Write for An Idea
By: Ritika Mittal
Tags: Guidelines, Publishing, Ideas, Submission, Writing

Write for An Idea

Let your idea touch many hearts!

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

An Idea (by Ingenious Piece) is an online publication that doesn’t limit itself to a specific subject. It is interested in anything that is genuine, comes from the heart, and can benefit others, from writers all over the world.

We encourage the writers to come up with an article reflecting their own thoughts and opinion. Each writer is free to work at her/his pace, there are no commitments on the frequency at which articles are to be submitted, but please note that we accept only drafts.

We support the author to publish their work in a simple and splendid way by following the below guidelines:

Short Captivating Title with Sub-Title

(Guideline No. 1)

The title could cover informative words of the central topic to catch the readers and subtitle helps to connect with them more quickly.

As an example, check the title and subtitle of this article (as shown in the below screenshot):

Screenshot by Author

Make sure to use the title case for the title and sub-title.

Images

(Guideline No. 2)

Images inspire to articulate thoughts, so the use of high definitions photos will help in making the article more gripping. Please include at least one high definition image and use it as a featured image of your article.

Photo by Mark Harpur on Unsplash

Below are some guidelines related to using images

(A) Always include the source of the image

It is always good to include the source of used images, to make it immediately clear its licensing requirements.

In general, this info will look like:

[photo by (Name of source)]

For example,

(B) Using images which are licensed as free for personal and commercial use

Please go ahead and use such images, but make sure to provide their source information (as suggested previously).

You can make use of the next section to know about sources from where you can obtain such images.

(C) Using an image with a purchased license

Please include the below details along with the image:

Licensed Provider

The Name of User

(D) Using your own images

That’s awesome! Please go ahead and give credits to yourself (mentioning your name or using the term “author”) such as:

Photo by Author

Photo by Author <name>

Photograph Copyright <name>

(E) Using images which are NOT free for personal and commercial purposes, or you haven’t bought its license or it’s not your own image

Do not use such an image.

Below are some of the sources from where you can get free-to-use images

(A) The https://unsplash.com/:

Unsplash provides freely-usable images.

(B) Creative Commons by Google:

Google provides you to use images with “creative commons licenses”.

Here is how you can filter them:

Screenshot by Author

Note: When using creative common images from Google, please do mention so as the caption (along with a link to the image).

(C) The https://www.pexels.com/:

Pexels makes most of its content available to be used for free for personal and/or commercial purposes but subjected to some limitations, as the below screenshot describes:

Screenshot from https://www.pexels.com/terms-of-service/

(D) The https://pixabay.com/:

Pixabay also makes most of its content available to be used for free for personal and/or commercial purposes but subjected to some limitations, as the below screenshot describes:

Screenshot from https://pixabay.com/service/terms/

(E) https://www.freepik.com/:

Most of the images from Freepik are free for personal and commercial purpose with attribution:

Screenshot from Freepik

(F) Other sources for open-source Images:

Other open-source image sources include StockSnap, Flickr, Burst, The Stocks

Other Image Sources:

(A) https://www.istockphoto.com/:

iStock offers two types of licenses: standard and extended. Please go through istockphoto.com’s license agreement to make sure if you have enough rights to use the image the way it is being used.

Screenshot from https://www.istockphoto.com/legal/license-agreement

(B) https://www.shutterstock.com/:

shutterstock.com offers two types of licenses: standard and enhanced. Please thought shutterstock.com’s license agreement to make sure if you have enough rights to use the image the way it is being used.

(C) https://www.canva.com/:

Make sure to adhere to Canva’s terms before using any image downloaded or designed from Canva.

The Textual Content

(Guideline No. 3)

Please follow the below guidelines regarding textual content. It also helps you to catch the reader's attention by focusing on some key factors:

What is the main idea behind writing and what you want to convey?

Keep your piece at least 2 mins long (except for poetry).

Make sure to check on spellings and grammar. You may like to use the Grammarly browser plugin.

browser plugin. Try to use constructive vocabulary.

Try to include your personal experiences as examples (if possible) to make it easier to convey your message.

Use Github Gist to share any software code. This will look like the below screenshot:

Make sure to avoid plagiarism. You may reference text from other sources, but it must be referenced ([1][2] and so on).

In-line with Ad-Free Medium philosophy, please don’t send articles endorsing a particular product. But, it is fine to include links to your other relevant articles.

Follow Medium’s Distribution Guidelines.

Don’t accuse anybody without referencing sources proving those as facts.

..and finally, it’s always good to re-read your piece before submission.

Graphs

Graphs provide more perception of the data and hence make it easy to understand.

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

You have full rights to your work

An Idea gives the platform to the writers and readers to join it for free. They can add and delete the work at their own pace. Your earning will be yours. We don’t take a share to associate with us. By publishing new articles we attract more viewers, and thereby also provide more views to added articles.

As part of the review process (or later), we may edit/change the text, images, and tags of your articles to improve readability (grammar, formatting, etc.) and its categorization to make it easily reachable to the target audience.

In submitting your article to An Idea, you declare that it is an original piece (that is, it is not plagiarised) and that you have all the permissions to submit it to An Idea for publishing.

Keep writing! Keep sharing!

What can you do to enhance the reachability of your work?

We pay special attention to the below tags:

So, if possible, tag your articles/stories/poems with at least one of the relevant tags from above. For example,

Screenshot by Author

Submission

(Guideline No. 4)

To join us as a writer, send your interest through the Contribution to An Idea form, so that our editors can review your profile.

If you have already joined us as a writer, you can follow the steps on https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/213904978-Add-a-draft-or-post-to-publication and submit your drafts.

We review all submissions within 3 business days. If your article is a good fit for our publications and follows all guidelines then it will be accepted and added to the queue to be published soon. We rarely take longer than that to respond. But if we do, please forgive us — we’re having a hectic week.