What S.F. & F. editors want!

Awesome article. Thanks for the link, Gillhoughly!

Some good bits in there...

/Straka throws away story about exploding spaceships

Thanks for the link!!

Sweet. Nice and informative. I'm glad the world needs more robot stories.

Nicole

thanks!

Thanks for posting this. I don't know if I'll ever write anything that's right for these markets, but at least now I have a better idea of what not to send.

-- Marcy

Looks like I have more stuff to obsess over.

Mah, it's the weekend; sleep is a luxury.

I'll have you know I managed to get rejected by all of three of those publications and not once did I include a retold fairy tale, slipstreamy foofery, an exploding spaceship, or any alternate history or Matheson-style viruses.

The best way to figure out what they want is to read the magazines they edit.

If you're like me, you'll quickly realize that you rarely, if ever, write anything they want to buy. However, that might not stop you from submitting, because it didn't stop me. (Hello, rejections! I was right.)

badducky said:

I'll have you know I managed to get rejected by all of three of those publications and not once did I include a retold fairy tale, slipstreamy foofery, an exploding spaceship, or any alternate history or Matheson-style viruses.

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I heard it was because you sent a pair of dirty underwear with each submission. No, wait. That was me.

Thank you for that link. I think I might try the F&SF Magazine.

I've been rejected by all these guys (and gals) and I can aver with utmost confidence that I did not, in fact, include exploding spaceships.

Tburger said:

I heard it was because you sent a pair of dirty underwear with each submission. No, wait. That was me.

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That underwear was clean.

(The pictures were dirty...)

Hey, thanks, Gillhoughly.

Any of those editors you?

In my story, the spaceship is about to blow up (but doesn't), the characters are grimy (because they worked hard to keep the spaceship from blowing up--and they don't stay grimy; they get showers later) and grim (but that's because they're worried). There is a virus (or maybe it's a bacterium) that threatens to destroy all human life but (because my grimy, grim characters are worried about it) there is a solution that prevents that from happening. None of this has ever been told before (in precisely the way I do) so I should be rich.

Right?

Pthom, I think you should self-publish that story immediately. You can make all the money the publisher would have taken, on top of the pile you will obviously make with that amazing story!

You, sir, will be the exception that proves self-publishing critics wrong.

Agreed, interesting article. I think people who'd been on submission to those magazines had some interesting observations though. I know when I was writing papers in college, my professors could frequently tell you what they thought of your writing. But only rarely did they have a good idea why they thought so.

I love a quote that James MacDonald shared on his uncle jim thread.

"When someone tell you there is a problem at a particular point in your book, they are invariably right. When they tell you what the problem is, they are invariably wrong."

badducky said:

Pthom, I think you should self-publish that story immediately. You can make all the money the publisher would have taken, on top of the pile you will obviously make with that amazing story!

You, sir, will be the exception that proves self-publishing critics wrong.

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Pthom said:

In my story, the spaceship is about to blow up (but doesn't), the characters are grimy (because they worked hard to keep the spaceship from blowing up--and they don't stay grimy; they get showers later) and grim (but that's because they're worried). There is a virus (or maybe it's a bacterium) that threatens to destroy all human life but (because my grimy, grim characters are worried about it) there is a solution that prevents that from happening. None of this has ever been told before (in precisely the way I do) so I should be rich.

Right?

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If you were to include any one of those points on their own, your story would be rejected out of hand. By including every one of them together, you've got a surefire hit on your hands.

Okay. I like badducky and ReneC.

My spaceships always implode, so I should be golden.

Williams:
Figure out what your story is about and put the whole thing in the first sentence, but don’t do it in such away that I can figure out what’s coming from the information. Just be sure that the beginning is intriguing.

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Great article and thanks for the insight into the editors' likes/dislikes.

The reality check is that I understand that these are the editors who are buying or rejecting our stories, and if one wants to SELL, one gives 'em what they want, obviously.

No doubt they're all skilled and savvy writers themselves, but I gotta wonder if such extreme demands for grabbing them in the first paragraph (nevermind the shocking request for a first sentence) isn't somehow a product of someone being too-much the editor, too-little the writer/creator and ... pretty much dumbing things down for the readers? To the detriment of all involved.

It's one thing to dislike a dull or inferior opening, no one's defending mediocrity.

It's another thing to taint the creative waters of future writers by making a demand (hell, by even speaking aloud the personal preference, from the Editor's throne of authority) like "intrigue me from the first sentence"

Let the Writer tell the story, and let the Editor show a little g-damn patience with the subtler unfolding of the tale, perhaps.

And if the quality story has a too-subtle beginning for the Editor's taste, then hey -- there was a time when Editors bought the story, then guided the Writer in the re-shaping of the story to meet the Editor's whims.

It's just sad, to some, to think that Editors might think that Readers today have to be served up a tale or a character rapidly as if the Reader has an MTV-level attention span.

You sell a few things, you prove yourself a Writer, and it's still a thorn in the tongue to think you're still expected to ... pander.

"Keep It Simple, Stupid" ???

Only if you suspect you're expected to be writing for the ADD. Reading isn't a video game, it's ... readin' ...

But yeah, you can recognize you gotta please the gatekeeper/Editor to pass (or to sell) ... and still resent the hell outah the narrowness of the gate they seem to impose.

"We love to be surprised" ??? Yeah, but they stacked the deck against surprise, if they don't care to take the time to let you wrap the gift or the story with a little mystery or subtle revealing ...

small axe said:

"We love to be surprised" ??? Yeah, but they stacked the deck against surprise, if they don't care to take the time to let you wrap the gift or the story with a little mystery or subtle revealing ...

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I think editors ARE receptive to new approaches, experiments, subtlety - but not in the slush pile. They're looking for it in works from authors they know, or who have come recommended.

You know, I'm not an unestablished writer, by any means, and I get very nice personalized rejections from these very editors - which I am very pleased and happy to recieve - explaining what worked and what didn't work in what I had sent them.

I have to say, the reader does, in fact, have ADD. The big reason I, a not unestablished writer, get rejected by these guys is because I'm too subtle and experimental at the expense of the readers that have mild ADD, and will not follow me down the long and subtle pathways.

Plenty of unestablished writers get published in these magazines and they do it by writing a good story, with solid craftsmanship, that moves at an appropriate pace to keep the reader feeling both informed and engaged.

I don't think it's pandering. Because it's really not. It's creating products that people want.

It is a great fallacy in the arts that the object of art is obviously desired somewhere because it was desired by the creator.