Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Over the summer, I ran a flash fiction contest, where we received almost 300 short story entries and the winner was published on the blog. First I want to say that I know how difficult it was for the people who submitted stories to the UMS contest. I have been on the other end of the "slush" pile more times than I can count. I am currently going through something similar as my agent submits my manuscript to publishers. Knowing the book I spent five years on will take certain editors five minutes to judge is stressful and, at times, frustrating.

I have to say, though, after judging the contest, I think I understand why editors often resort to making snap judgements. At first, I made myself read every entry in its entirety. My reasoning was that people spent time on these stories and they were short anyway. But after I got through the first hundred or so, I realized that if I didn't like the first couple of paragraphs, the chances I was going to like the rest of the story were practically zero. I began to subconsciously compile a mental list of things that would get me to put a story aside. If an entry matched something on this list, I would either stop reading or just skim.

While this is highly subjective, these are the trends I ran into it and I thought it might be helpful for people:

Sentence Structure - This may seem surprising, but run-on or confusing sentences in the first paragraph were the number one reason I put entries aside early without finishing them. I was expecting typos or bad grammar to be a problem, but for the most part writers actually did know how to use spell check. The problems I am talking about can't be found by spellcheck, but they still made the piece feel unpolished. To prevent this, I would suggest reading your work to yourself or a friend out loud before submitting it. If you find yourself stumbling over long clunky sentences, chances are an editor will too.

Endings - There were many, many cases where I actually did feel myself pulled in by a world and a character only to discover by the end there was no real plot. The character wasn't really trying to achieve anything so there was no reveal of success or failure at the end. These stories almost felt like pitches or explorations that would be good for a longer work, but just didn't meet the needs of flash fiction. I have written these sorts of stories more times than I can count, and while they are useful writing exercises, I totally understand why they aren't publishable. 

Dialogue - I was a bit surprised to see that the vast majority of stories had no dialogue whatsoever. While containing dialogue wasn't a hard requirement (I actually had some finalists that were dialogue free), I often found excluding dialogue was one the things that slowed down a story and made it feel more like a "pitch." If you think of a short story like a scene in a movie, nine times out of ten, it's going to be a lot more engaging if the characters talk. Dialogue also helps visually break up long paragraphs, making for a zippier read. I would suggest if you have a short story or first chapter of a novel with no dialogue, I would examine why. If you would have to shoehorn it in to get it to work, don't. Otherwise? Probably include it.

One final note is that this is all very subjective. There were times I read a story that didn't click with me, only for it to get withdrawn later because it had been picked up somewhere else. That's okay. It's one of the beautiful and frustrating things about publishing. One person's "poor sentence structure" is another person's poetry. 
 

  • Replies 0
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.










ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES





What should you accept as credible?



Where it All Began















×
×
  • Create New...