Market Style

W.L. Marks

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Style, tone, feel, aesthetic -- however you view it, I've come to realize that it's incredibly important to have a good grasp of this when choosing a target market for my work. For my first few submissions, I was shooting in the dark. I had read the markets I was submitting to, but I hadn't really cottoned on to the fact, for example, that "Market A" almost never published work in the first person present tense while "Market B" tended to like plotty stories rather than introspective ones, regardless of whatever their submissions pages might indicate about their taste.

I'm starting to gain a better understanding of all of this as my pieces make the rounds and receive first tier form rejections from some markets and very nice personal rejections from others, but sometimes I write something and think, Oh, dear, I've never seen anything quite like you at any of these place.

So, to you people who've been at this a lot longer than I have, what is your sense of the different aesthetics at the various markets? I think it would be very helpful to see what everyone's picked up over the years, so that we can all target our stories more effectively the first time around.

For example, I've noticed that Clarkesworld (which I love) publishes a lot of pieces that are more ornate in terms of language and imagery than some of the other markets. (Which might explain why I got my only top-tier form rejection from them on a story that another market said was too "formal".)

I'm thinking mostly of the pro and semi-pro spec fic markets, but I'd love to hear about others as well.
 
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Tienci

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My first time getting past slush at Apex was with a 3500-word story that was plot-driven, dark, in 3rd-person and had lots of fantastical elements.
Perhaps if the characters were a little more fleshed out/stronger it would have fared better? :e2shrug: I don't know--ended up getting a form R from the Editor-in-Chief. :eek:
Oh--the style of it was plain/mainstream/straightforward (i.e. not literary).

ETA--Oops, just saw your post Polenth. Will check out that thread.
 

W.L. Marks

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Thank you, Polenth. I'll go check that thread out. :)