How Top in Fiction is Created Week-to-Week
A behind-the-scenes look at community!
If you didn’t know already, Top in Fiction is a Substack I created one month ago in answer to what seemed to be a complaint cropping up in every fiction writer’s Substack Note:
Why doesn’t Subtack’s Top in Fiction reflect FICTION posts, like EVER?!
I saw this problem and wondered what I could do. My goal when I created Top in Fiction was to make it easy (on myself) and 100% fiction. Two basic concepts but I knew in order to execute them, I would need assistance from the same people who were complaining about the lack of fiction coming from Substack.
First, I set out to create the publication. As luck would have it, Top in Fiction was available. Then I set out letting people know, mostly on Substack Notes, what I had created and what its purpose was intended to serve.
Second, I needed to set-up Top in Fiction. This meant creating an About Page, Welcome email, logos, banners, and everything else. As spending time working on these areas is something second nature to me, I got right to it.
Third, and lastly, I needed to create Templates that would make doing this project every week as easy for me to put together as possible. This meant implementing a few things:
Organization! For this I am using Google Docs and I created a MASTER spreadsheet. This helps me to log important information about each story that is recommended and that will ultimately end up in each issue.
NOTE: Something you may not realize is that I start collecting stories to put in the following issue the day after the meet-up post goes out! This allows me to make sure I don’t miss anyone or anything. If you notice, the list is mostly comprised of stories shared in the comments but also some that aren’t because I find them mentioned in Notes and through my own searching. This is why labeling your work is so important for me to find it, and you, out in the wild!
Aesthetics! I used Adobe Express (but a free equivalent is Canva) to create the word mark, logo, and even the divider. These make it, I hope, so that TiF can eventually become more easily recognizable. Eventually, I would love to hire someone to make a more official logo.
Templates! In this case, I want each week to look and feel exactly the same to when I started on Week 1! This isn’t always easy to do because what if an idea or design change comes up that I didn’t account for? Whatever template design I make has to be simple and easy to change without jarring all of you if I were to make any changes down the road. These choices were as simple as using certain header styles to differentiate the type of story being shared (ie Short story, Microfiction, Serial, etc.).
PDFs | For the PDFs, which were a very last minute decision to create, I thought it would be cool to have something in “Print” and in a different look and feel that I could never do in Substack due to its formatting limitations. The PDF allows me to utilize columns! I also make sure to make the story titles clickable links as well. It looks the same each week, where I may need to shift categories up or down depending on how many stories are going to be listed.
Medallions | Again, a last minute idea I had. When it comes to Substack, they give out medallions/badges to publications they feature and so I thought to myself, “why not give medallions to the posts that are featured each week!” Of course this means creating around 15 of them every week! I probably should’ve thought this one through since that is quite a lot to do every week. But I just like the idea that you can display this at the end of your posts, or even in your About pages or Welcome emails and link to that story for newcomers. That was the vision behind this idea.
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT CHOICES
Something that I haven’t been asked yet, but I’m sure it will come up in time is: How do I decide what stories are selected each week?
There are a couple factors that go into my decision making process:
New writers. I want to always make sure, if I can, to highlight writers that have not appeared in previous issues. I realize eventually I will run out of new writers to include but until that time comes, new writers who have not been in any previous issue (excluding Honorable Mentions) will get priority.
Story Type. By that I mean microfiction, short story, poetry, serial, short serial. I want to always try to have a balance, even though I realize short story or serial might dominate week-to-week. But whenever I can find microfiction or poetry, the two types that seem to be less seen/promoted I will try to prioritize them over short story and serial, because I know they will never be in short supply.
Quality. Lastly, I do try to read all the story recommendations prior to selection. If I just don’t have the time to read it, I will look at the comments left in a story. This doesn’t mean I won’t pick a story if it doesn’t have any comments.
The selection process isn’t an exact science and it will mean that some really great stories simply may not be featured each week. which leads me to the next thing I wanted to talk about:
FREQUENCY
Why did I choose to take on this project weekly? I could’ve gone with twice a month or monthly but I chose weekly because I wanted to show a couple things, just in case Substack is watching 👀:
There is A LOT of fiction being written on a daily basis!
There could easily be 20+ fiction stories on a daily basis featured on Substack’s own Top in Fiction if their algorithm were fixed.
I also didn’t want to have to be too selective. If I did this only twice monthly or monthly, selecting around 15 featured and 5 honorable mentions would’ve been even more difficult than it is now!
A NUMBERS GAME
Why did I choose to limit myself to 15 featured and 5 honorable mentions? Well, for times sake mostly! I didn’t want to have to spend too long listing everyone (it could easily be double this number every week!), creating these medallions, and the PDF. I knew when I started that I didn’t want the PDF to be more than one page and right now 15 fits nicely on one page.
WHO TiF RECOMMENDS?
I realize that “recommendations” is in the fabric of what makes Substack unique and work so well. However, I want to try and remain as impartial as possible. It is for that reason that TiF will only ever recommend within its publication other publications that are similar in its mission and purpose. This means that TiF will not recommend an individual person. Here is a list of the Substack publications that we are currently recommending:
If you feel there is another Substack publication that highlights and promotes the fiction community along the same guidelines, please let me know. I have had several private suggestions made to me that I should recommend either them or other people and I wanted to address why I have opted not to do that.
LASTLY, WHAT WON’T GET YOU ON THE LIST
So far I’ve discussed how I put the list together and who gets on the list but I want to close out my process by discussing an elephant that just plopped itself in the room where I work. Pay close attention to what WON’T get you on the list! I know not everyone will read this or see it and I will include this portion in the About Page and Start Here over on TiF as well for reference:
Size doesn’t matter here. I never look at your subscriber count (if it’s listed) or how long you’ve been writing fiction on Substack.
DMing. In fact, this might be a double detractor. I encourage self-promotion within the Friday meet-up posts, but I won’t accept DMs from people asking me to include them in the next TiF issue (believe me, it’s already been happening more often than I’m willing to admit here).
Restacking/Likes/Comments! I love when the issues are shared. Sharing is what helps TiF grow and growth increases the audience that the stories listed each week can reach. But it’s not a tit-for-tat situation. Just because you’re helping the community doesn’t mean I owe you something in return. Yes, I’ve gotten DMs about this too! You don’t have to subscribe to my personal Substack or any of my publications and doing so doesn’t guarantee that now I owe you a spot on the list. That’s not how this works.
THE BEST IS YET TO COME
I don’t want to end this peek behind the curtain on how I put TiF together on a sour note so I want to say THANK YOU to each and every one of you who’ve shared, and continue to share, TiF with your subscribers, within the Substack Notes community, and everywhere else. Most of all, thank you for continuing to write amazing stories. Without them there would be no TiF!
Keep up the good work, storytellers!
Have any questions/comments/concerns for me?
Epic effort, Erica! I hope you still have time to write your own fiction. I'd like to suggest 'SmallStack' as an addition to TiF's recommendation list of fellow fiction promoters.
I'm glad I saw this too, because I didn't realize TIF was open to serialized novels. I thought because the submissions were only for a certain time frame that it was limited to shorter work.