Submission requirements and style guide

We are accepting post submissions!
Daring Diaries is a friendly and radical publication. We run reported pieces, explainers, opinion, photo collections comics, personal essays, humor, and more. We’re excited by truly fresh and new ideas.

Daring Diaries aims to publish stories that have a strong, thoughtful, personal voice. Although we cover many serious and important topics, we try to do so with warmth and compassion for all. We are always looking for stories that convey enthusiasm and warmth, that amuse and delight as well as inform. We’re also fascinated by diverse perspectives on animals, science, politics, health, fashion and food!. We are always eager to publish writers from underrepresented groups and stories from all over the world.

What We Look for and Prefer to Publish

We are “a community of storytellers documenting the journey to happiness & fulfillment.” Basically, we’re here to help inspire and educate others to lead better lives, whatever their individual goals may be.

We believe in authentic, personal storytelling. The stories that perform best for us are rooted in firsthand experience and packed with tons of value, in the form of personal lessons and profound takeaways for the end reader.

For every story we review, we ask ourselves the following questions:

• Does the writer provide empirical evidence to support or justify their claims? Is the story rooted in real-world knowledge or experience?
• Does it provide meaningful advice, offer an original take on an important issue, or share a new insight or perspective beyond conventional wisdom?
• Is it well-written, easy to follow, narratively compelling, properly punctuated, and free of typos or grammatical errors?

Submissions must follow our Style Guide in its entirety. This ensures readers encounter a consistent experience while reading stories throughout our publication.

Titles and subtitles
Submissions must have a clear and descriptive title and subtitle at the very top of the story. The title and subtitle should be the first thing a user sees when viewing a story.

Submissions with a link in the title or subtitle, written in all capital letters, or containing profanity of any kind will be rejected.

Search engine optimization
For proper SEO, titles should be between 40 and 50 characters, and subtitles should be between 140 and 156 characters long. To check the SEO readiness of your title and subtitle, click the “…” button in the editor, select “More settings,” and then scroll to “SEO Settings.” There, you can verify the story’s SEO settings and character count.

Images
All submissions must include a unique featured image right BELOW the title and subtitle

Choosing images
All images used must be something the author has a legal right to publish. Medium is partnered with Unsplash to easily add images with proper citation to every submission.

Citation
All images must include a caption clearly citing the source and usage rights, even if it is a photo taken or created by the author. When not using the automatically generated citation from Unsplash, the citation should clearly convey the image’s usage rights.

When an image is provided by the author or permission has been granted individually, the citation should read “Photo Courtesy of Person Who Provided Image”. When none of the above apply, “Source: Studio or Provider” may be used ONLY if the image falls under fair use.

New writers must request to contribute by sending and E-mail to: secretum.inc@pm.me or by filling out this form for guidance. Filling out the form/sending us a message does not guarantee addition as a writer.

Each new request is handled manually and will take time to process. Please be patient and wait for a confirmation email to arrive.

If a submission is ready for publication, we schedule it in our next available publishing slot. We generally publish one story every two hours between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm EST. We focus on quality over quantity. Publishing on this schedule ensures consistent content and maximum exposure for each story. Because of this schedule, stories may be scheduled a week to ten days or more from the day it is processed. Friends and VIPs receive expedited review and publication of their submissions. Join our mailing list or donate