Why Rejection?

Why?

There's nothing quite so frustrating for a writer, especially a beginning writer, as the "this does not meet our needs" rejection letter. For all it tells you, a stony silence would almost be better.

Editors frequently reject stories because they just don't fit the editors' needs. Before you send any story, read a few issues of the prospective magazine, write for guidelines (include a self addressed envelop with sufficient postage, known as a SASE), and make sure your story fits the publication. A hard science fiction magazine like Analog isn't going to be interested in your Gothic vampire erotica, no matter how well written it is.

Even though the story may match the needs of the publication, say horror for Worlds of Fantasy and Horror (where I am an assistant editor), it may be rejected because it is unpublishable. In other words, even if the idea is interesting, the story doesn't come up to scratch for mechanical or stylistic reasons. While there may be other genre-specific faults that will lead to rejection, the advice that follows applies to both books and magazines; you should only ignore it for very convincing reasons, and then do a damn good job telling the story.

The cardinal rule, and the only one you cannot break, is: the story must grab the readers' interest, and keep it until the end of the tale. Stories are about people (or beings) faced with some sort of conflict, and you must make your readers care enough about your protagonists to want to see them through to the end. The conflict has to be resolved convincingly, and the protagonists should grow, or in any case emerge from the conflict changed (there's nothing that says they have to survive, though simply coming out dead isn't enough - a supreme egotist who sacrifices everything for the common good will work, for example, though the idea has been done many many times). Another way of looking at this is that the story must have something worthwhile to say.

As I was saying, the conflict must resolve, and do so convincingly. If you present us with a situation, but don't resolve it, you haven't done your job. Trick endings, of the "and it was all a dream" sort, leave the reader feeling cheated, and the editor won't buy them. The same can be said for tomato surprises, in which you withhold a crucial piece of information, say that the murderer has two left feet, while the person we've been chewing our lip over for 20 pages only has one.

Though it's not absolutely necessary, stories work best if you place us firmly in the shoes of one character, known as the point of view character (pov). Ideally, we as readers should be peering over the pov's shoulder, learning things as he or she does. If you want, you can show us what the pov is thinking/smelling/feeling; knowing the person's thoughts and feelings usually makes the story much more immediate. Do not shift the pov without a damn good reason. In other words, if we're Linda, shuddering under the blows of her estranged husband (who's come to pay an unwanted late night visit), don't suddenly tell us he thinks she looks sexy with her shirt ripped open. She's not going to know that unless he says it, and if he does, it will certainly engender some sort of reaction on her part that you can explore.

Be clear. If I get to the end of page one and realize I'm lost, I'm not going to read further. You have to make the setting clear, and tell us what is going on, or tell us why we don't know these things, and do so convincingly. Failure to do this does not make a story mysterious, but murky. Nobody wants murk. Remember, we are not in your head; if you go from A to C you must touch on B, however briefly, or we will get lost. Never assume the reader can figure something out.

Start in the middle of things. We get an awful lot of stories that really begin on page five. If there is background that you must include, figure a way to slip it to us (a flashback in the middle of a sword fight on page 2 is usually not the best way to do this), or let us infer it as we go along. You as the author are going to know all sorts of things about your characters and the situation that we don't really have to; communicate no more than is absolutely necessary, and GET ON WITH IT! This is especially true of settings and people; for some reason many writers tell us everything about their characters including their waist lines, and then proceed to tell us how many cedar shingles there are on the roof of the building. This sort of thing slows the story down, making your readers loose interest (a major problem). It also irritates your readers, because they aren't allowed to picture the settings and people for themselves. For example, if eye color is important, say, the Japanese thinking Blackthorn has cat's eyes like an evil kami in Shogun (this serves to highlight their differences), then mention it. But if it's not important, forget it.

Great lumps of expository prose get in the way of the story and slow it down; readers loose interest. Include only the significant details/actions, those that advance the story. If you write a pretty phrase (or even scene) that's just pretty but doesn't go anywhere, cut it out (this can be kind of fun if you're in the right mood). Expository prose also frequently results in preaching at or browbeating the reader. Reading fiction should be a form of escape, and the last thing we need is to be earnestly told how evil child abuse is. We know that already, and don't need to be reminded. At least not here. Now, if you tackle the problem from a unique angle (this is, admittedly, tough), the results could be quite interesting. So long as you don't preach.

