  Short Stories
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This month:
An Editor's Eye
What do editors look for, anyway? Every story is different, but some have a distinct advantage. |
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So, I've been doing this Submissions Editor thing for a few months now, and I love it.
Except for one part. And statistically, it's the part I have to do the most often, which is "reject stuff."
Now, not all stories are created equal; some, I know within a paragraph whether the caliber of the writing is up to snuff. While of course there are plenty of stories like that right here on Writing.Com, I'm going to put it to you that you're at an advantage compared with many other writers out there, in that you're part of a vast support network where you can learn what your audience enjoys most about your work. You won't get that from an editor -- many of us on editorial teams give form feedback at best, making it difficult to diagnose what is or isn't working with a given story. Get your hooks in and make sure your writing is tight.
I'd say there are two varieties of stories which give me the most trouble at present, and both of them are in the "close, but not quite" ballpark: stories which are good and inventive but not tightly written, and stories which are immaculately beautiful, but nothing happens.
One story in my most recent batch of submissions was SO close-- I hung on every word, because the writing was beautiful, just waiting for some dramatic action to happen in the story. The author got me through the entire story effortlessly through the quality of her writing, but I was scouring for something, anything that might constitute a plot and failed to find anything-- worse, what little drama did occur in the story was completely undone in the last paragraph. I felt like someone had knocked all the books off my bookshelf, I was so mad.
Another story which comes to mind was an intriguing and strong inventive fairytale. Lots of intrigue and a very cool family story, but the writing was so stiff with "be" verbs and the construction was not really quite elegant enough. (I read the story aloud, which, to me, is a sign of a pretty cool story, but ultimately in reading it out loud I found a lot of places where I stumbled or got very confused by the sentence construction.) While an editor may be willing to correct these things, when the problems run throughout the piece, it's very easy for an editor to reject that story in favor of one that's closer and requires less editing.
And that waffling period in the middle-- the close-but-not-quite-- I am often in that bubble, and I know many other authors who are as well. And the only advice I have, with the caveat that it may not be very helpful, is that each story you write will be better than the one you wrote before, and that it may take many of those to get your foot in the door.
I can say with certainty the thing I look for most, as an editor, is a story that I just cannot wait to share with someone else. It's hard to get to that point, and harder still to have to say over and over again, "this is not the one," but there will be one, soon enough.
Until next month,
Take care and Write on!
~jay |
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Feedback from "Cut, Snip, Slash, Stitch" :
DRSmith writes:
Terrific newsie. So few words, yet SO MUCH said. I'm sure any serious aspirant of the craft can identify with your observations. Lord knows I'm guilty... perhaps even more so than most. I'm likely to edit works up to 40 or more times within in a week of slopping words together before I feel its "about right" w/o concern I'm too picky; that it's right for ME. Hence, first thing I do is remind myself I'm in good company (like Hemingway, a noted self nit-picker). Personally, I believe there's a balance between overdoing it, and fine-tuning. Just takes a little discipline starting with a true desire to get a piece just right vis a vis theme. What tends to work for me are a series of wholesale fixes shortly after "slopping words together", I mean finishing a piece. Then let it sit for a month and PRINT IT as a stand alone fresh read. Mark it up as you go over it with a fresh eyes and mindset. Maybe after about a year, do it again. This is where I usually fine tune such as with a few key words, modifiers, or phrases that work hard for a piece. Sometimes, the re-look will even inspire major changes to better suit the theme. All in all, timing such sequences does help resulting in a personally satisfying, entertaining read.
Thanks very much! Yeah, I think you have the right of it here-- this is a great piece of advice for those who like to carve a story into shape after the initial work is done.
Bob retired  writes:
Thank you for dealing with the topic of editing in this way. I am one who does not actually edit until the story is completed and left for a few weeks to go cold. Then I read it as a reader, for my pleasure, just as a real reader would. After reading my cold story I can edit where necessary, not edit for the sake of editing. You can chop a good story to pieces completely and utterly by over editing, and that would make writing it a waste of time. Write on, read, and edit, and enjoy what you do.
I agree-- it definitely works best once you've let it marinate for a bit. Just don't forget to come back to it! (I've had a few like that.)
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Short Stories: November 12, 2014 Issue [#6653]
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