Submissions

Thanks for your interest in submitting to The Dot! Please read these submission guidelines before submitting.

Please note: The Dot only accepts work from female-identifying people ages 13 and up.

Here’s what we are looking for:

Personal Essay

The Dot publishes humorous personal essays under 3,000 words. Please only submit completed work.

What do we mean by humorous personal essay? Good question! First of all it has to be true and and it has to be about you or your thoughts and opinions. While your in-depth research piece on the history of snails is probably incredibly interesting and maybe even funny (who knows?), for the purposes of this site personal essay means you are writing about a real thing that happened to you.

Humorous is more subjective. Pieces should include humor, but can ultimately be about something serious. Or they can be just plain funny. If at least some of it makes us laugh, it’s within the guidelines.

We are looking for personal essays that are not only funny, but give a glimpse of who the writer is and how the experience they are writing about changed them, even in a small way.

Opinions on Outdated Pop Culture

The Dot accepts opinion pieces on outdated pop culture under 2,000 words.

Do you have a burning opinion about why the custody agreement in The Parent Trap was a terrible idea and no judge should have allowed it, or why the Spice Girls would have been more memorable if they were named after actual spices, or have a strong argument for which Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode was the best one (It was the one where she gets addicted to pancakes), but have nobody to tell these important opinions to? Send opinion pieces about outdated pop culture our way, we love them.

These pieces do not have to be about you, but should still be non-fiction, please no satire pieces.

Humor by Teens

The Dot welcomes teenage women ages 13 and up to submit humorous personal essay and opinion pieces with proof of parental permission.

***All submissions from women under the age of 18 must include a parent’s email address.***

Here’s what we are not looking for:

Satire. At The Dot we love satire, but that’s just not what we are doing here. Please no satirical pieces, no matter how funny they are.

Satirical News Stories: Again, we love The Onion, but that’s just not what this is. Please no parody news stories.

Pitches. Please only submit completed work.

Reporting. The Dot accepts personal essay and opinion pieces, but not research pieces or reviews. While some personal essays may include research, we are really looking for personal stories.

Compensation:

Here at The Dot we truly believe all writers should be paid for their writing. Writing is hard and time consuming and giving it away for free is, at its core, pretty unfair. (As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing, I love having written”). That being said, we currently have no way to pay writers outside of tagging them in good photos of dogs on Instagram. We welcome writers who are happy to give us the honor of publishing their work for free, but every writer reading this should know that their work has monetary value and they should be submitting it to places that pay them before submitting it here (unless they really want to). If this site ever makes money, the writers will be the first people to see it.

Now that we made you read all of that: here is how to actually submit:

Send your submission to: thedotsubmissions@gmail.com

Please paste your piece into the body of the email with the subject line: Submission: The Name of Your Piece.

Please only submit one piece at a time.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please send us an email to let us know if your piece was accepted elsewhere after submitting.

Cover letters are not needed, but it’s always fun to chat!