Tighten your writing with active voice

Tighten your writing with active voice

‘Write with an active voice’ is advice that is often doled out, but what does it mean? Even if you know this already, brushing up on the basics is never a bad thing.

Most verbs, or at least those that are related to something or someone (known as transitive verbs), have both an active and passive form. Both of these are correct ways of using the verb, but it's definitely beneficial to know the difference between the two and why active is almost always better...

Simultaneous submissions: An editor’s perspective

Simultaneous submissions: An editor’s perspective

This week’s article is going to come with a mainly editorial, rather than writer’s, hat on. It’s important to know that we expect some short stories to be submitted to other publications as well as to Firewords. We don’t think it’s right for a journal to demand any kind of exclusivity before they have even read a piece, which is why we accept simultaneous submissions. A writer wants to utilise their time effectively and capitalise on their chances of success, so if an editor is too slow to read it and misses out, then too bad.

First off, what are simultaneous submissions? It means a writer is submitting the same piece of work to multiple publishers at the same time but is offering exclusive rights to the ‘winning’ publication, so when they receive an offer of acceptance then they must be willing to negate all other publishers’ offers...