How to Add Stories to the Writing Atlas

We are trying to create a large catalogue of short stories for movie producers, screenwriters, academics, readers and ourselves. We think this can be a great resource, and a great way to highlight writers’ works for more audiences.

For the producers, we need to create what are known as loglines (summary of the plot and premise), tags (something people can use to browse by which encompass everything from the setting to the protagonist to the type of ending), and our own assessments.

We do prestige short stories, such as award-winners and Best American Short Stories Selections, and also scifi, literary, horror, fantasy — representing a wide range of narratives for screen adaptation.

This document walks you through each step of reading for the Writing Atlas. You can refer to it anytime you are unsure what to do next, or just email us at atlas@plympton.com.

Contents

1. [FIND A STORY]
2. [READ THE STORY]
3. [WRITE A LOGLINE]
4. [WRITE A SUMMARY]
5. [WRITE TAGS]
6. [WRITE NOTES]
7. [SET TO DRAFT]

AIRTABLE and SLACK

If we onboarded you correctly, you should be able to join the Atlas Airtable and the Plympton Slack with the email you gave us. If not, email us at atlas@plympton.com. You should be able to see a “Reader View” of this Airtable, and you should have edit access. (If you love publishing you can look around at the other tabs for all the rich literary info like agencies and writers).

FIND A STORY

1. Create a View on this Airtable and name it after you.
2. Filter the READ STATUS field for READY TO ASSIGN or PRIORITY READ
3. Find a story. Set the Read Status to WORKING. Add your name to the READER field.

4. Take a look at the STORY TEXT STATUS field.

   • FOUND STORY URL>> you can find the link to the story in the STORY URL column. If a subscription is needed to read the story, we may have a log in. email us at atlas@plympton.com
   • BOUGHT EBOOK ON KINDLE >> contact atlas@plympton.com for our Amazon Kindle log in.
   • PDF LINKED >> you can find the link to the story in the STORY URL column.
   • If it says ADD STORY URL that means the URL has not yet been found. You can research where to read it online, and add it to the Airtable if you like.

5. Go ahead and start reading.

READ THE STORY

Click through a few stories, and take your pick. You should prioritize “plotty” stories that you could see as a premise for a movie/TV. If a story seems like it might be a bit too strange, bizarre, vignette-y you can pick a new one.

You don’t have to read too too carefully. You need to know enough to understand the plot line, and characters plus be able to write a brief summary.

ADD GENRE (if not already there, or feel free to modify)

There are some preset ones (Science Fiction, YA, Fantasy, Mystery). Browse through our list of existing genres already generated by our readers, or leave it as UNKNOWN. Often the story will fit into more than one genre.

We want our GENRE to help a user learn about the story "type" in one glance. This could be anything from

• sci fi
• fairy tales
• queer fiction
• fictional autobiography
• dark satire
• action and adventure
• political thriller.

We want our Genres to be somewhat specific: Urban Fantasy (sort of under Fantasy) and Murder Mystery (under Mystery) “Science Fiction” is useful. “Hard Science Fiction” is even more useful. Combinations of genres, like “Fantasy” and “Historical Fiction” are useful.

Feel free to be more creative with the genres you use to label your stories! Don’t worry if you’re using a new genre label or if you’re being too specific. Our system can map genres to parent genres so “Queer Sci Fi” gets mapped to “Queer Fiction” and “Science Fiction.”

Use this additional reference if you need help! But keep in mind that our genre definitions are a work in progress at the moment, so we are quite flexible.

ADD THE WORD COUNT

Doesn’t have to be precise (nearest 500 is fine). Just a rough cut and paste into a word count website like wordcounter.net will give you a pretty good guess. 

If you have a story that is in a book, try to get a rough estimate of how many words are on one page and multiply it.

SET TO DRAFT AND PING US

When you are done with your short story entry, set the status from WORKING to DRAFT.

Ping us on Slack or email when you want any feedback. Email, kiara@plympton.com. Slack, @Kiara

We will give you notes and questions in the comments, as well as some edits. Then we will set the status to NEEDS REVISION.

Take a look at the notes, and try to address. You can leave it on NEEDS REVISION. We will change the status to READY FOR COPYEDIT.

Next, learn how to write a logline.