Pitching your story

Before writing your story, you must first submit a pitch to team@wearenotnumbers.org. Your pitch should be between 150 and 200 words.

• Provide your name, whatsapp number, working title, summary, and date.
• Elaborate on your summary with the main points you plan to cover; explain how you will present readers with your particular perspective, insights, and connection to the topic. For example, how do you know the event or person you are writing about, and why is it important that you are the one to tell this story?
• Explain why this story or poem is relevant, timely, or important to our readers.You should review stories on our website at wearenotnumbers.org/stories to avoid duplication.
• Describe photos you have, can obtain, or can take that you will be able to provide, with permission to use from the photographer, to accompany your story (not required, but helpful).
• If you plan to interview or quote a person, you must have a recording or interview documentation/transcription to include in your documentation of the story.
• When writing your pitch (and your story), avoid overly emotional or hyperbolic language. Focus instead on the core message, key details, and the narrative arc you want to develop. Clear, realistic, and focused pitches are far more likely to be approved. Pitches that do not meet WANN’s requirements will not be considered.
• Read more about personal and feature story submissions, below.

After your pitch is accepted

We will notify you if your pitch is approved or not. Once your pitch is approved, you will be invited to submit your first draft. Drafts should be prepared in Google Docs or Word format. At the top of your document, please include your full name and the submission date. In your submission email, you should also provide your WhatsApp number so that our editorial team can contact you easily.

After submitting your first draft, you will be paired with a mentor (a writer who has published extensively in English) who will work closely with you to strengthen your writing. The mentor’s role is to help you improve the structure, clarity, and flow of your story while ensuring that your unique voice and perspective are preserved. If you have unresolvable issues or concerns about your mentor, you will have the opportunity to discuss this with the staff and if necessary, be assigned a new mentor.

Following this, the WANN editorial team will review and copyedit your work to ensure it meets our editorial standards and style guidelines, and then it will be published on the WANN website.

If your pitch is accepted, DO NOT submit the story elsewhere.

Personal story

• It must be written in the first person, focusing on lived experiences. Your story should be told directly from your own perspective, using “I” or “We” to guide the reader. The goal is to make your voice and experience central, allowing the audience to see events through your writing.
• It should highlight how events, situations, or circumstances directly affect you, your family, or your community. Instead of writing in abstract terms, ground your story in concrete moments. For example, show how this event, personal loss, or moment of joy has shaped your daily life or the lives of those around you.
• It should carry human significance and must be specific, not general. Whether you are writing about overcoming hardship, celebrating a personal achievement, or reflecting on love and loss, your theme should connect personal experience to larger truths. The theme and larger truth do NOT need to be explicitly stated, and the reader does NOT need to be told what to conclude (e.g., “This is an example of the resilience of the Palestinian people”). Readers should be able to infer your theme and make their own conclusions.
• The story must be more than just expressions, feelings, and conclusions—your story should have narrative, coherence, and a clear chain of events. Each paragraph should move the narrative forward rather than simply repeating feelings or conclusions.
• Your submission should be written in a narrative style, engaging the reader through vivid description and emotional honesty. Show, rather than only tell, what you experienced.

Feature story

• A feature story highlights people, places, or events beyond your own experience. Unlike personal stories, a feature focuses on others while still reflecting your perspective as the writer.
• It must be factually accurate and reflect your narrative style. A feature is not just reporting facts—the writer blends research, interviews, and observation with storytelling techniques to make the piece compelling and human-centered.
• Every feature must include at least two interviews. You are required to speak directly with people connected to your story. This may include family members, community leaders, neighbors, or subject experts. Their voices and experiences should appear in your piece through quotes or paraphrased accounts. Writers must keep full records of their interviews. You should save your notes, audio files, or transcripts, as the WANN mentor and editorial team may request them to verify your work. Full names of those interviewed, and ages and locations, should be included in your draft (WANN will accommodate requests to keep identifying information out of the published article, for security reasons, at the interviewee’s request)
• A feature story should include near the opening a paragraph that says what this whole story is about and why the reader should keep reading (this is called a “nut graf”). The story should move smoothly from introduction to background, then into interview content and reflections, and finally to a clear conclusion. It should read like a complete story, not just a collection of facts.
• The feature story should be written in an engaging, descriptive style that combines observation and testimony. It should include vivid details and direct quotes from interviews to bring people and events to life. Readers should feel they are meeting the people profiled and experiencing their world.

General notes for all submissions

• Word Count: All text submissions (personal stories and features) must be between 850 and 1,400 words, while poetry submissions should be between one and three pages. Staying within these limits ensures your story is fully developed but still concise and accessible.
• Photos: Every text submission should be accompanied by at least one photo that directly relates to the story; writers who submit personal essays often find they have appropriate photos on their own phones, or can take relevant photos. Photos must be submitted with permission from both the photographer and any individuals appearing in the image. For poetry, photos are optional but encouraged when they enrich the presentation of the work.
• Use of facts and statistics: You must cite the original source clearly and provide a URL for our team to fact-check and include the hyperlink in the online document, as appropriate. This may include official reports, NGO publications, academic studies, and quoted material from published documents. Submissions without proper referencing may be returned for revision.

AI policy

WANN uses a human mentoring process to help writers grow and develop their craft. All pitches and drafts must be written entirely by you, in your own words. The use of AI writing tools to write, correct, polish, or humanize a draft—including but not limited to ChatGPT, QuillBot, Jasper, or Grammarly’s full rewrite function—is strictly prohibited.

AI-generated drafts can contain false facts, generic language, over-sentimental statements, and clichéd vocabulary and it often lacks the personal voice that defines the work of WANN writers. If your draft reads as if it were AI-generated in part or whole, it may be returned to you for rewriting or we may reject it outright. Repeated violations may result in suspension from the WANN program.

For support with word usage and vocabulary, we recommend using the Free Collocation Dictionary.