What are fillers?
Fillers are short items, such as quotes, jokes, brief anecdotes or interesting facts, that appear in between main articles in magazines or in other small spaces. They fill spaces.
Who writes fillers?
Well, some fillers are written by the staff of magazines, but a great number of fillers are written by freelance writers like you and me.
Why write fillers?
Fame? No. Typically, you will get no listed credit for a filler. An exception is Reader’s Digest, which often provides the name of the author of the short pieces that fill its pages.
Fortune? Well, not exactly. You will get paid for published fillers you submit, but you won’t get rich unless you submit a ton of fillers and succeed in getting half a ton published. Still, if you submit regularly to magazines that accept fillers (most of them do), you can make a fair amount of pocket change. And the good thing is that fillers are short by definition. You can compose a number of them in a short period of time.
How do you start writing fillers?
I would suggest that you buy a copy of Reader’s Digest and study it from cover to cover. You could find a copy in the library, but the librarian will probably look askance at you if you start taking notes in the margin and underlining important sections.
You will see that there are a large number of sections that qualify as filler material in Reader’s Digest – Life in these United States is just one example.
Pay attention to the interesting and funny things that happen all around you every day. Keep a pad and pen with you at all times and jot ideas down. If you hear a good joke or a funny quote or something hilarious happens to you, write it down.
Then (and this is the most important thing), write up your filler and send it in. If you choose to submit to Reader’s Digest (and why not? It buys a lot of fillers and its payment rates are excellent), go to the Reader’s Digest website and submit your filler.
A Final Bit of Inspiration
Recently, I was vacationing at a state park with my family. My wife was at a trading post and saw a somewhat quirky quote posted there. She told me about it. I thought it was funny, and since I had never heard it before, I thought it might make an interesting filler item.
I wrote it up and posted it at the Reader’s Digest website, noting that it was a quote (I checked online first to see if it had been attributed to anyone; it had not – it was just a well-worn quote something along the lines of the old “Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday.” Since it had entered into the common lexicon, there was no author to list, just a notation that it was a quote from a posting at a park trading post.
I may never hear from Reader’s Digest from the submission, but if not, that’s OK. It took me about 5 minutes to submit–much shorter in time than this posting has taken. If they buy it, I’m $100 to $300 richer; if not, well, I used 5 minutes to improve my writing skills.
The Moral?
Look and listen for stories to tell. If they’re short, they’re perfect for magazine fillers.
Write them up and send them in!
Good luck with your writing.
–Jack Sundown