago. No subscription price. Charles B. Cory, editor. Published in the interests of good roads, irrigation, and drainage. Uses illustrated articles on highway construction and maintenance, setting length limit at 1,000 words; buys photographs of roads improved and unimproved; and pays from one-half cent to two cents a word. Uses no fiction. Hispanic-American Historical Review (Q), 1422 Irving st., Temporarily discontinued. Holland's Magazine (M), Texas Farm and Ranch Publishing Company, Dallas, Texas. $1.00 for two years; 10C. John W. Stayton, editor. A woman's home paper, using short stories, novelettes, serials, general articles, juvenile matter, poetry, and humorous verse, with culinary, household, and puzzle departments. Sets length limits for stories, at from 2,000 to 5,000 words; serials, from 40,000 to 75,000 words; general articles, 3,000 words; and departmental matter, from 800 to 1,500 words. Prefers fiction to be chiefly love stories, in which real human beings act under an unusual but possible combination of circumstances; with not much mystery, and no sex problem, but with "pep and punch." Pays on publication. ADDITIONS AND CHANGES. Uses articles on health topics, and an occa- Formerly published at Richmond, Virginia. Uses short stories, general articles, poetry, and one-act plays, but no serials, novelettes, humorous verse, or jokes. Fiction should be realistic, human, and true to life, and must have true literary significance. Does not buy photographs, and pays on acceptance. York. Your Car (M), Macfadden Publications, Inc., 1926 Uses articles on automobiles, short stories, and novelettes, but no poetry and no jokes. Sets length limit for short stories at from 4,000 to 5,000 words. Buys photographs, prefers romantic fiction connected with automobiles, and pays for manuscripts when scheduled for publication. AUTHORS' SERVICE MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOPLAYS, LECTURES, POETRY TYPED to meet editorial requirements. Fifty cents per thousand words including carbon copy and minor corrections. Poetry two cents per line. Special rates on books. GRACE K. MORRISON 91 East 14th St., Mention THE WRITER. TYPING Atlanta, Ga. Let us type your manuscripts; guaranteed work by professional typists. Write for terms. AUTHORS' TYPING SERVICE, 942 Oakland Avenue, Indiana, Pa. Does not Mention THE WRITER. The third printing of this Directory was begun in THE WRITER for March, 1917. Back numbers can be supplied. A set of the numbers from January, 1918, to date, giving the Directory complete, with additions and changes bringing everything up to date, and much other valuable matter, will be sent for five dollars; with a year's subscription added, for $6.50. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS. VOL. XXXVII. BOSTON, APRIL, 1925. ENTERED AT THE BOSTON POSTOFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER, CONTENTS: PAGE 61 63 PICTURES THAT EDITORS BUY. 63 Few writers realize the money there is to be made on the side by the aid of their cameras, both by the sale of single prints and by illustrating their feature stories. Every event of more than local interest offers some enterprising writer a chance at photographing persons and places connected with the event and turning these pictures into real money. Every human-interest story of wide appeal which local newspaper reporters uncover gives opportunity for photographing the chief persons in the drama and elaborating the story into a feature; but without an ever-ready camera with which to secure illustrations for such a story the writer may find difficulty in selling it, be it ever so skilfully written. The chief thing which the uninitiated writer wishes to know is just what classes of pictures No. 4. editors will buy. The answer to this question cannot be given in three words, but three words can tell a great deal - they want fea tures. A feature is an account of an interesting occurrence which is not news, yet which arises from the news. If the Brooklyn bridge should collapse, that would be news; but if some old crank had been dogging the mayor of New York for weeks with the alleged information that it had been revealed to him from occult sources that on a certain day, hour, and minute the bridge would collapse (and it did) that would be not only news but a feature, and fortunate would be the man with a camera who first got a picture of this crank and got to the newspapers with his story. news. If a cross-continent limited should be wrecked by a defective rail far out in the desert and twenty persons killed, that would be The great newsgathering agencies would get the story and every newspaper of any consequence in the United States and Canada would carry it; but if one of the readers of THE WRITER should happen to be a passenger on that train and should crawl out from under the debris and take one or more good, clear pictures of that wreck and its victims, he would have something which no. body else had and could syndicate those pictures far and wide at great profit to himself. Next in importance to the news feature is the human-interest story with illustrations. If a perfectly normal baby weighing only one pound should be born and should live, fortunate would be that writer who was on hand first with his camera to get a picture when the nurse took the wee thing out of the baby incubator to feed it with a medicine dropper. I have known a Hearst paper to run feature stories for days on the birth of an apparently normal 18-ounce baby in the locality. In that instance no picture of the baby was ever permitted. If a mare mule should drop a colt in your vicinity a thing commonly considered impossible that would be a human-interest feature. I had the good fortune to be but five miles away once when that particular thing happened, and I succeeded in getting a good picture of the colt taking refreshments. It goes without saying that I had no trouble in syndicating the picture to advantage. News syndicates buy many pictures, but in order to sell them one must have a striking photo of a thing of considerable news interest. If the reader had had a number of pictures of Japanese cities, people, architecture, harbors, and so on, when the first flash of news came that a great earthquake had devastated that country he would have had very nearly monopoly on a thing very much desired at that time and could have sold the pictures readily to almost any news agency of national scope. a Magazines of all types constitute a ready market for pictures of interest to their several classes of readers. Magazines for the general reader are the largest class, and they buy photos along with manuscripts to illustrate stories. Sometimes they buy exceptionally good photos to use for magazine