Publishing Your Work

When we accept your work, we find the appropriate location to place it for our readers to enjoy. In this case, it would be either one of your hunting stories or a hunting tip you would like to share with others. Once we place it on our web site, we call that publishing. Once North Carolina Hunting Today accepts and publishes your material, it becomes the property of North Carolina Hunting Today.

Real Stories From Real People

Any of us can subscribe to or visit a local news stand and buy a number of quality magazines about hunting, fishing or the outdoors. The stories we find there are professionally done, like some of our stories, and contain educational, entertaining and helpful information.

As part of our ongoing success, we have opened the doors to hunters from anywhere and everywhere to share their hunting experiences with us. We understand that you are not a professional writer. As a matter of fact we understand that you may not be very good at it at all but we don't want that to stop you.

We all have stories to tell and we collect them and make them available to millions of hunters all over the world.

Learn more about the program.

Easy Steps To Writing a Short Story

It's really quite easy to write a short story of your own and we're going to make it even easier for you. If you follow the simple steps below, you'll have a masterpiece in no times.

1. Collect your ideas. When you have decided on a story to tell, keep it simple and focused on the topic of your story. Don't wander off with insignificant details that don't pertain to your story. Think about how you want to begin telling the story and how it will end. Jot down ideas as you think of them.

2. Begin writing. Start at the beginning. Include only information about what your subject pertains to. Tell your story as a progression of events exactly how it happened. Again, don't get side-tracked. Include details when necessary to relay to the reader the point you are making. A key to good writing is giving a clear, information filled story in as few words as possible.

3. Reread it. As you are writing, stop and reread what you have written. Often it will show you things that should be changed and it will also jog your memory about other details.

4. Read it to someone. Once you have finished, go read it to someone. Watch for their reactions. This may tell you more honestly what they think of it than what they may say.

5. Once you have finished wait a day. Let the story sit a day and then pick it up and read it again. A fresh look might cause you to make some changes for the better.

6. Submit your work to us.

It's that simple really. Remember, readers are interested in your content not how well you write. Here's some tips. Inject humor if appropriate to spice the story but don't overdo it. Readers want to know things like, where it happened, when it happened and who it happened to. They also want to know details about what kind of weapon you used, if the weather was frigid or hot (if it affects the story). If you want to brag about a new piece of hunting gear your brother-in-law made, go ahead.

Read some of the stories from some of our other readers and this will give you some ideas too. The staff will review your work and make editorial changes without changing the content of the story.

By all means, change the names to protect the innocent. We all know it's the fishermen who lie, not the hunters.

Thank you!

E-Mail Attachments

When you write your work, you should do it with a word processing software program. Once you have completed your work, save it in your document files of your computer. When you open your email service to send an email, there should be a hyperlink visible to you that reads "attach" or "attachment". Click on that and follow the directions. Here you will be able to "browse" your computer files to locate your saved work.

Sending photos is done the same way. You can attach a photo from a file in your computer. DO NOT place pictures on a Word document!! The quality of the photo is done much differently than sending the photo from your file separately. Don't be too concerned with photo size. We will resize it to fit the page.

By all means, we do not want you to not be able to send us one of your stories or hunting tips because you don't have any kind of word processing software. Go ahead and send the story to us in the body of the email and we will do our best to retrieve it. If there are problems we will contact you. Do this only if you cannot send it attached. Please understand that we handle hundreds of stories a day and our work is easier if we don't have to spend much time reformatting. Thank you!