The Monster Children Guide To WRITING For Monster Children

It warms our hearts to know that so many of you weirdos are passionate enough about our dumb little magazine to want to contribute your own pieces of visual and linguistic art.

Lately, our editors’ inboxes have been a bit inundated if not overcome by your ideas, pitches, inquiries, suggestions and queries. In the last three weeks alone, I’ve been pitched on everything from the new Cons shoe (which we lovingly and gladly covered), to LSD microdosing campaigns, to the Cambodian booty rap scene, and we are grateful for Monster Children’s audience’s diversity of taste. 

You have to either be a real idiot, really naive, or a real son of a bitch to work in freelance journalism, but those tend to be our sort of people, anyway, so we are glad you’re here. We are wide open for your ideas, keep 'em coming. However, we’d like to offer a bit of guidance as to the scope, style, and format for pitching us on your wild and strange proposals. If you’ve got a great idea, of course we want to hear it, but before you open your mail app, give this a read.

Ask yourself, ‘am I good?’ 

Are you a good writer? A good photographer? Can you prove it? Where else have you written or photographed? Do you have a portfolio or a website or a clipping or any sort of sample that you can share with us to prove that you aren’t cosplaying as a writer/photographer? At the very least, is this pitch email grammatically sound? We are definitely down for using first time contributors, because everyone has to start somewhere, and, having gone through the bullshit freelance life ourselves, understand how hard it is to get started and build up a rep. That said, if you can’t share any examples before hand and we give you the go ahead and you come back with some really, truly, unforgivably bad material, you can’t be mad at us if we ask for edits, or in the case of photography, don’t take it at all. We’ve published our fair share of garbage, it’s part of the publishing game. However, we try to keep that to an absolute minimum. ‘Minimum garbage’ should actually be the title of our sales decks.

Is my idea within MC’s pillars?

What are the Monster Children pillars? They are as follows: Surf, Skate, Art, Music, Travel. Lifestyle is another broad enough term that can fill in the cracks between those pillars, and we are always looking for ideas that pertain to them. If your idea does not fall within the relative bounds of those pillars, we are 99% not interested. We try to be pretty strict about that. You could offer us an interview with Tom Cruise, and we might take it because we are big fans of Risky Business, but we’d be asking what his favorite band is, where his favorite waves are, and if he can kickflip. 

PS; we love weird shit. If you are worried that your idea is too weird, let us be the judge of that.

PSS; if you can get us an interview (or a selfie) with Tom Cruise, let us know.

Will I be inadvertently endorsing a white supremacist rhetoric? (Do your research)

When I was an editor at a news platform, someone emailed me a pitch without realizing that they cited a Ku Klux Klan newsletter. Here at Monster Children, someone emailed me asking if they could do an interview with Lou Reed. Lou (painfully) has been dead for a decade. All we ask for is basic research. Google your idea before you bother us with it. Your idea could be terribly racist, dead, or already done, all of which is embarrassing for you and will guarantee that we don’t trust any of your ideas in the future.

Is my pitch email just one enormous run on sentence?

Format is important. If your pitch email is one long incoherent sentence riddled with spelling and grammatical errors that does not even adequately explain the idea, we will not email you back and you will make us mad. Some advice for all freelancers brought to you by a guy who’s been sending pitch emails for a decade: read and reread your email before you send it. Fix the language. This pitch email is your business card, your first introduction. If you see little red dots beneath a word, give a shit enough to click it and see why. For MC, the ideal pitch format is as follows: ‘pitch: subject of your idea’ in the email subject line, a brief introduction saying your name, who you’ve written/photographed for, where you’re based, a body paragraph explaining your idea including what, who, where, and why it matters, and what you’d need from us (ie, you are a writer and a writer only, and we therefore need to get photos or send a photographer with you, or your idea involves gaining credentials to a show through us, etc). You don’t need to make this pages and pages long, just give us the gist and we can talk about it to get more info. Check out an example below:

“Pitch: Skateboarding on the moon

Hey,

My name is Skud Skadouche, I’m a writer from New York City. I’ve written a lot about skating and science, and you can check out a link to previous work, here.

I was wondering if Monster Children would be interested in an interview with an astronaut who can kickflip. This guy I know is the son of a guy who goes to space and that guy also skates. I wanted to ask him about how skateboarding has shaped his life and career, if NASA encourages it, and how it feels to be up there with Spike Jonze as one of the most professionally successful skaters of all time. I’m a writer, so I’d need a photographer or help getting photos to go with it. Check out his wikipedia page, here and his last thrasher part, here.

Thanks!”

If you don’t hear back from us within a week, send a follow up. We try to respond to each and every idea as quickly as possible but we are only human.

Have I already written or made this thing and am now demanding payment?

You’d be surprised at how often this happens. Someone sends me a completed piece that I never asked for and asks for $1000. I respond, ‘who are you? Also, no’, and they respond with, ‘alright $500’ and I respond, ‘no.’ and it goes on like that. Before you send an invoice, ask if we want to buy what you’re selling.

Is this a good idea or am I just counting likes? (Clout vs Cool)

This is perhaps the most important thing to consider when pitching an editorial idea to us: is this subject cool or is it just clout? Something can be cool, and something can be cool and clout, but we will not take something that is just clout. We often get asked to cover influencers, whatever Elon is up to, and internet dance trends. We aren’t into that stuff. We like things within our pillars that are compelling, challenging, weird, new, funny, gross, difficult, outside of both comfort and conformity, and as often as we can, are expressed through a genuinely interesting story. Clout and following have nothing to do with it. I think that this mag has always had a knack for sifting through the temporary bullshit of whatever is popular at the moment and identifying what is actually cool, which is why we are as likely to write about a fucking amazing new band with 100 followers as we are to interview Beck. If I get one more email from a fashion blogger or Instagram skater telling me they’ll let me interview and repost them if I pay $500, I am going to remove my brain. 

For those still nervous to pitch

If you genuinely believe your writing is hot shit, requires no editing whatsoever and could be in the running for the Nobel prize, chances are you suck. Likewise, if you think your writing could be better, your jokes won’t land and submit with the line ‘feel free to change/ edit anything’ then chances are you’re actually pretty good. Obviously, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, you could actually fucking suck, but we’d much rather be working with someone giving it an honest crack with the ability to take on feedback without it crushing their soul than someone who will not budge that asshole isn’t spelt with an e. Passion, a willingness to learn and being a good human are going to get you a hell of a lot further here at MC than a swanky resume. You have the ability to do some real good with words, you just have to believe you can. Finally, if you genuinely don’t know what side of a comma or full stop these little bastards go “ “ then just don’t.

If you’ve gone through this checklist and you feel pretty good about your idea, we are happy to have you shoot us an email at editorial@monsterchildren.com.