Market Workshop

Well I do think it would be useful to try and figure out what's appropriate to markets in a more considered way than I'm currently managing (current method: market that pays well? check; read story; like story? check; submit).

So how about we do a short informal poll to see what magazine to discuss, take a couple of weeks to read the stories in that magazine, and then try and determine what they have in common, what threads tie them, what the editors particularly seem to appreciate, etc. Then choose another magazine and start again. Any other ideas, suggestions?

Is everyone that is interested submitting to genre markets?

If we all write genre, we can probably find one magazine that would work for most everyone - lots do SF, Fantasy, and Horror. It'd be harder to find a mag that took genre and literary - except maybe the New Yorker or something, and that's a bit out of my league.

Yeah, one that's available free online would be ideal. Definitely needs to be something everyone interested can read I believe there are several in that category anymore.

I'm iffy about DSF though. I already read that one regularly for one thing. And it's so eclectic, I'm afraid it would be difficult to analyze. But if that's what everyone wants to do, anything will be a learning experience for me.

Thanks for the list Matt. I should have looked at that before. There's a couple on there I hadn't really looked at previously

These are all good ideas. Do people want to say which they prefer or shall I just pick one and we get on with it? If we do a different magazine every couple of weeks or month or so, we'll get to all of them eventually.

I'm thinking Chizine looks like a good place to start

Yes and yes.

What I'd like is to end up with a good concept of the right magazine for a story, or, if one were so inclined, some idea of how to write a story for a particular magazine. What "fits" (at least in the here and now. These things change.)

The magazines obviously have to differentiate themselves for their readers. So if you pick up Weird Tales (for example) you as the reader have an idea what kind of stories are going to be in it. But if I look at Chizine's submission guidelines (I just did), it says "dark" and "well-written". That doesn't tell me a lot. So if I write a dark fantasy story, am I better off sending it to Chizine or Cemetery Dance or Dark Wisdom or Fantasy Magazine? I think all of them would like well-written, dark fantasy, but different stories would work better for each of them.

Most magazines suggest reading the stories in them. And I do. I always read at least one story before submitting anything. Unfortunately I think my analysis is sort of shallow. I end up with either I like it or I don't, but little about what made it the right story for that market. To figure that out, I need to read a lot of stories from the magazine and compare them

So if we assume all of us can manage well-written (even if I can't, reading and analyzing a lot of stories will help with that anyway), then I'd like to go through a good list of pro-markets (the genre list isn't that long), and analyze them so I understand what kind of stories each market needs.

And yes, I know, I could just send the stories to all of the reasonable markets, but I think I'll end up better off overall from analyzing what works in stories, and what makes them work for each market. And that if we do it together, we'll get a much deeper analysis as everyone else will see things I miss and vice versa.

Does that make sense?

That's the one I know, soapdish. If there's some other criteria, I'm not aware of it. I think Matt's correct about using the well-known semi-pro ones as well (and markets that pay a flat free range from semi-pro to pro depending on how long the stories are, I think).

Unless someone has a strong objection, I'll plan on starting with Chizine then, and spending 2 weeks to a month reading the stories there, posting whenever anyone has anything to add There's plenty of archive issues so it isn't necessary to wait for material or anything. I suppose some markets may have less up at once.

This was an interesting story to have read to start with Lillie, thank you. It's not my kind of story either, and I probably wouldn't have finished it other than wanting to be able to discuss it intelligently.

I haven't read enough of Chizine in a way that would have allowed me to pick up on the general ambiance things you noticed, Matt. Thank you so much. The atmosphere and building horror are very clear in this one and I'm going to find it interesting to look for that in other stories in the magazine.

There are things in this one that make me happy for a piece of my own that is similar in some ways - it's intended to have a similar increasing beat, and also has a mythological theme (which probably isn't important, but still).

The "twittering happily" and related didn't really bother me. I noticed that one, but thought it fit the tone rather well. I believer the general advice (avoiding adverbs and adjectives) is intended to help new writers learn to use stronger verbs. Not an issue in this story and the occasional adjective, like that one, is actually the descriptive phrase that fits best.

There were a few places I labeled as "trying too hard" in my mind. Where an analogy or turn of phrase was neat and unique, but made the action described very difficult or impossible to picture. But I'm not going to point them out specifically as that turns into more a critique of the story individually rather than adding to the general preferences of the publication. (And yeah, I saw a typo or two as well.)

I didn't really like the story. I believe I found the sex scenes a bit gratuitous as they were so completely described. But that's a personal preference kind of thing. I certainly don't expect to enjoy every story published (even twice, even in the same magazine.) As the submission guidelines say 'no reprints' very clearly, all of the ones that are reprints must be by invitation only. I'd love to know what makes them chose to do so, but can only guess.

I'm not sure I agree that it's about revenge, exactly. Or is meant to be. Certainly there's some of that. But there's also the 'breaking barriers' kind of theme. That I dunno if I understand very well anyway. I agree with you soapdish that it would take rereading and a deeper analysis. What do you mean by a "Black Swan" feel? A reference to the movie? (I haven't seen it).

I haven't read the other story you mentioned Matt, so I'll try that one next.