Submitting Stories to an App

Hello, I work for a mobile app development company that created a free to download, chat fiction style app, currently launched in the UK and close to being launched in the US. We have a baseline of stories written already that are included in the launch. However, one of the things we’ve received feedback on from people is that they want more stories. I appreciate the Reddit community and the group here on nosleep so I thought I would reach out to you folks!

We are looking for writers who want to write short, chat-based fictional stories in a similar style to those of apps like Hooked or Yarn. We do have a target audience, which is more female oriented (although not exclusively), who are generally in their teens through late 20’s.

The stories should be fictional, and the topics are varied including but not limited to suspense, horror/scary, romantic (not overtly sexual), drama, funny, and so on. We prefer stories that have a slight twist (if possible) to them or are otherwise engaging with some character development. For stories that have an ongoing theme, we do allow for multi parters and sequels. The only caveat with that is each story should be able to stand alone i.e. each story in the multi parter has recurring characters, monsters, part of a greater situation, etc. There are the obvious tropes to avoid, “don’t go in the basement”, “I’m calling the police”,“NO!”, as stories like that are found on all apps of this nature. While we will accept these stories because it does spark interest and sort of pad the roster, we encourage and believe the folks of r/nosleep will think a little more outside the box.

Getting down to the nuts and bolts, stories should be:

1. Formatted like a chat or message thread. Like if you were texting a friend. An example of the exact format that each story needs to be submitted can been included and writers can use it as a guideline. It’s spreadsheet style, and can be a .csv, .xls(x) file, or google doc spreadsheet. We urge writers submit stories in this manner but if it is not we can adjust for that on our end.
2. The story should be titled. Please provide a title for the story or we will make one. The writer's name/alias they provide will be listed on the app along with their story.
3. Each chat message story should flow seamlessly and occur in chronological order. Writers are free to insert “2 Hours Later…” and other time stamps to show the passage of time.
4. Each message should be succinct and generally contain the average amount of information a single text message includes. When in doubt break the message apart if a writer feel it is going too long.
5. Each story, in it’s entirety, should be somewhere around 300-500 lines, with a variance of 50 lines give or take. In the interest of flexibility, we give writers leeway to deviate from this based on the best narrative and story flow. We prefer the story flow well rather than have a writer get bogged down in specifics about lines and numbers. Note: super short stories don’t typically give the user enough time to build interest. Stories under 200 lines will generally not be used unless they are exceptionally well written to be told in such a succinct manner.
6. The pace in which each message is displayed is controlled by the user. They tap the screen to display the next message in the story. The messages do not have to alternate characters between each message as one character may send several messages in a row.
7. While text shorthand such as “lol” and “brb” are allowed, writers should refrain from overly using these terms.
8. Writers CAN use emojis but don’t go too crazy.
9. Writers CAN use photos but they must come from shutterstock non-editorial pics. When and if writers use a picture in the story they should just include the link where the picture would be.
10. Writers CAN use “breaks” in the story. We call them announcements. These include things not said by either character such as “15 Minutes Later...” or “Message could not be sent” the example shows how to properly insert them into a story.
11. Writers CAN use more than two characters in a story, such as if there are four characters talking in two separate text conversations, or one character is talking to two separate characters. Writers be weary as we’ve found that too many characters in a story makes it so the typical user doesn’t follow along and hence abandon the story.
12. Curse words may be used, but utilized SPARINGLY and only where writers feel it is absolutely necessary. While our office loves cursing regularly we don’t want that to be a knock on us to potential users given our target market.

Feel free to contact me at /u/ WillfromRLG for more serious inquiries as this is a general overview. Thank you to all who take the time to read this. Have a nice day! EDIT: Here is the Upwork link to submit formal propsals.
https://www.upwork.com/job/Creative-Writers-needed-for-two-character-chat-fiction-style-mobile-app_~0147783cc0bcba92df/