Fiction contest requirements, my fellow writers, are not to be overlooked. What about literary submission requirements when querying agents? No. Not those either. When I first started submitting my short stories to journals, back before I had a novel to submit to agents, when you could send them hard copies and then, later, via email, Submittable, and whatever other submission platforms the literary magazines and journals out there used to expedite submissions to their contests and general entries, I have to admit something that showed my ignorance of the process: not paying attention to the contest and literary submission requirements.

See, I thought they didn’t apply. Not to me, anyway. My stories were long. If the max word count was 3,000 words, I submitted 4,500. 8,000 (generous) word count max? I shot over 10,000. As someone who’s read for literary journals, those are the first I tossed. Why? Because 1, I wasn’t going to waste my time on someone who couldn’t follow the rules. And 2? The submissions screamed “amateur!” Sorry, not sorry. Always make sure to follow the 2026 fiction contest and literary submission requirements.

And here’s a truism: if you’re going to give yourself the best chance of success with your fiction this year when it comes to submitting it to different outlets, make sure you follow the fiction contest and literary submission requirements to the T. You’ll find these requirements (or submission guidelines) on the contest and entry pages, and if you’re logging into Submittable or Duosuma or Moksha or Subfolio or wherever, the submission requirements should be pretty prominently displayed. Same with submitting longer works to literary agents. Trust me, you’re not the exception. They’re looking for great writing, certainly. But they’re also looking for reasons to reject entries, and not following the rules is one way to do it before reading the first sentence. As readers, literary magazines and journals and agents receive hundreds, if not thousands, of entries. If they spent all day every day just reading every single entry, they’d not have time for anything else at work, and believe me, they have plenty to keep them occupied. Culling the rule breakers is almost a relief.

But I get it. We writers, we’re impatient. Until we’re not. When we first start out, we’re thrilled to get our work out into the world. To compete against other writers for the three or four or five spots literary journals and magazines have allotted for fiction. Sure, there are the Atlantics and the New Yorkers, the Ploughshares, Harpers, and more. Personally, I find them pretty vanilla, and a bit derivative. Unless they publish something from a George Saunders or someone, it feels like I’m reading a different story from the same writer. At least the Atlantic and New Yorker (don’t hate me, Deborah Treisman! Thomas Gebremedhin and Ann Hulbert, I know I’m being kind of a jerk!). The point is, you’re asking for a ticket to the big show. Pay the entry fee (literally and figuratively) that’s posted by the door. Otherwise they won’t let you in.

So here are some 2026 fiction contest and literary submission requirements you should follow to ensure you follow when submitting to lit mags and journals:

• Formatting violations

• Sending the wrong file type (don’t send a .pages file if they explicitly say they only take .doc Word documents or .pdf or whatever.

• Sending a hard copy (very, very few publications take hard copies these days (the Atlantic does)). Save the paper.

• Make sure the magazine/journal/literary agent are even taking submissions before you send your bad boy or bad girl out into the world.

• Don’t just blast out the same cover letter to everyone. Personalize every one so it’s geared to the particular publication/agent. You address your cover to “Whom it may concern,” or accidentally forget to change the name of the agent, it ain’t going to get read. If you didn’t have the time to make sure you’re being thorough, you’re screaming “rookie!”

• Make sure you mention your submission is a simultaneous submission if they ask you to. It’s kind of silly to expect your submission not to be, but some publications want to know.

• Make sure you follow the “paste your story into the body of the text” or “attach your story as an attachment” rule. If you don’t, you can say buh bye to them considering your work.

•  Make sure you’re sending your best work. Don’t write a first draft and send it off. Chances are, you’re not Shakespeare. And Shakespeare didn’t work off first drafts anyway.

• Proofread and proofread and proofread before you submit anything. Yes, everyone’s seeking the best fiction, but if you can’t even bother to check your spelling, or grammar, or have typos, you’re showing you’re back in the “rookie!” camp.

• That pretty much sums up the main points of what to do and not to do when submitting to literary magazines, literary journals, and fiction contests, whether for short stories, novellas, flash fiction, poetry, novel excerpts, or, in some cases, entire novels. But that’s only one side of the coin. The other side is what happens after you’ve successfully submitted. Here are some things you should or shouldn’t do:

• Don’t check in with the publisher if they have something like, “If you don’t hear from us in six weeks, or six months or whatever time frame they put, it means we are not considering your entry” written in the submission guidelines. Again, you’re not the exception. You’re just going to be that annoying writer who doesn’t get it.

• Don’t argue with the editors/literary agents via email. All you’re doing is hurting yourself by creating an adversary where you don’t want one.

• Don’t bash editors or literary agents on social media, at conferences, to other writers, or anyone other than, say, your mom. You never know who knows who, and the literary community ain’t that big.

• Don’t hold your breath waiting on a response from anyone in the literary world—agents, editors, judges, etc., they’re busy. They often don’t have time to even send you the pre-written thanks but no thanks letter. That’s life. Move on.  

Cully Perlman is author of a novel, THE LOSSES. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com

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