covers. Such pictures must be quite artistic, or at least striking. Farm magazines buy many pictures, either with articles or without. Photos of novel devices in the way of water systems, labor-saving devices, new agricultural inventions of real consequence, noted farmers, farm assemblies in session, and anything that has more than ordinary interest to a farmer or a farmer's wife may readily be sold to them. Almost any trade journal will buy pictures of things of special interest to its readers. An exceptionally attractive window display, an ingenious advertising device, or men who have made marked business successes can be photographed and sold to publications of this class. With such pictures there must at least be a few words of explanation, and preferably a. brief entertaining story. Prices paid for pictures range from fifty cents to $5.00 and sometimes more. The contributor is not expected to set a price except on those rare occasions where he has absolute or practical monopoly on a picture of great value. The quicker a picture dealing with a news feature reaches an editor the more likely he is to buy it. Newspapers want their pictures while the news is hot. Advance pictures of prominent men who are expected to die, or to make notable addresses, or to do anything of peculiar concern to the public may be sold to newspapers in the localities affected, if such papers do not already have them. Pictures of freaks may often be sold to newspapers, but not so readily to magazines. A concrete illustration will serve to show how one set of pictures may be used in many ways, to the enrichment of the fortunate writer who happens to be on hand with a camera. Suppose two trains, one of which is loaded with a delegation of farmers en route to attend a convention, met in head-on collision, killing six and wounding thirty. The cause for the wreck, we will say, was the failure of a block-signal system to work. One train, however, escaped without great damage, because the engineer saw and acted in time to bring it to a stop and jump before the collision. The only car left intact on the other train was a steel coach. Here are some of the photographic possibilities in that event. Several copies of pictures concerning the wreck could be sold to newspapers in all nearby cities. Possibility No. 2 is to sell a human-interest story about the wreck, built chiefly about the incident of a baby which was left alone by the death of all other members of the family on the train. Possibility No. 3 would be to sell a story to some important farm magazine detailing how a number of important agricultural leaders were killed and others injured and what effect this might be expected to have on the outcome of certain agricultural contests just then raging. Possibility No. 4 would be to market with some railway brotherhood magazine a lauda tory story, accompanied by a picture, of the engineer who brought his train to a stop and thus saved many lives. Possibility No. 5 would be to get a detailed picture of the block signal which did not work and sell to a technical magazine an illustrated story on defects of such systems and improvements suggested by men you have interviewed. Possibility No. 6 would be to sell a story to a manufacturer's magazine built chiefly around the one steel coach which did not smash. an Next to timeliness there is nothing editor prizes more in a picture than clearness. Clearness is made up of two things, detail and contrast. Detail is secured by exact focusing and the use of the smallest camera aperture that time and light conditions will permit. Contrast is secured by a slight undertiming of the negative and the printing of the pictures on hard-surface paper, followed by giving to the print a high, glossy finish. A mistake which nearly all amateur photographers make is getting too much in the picture. An editor wants only the chief character or characters in the picture and no others. Certainly he does not care for any of the surrounding landscape. If the picture is that of but one individual, all an editor cares for is his head and shoulders, unless there is special reason to the contrary. If the scene is such as to be somewhat artistic, take care to put into the picture just those things which will give it artistic balance. This does not mean that the scene is to be divided as squarely in the middle as if done by a compass far from it. To do that would make it look mechanical. Balance is obtained by including within the confines of the picture such natural masses of vegetation or other conspicuous objects as are necessary roughly to offset similar masses in opposing parts of the picture. Never let a picture trail off on one edge, if it is intended to be artistic. To do so gives one the impression that he has been left dangling in the air. The foregoing are but so many leads tips, the newspaperman calls them which must be followed up if one is to cash in on his camera. The possibilities inherent in important events. have merely been sketched. Each writer must use his own judgment as to how to act when a big event occurs near him. Experience will show him what particular magazines to shoot his pictures and features in to, in order to sell them most readily. Austin E. Burges. DALLAS, Texas. TALKS ON PRACTICAL AUTHORSHIP. Exposition. V. Action - Plot Climax Thus far we have learned that motion and emotion are closely allied, that man's desires are the stuff of which literature is made, and that the story interest depends on the obstacles due to thwarted desires or due to desires having unexpected consequences. We have discovered that in writing it is necessary to use our imagination, picturing what is n't actually there and omitting things that are not appropriate for our purpose. We have learned that the imagination taps our sub-conscious memory and makes new combinations of old things. It was stated that the imaginative faculty flowers most fully perhaps in characterization, which is a sort of impersonation or the expression of our multiple selves. In connection with characterization, conversation was mentioned, but nothing further need be said about conversation at the present time. Conversation is simply the way your characters talk. Each character must talk like a human being and also like the particular human being he is. This leaves for our consideration, action. Action is obviously what a given character does under the stimulus of desire. In my last talk I mentioned Sherlock Holmes and D'Artagnan as being held in the memory of thousands of readers because we sensed or felt their personalities, but should we have felt their personalities if they had never expressed themselves in objective acts? Conan Doyle Copyright, 1925, by Richard Bowland Kimball. |