Use the right word. As Mark Twain observes, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug." Don't be satisfied by a near miss corrected by a string of modifiers. And go easy on modifiers in general. "The gnarled finger-like branches whipped back and forth, buffeted incessantly by the howling winds of the furious storm..." is overdoing things. An occasional well placed modifier will work wonders, but a string of them will bring your story to its knees. As a corollary to this, do not make indiscriminate use of your word processor's thesaurus just to avoid repeating the same word. Stephen King once said thesauri can be creepy, and he's right - when I asked my thesaurus for synonyms of terrifying, it suggested both ghastly and disgusting, which have vary different connotations.

Another problem is said bookism, in which the author for some reason decides that the classic dialog tag, "she/he said," should be changed. I recently read a story in which people hissed (This is difficult unless the words are all sillibant - try hissing "take that."), cackled, popped, and sniggered at each other for three pages before anyone actually *said* anything. The problem is that these funny tags get in the way, and then it's impossible to draw the reader's attention to, shall we say, a shriek that is important - for example, Betty trying to warn her husband that a bear has just reared up behind him. Said bookism also takes the form of telling the reader how the words are said -- quietly, loudly, agitatedly, whatever. Let the setting and the choice of words tell us how a character is uttering the dialog, and add a modifier only when the dialog is uttered in a way we wouldn't normally expect. Elmer Leonard, who's a master at this sort of thing, only occasionally uses quietly with said - nothing else.

Dialog itself is a potential minefield. You must remember that good dialog, that which people admiringly say sounds like speech, is actually a distillate of speech. You'd be amazed, if you transcribed the average conversation, at how much drivel we spout. In good dialog, every word advances the story. Mr. Leonard, again, is a master at this.

Show, don't tell. Yes, this is one of the oldest saws in the publishing business, and it's still as true as the first time our Paleolithic ancestors trotted it out. Readers do not like to be told things, they'd rather discover them. For example, if your character Jimmy has just gotten slapped by his date for no reason at all, don't say "Jimmy was furious." Not only is it as cold and lifeless, but you're asking us to take it on faith. Show us: "Jimmy felt the flush rise to his cheeks, and the sharp sound of the goblet stem cracking between his fingers carried over the silence." Not good, I admit, but things are moving along.

Don't be detached. We often get stories where the most horrible things are happening to people (we do after all publish horror), but we get the impression that the author is watching from a distance, almost as if he or she was afraid to get involved. That doesn't work: You cannot isolate yourself from your characters and expect to really care about them. Writing can be a painful business, and if your characters are hurting but you're not, you're not going to be able to convey what they're feeling to your readers. I once read a story about a man whose metabolism accelerated to that of a shrew's (he essentially starved to death), but the author told the story from the pov of a flighty journalism student who really didn't care about what was happening to her next door neighbor. If the guy had become her friend/lover or whatever, the story could possibly have been very effective. But the author didn't want to get involved.

Have believable characters that your readers can empathize with, though they need not like them. We often get stories with characters who are either all good or all bad; most people are a mix, and even the most abject individual has some redeeming qualities if you scratch hard enough (the thug who helps old ladies cross the street, or feeds abandoned kittens with a medicine dropper). Also, remember, everyone has goals in life, a reason for existence, and even if you don't at all approve of your villain's goals, you must know what they are and understand them. Having the villain simply be evil isn't enough. Likewise, spectacularly good heroes can be boring. What motivates them?

Every character in your story must be there for a reason. Just because they're cute in your mind's eye is not enough; they must advance the story. You may discover that by combining one or more characters you end up with a considerably stronger individual who plays a much more important role than the original characters did. Another observation about characters: sometimes they take on a life of their own. Unless they do something stupid like jump off a cliff for no reason, follow them - they will often do completely unexpected things that will make your story much stronger. If they just seem to be running around, on the other hand, call them to heel and get on with your tale. The point is, don't try to force your characters to do something that is totally out of character for them - stop, figure out what the problem is, and go on from there.

Your characters should be interesting: you don't seek the company of people who bore you, and you shouldn't expect your reader to either. Also, it's very hard to care about someone who bores you.

A few strictly mechanical problems also lead to rejection. The manuscript must be typed (or wordprocessed, or whatever), double spaced (not line-and-a-half spacing, which makes the page look crowded), and have generous margins - Asimov was able to get away with typing to the edge of the page, but he was Asimov. The type face should be 12 point, and along the lines of Courier or Times Roman. Type that is too small, or that makes it hard to distinguish between various letters, is not acceptable.

Do not use alternative fonts, and do not use fancy things such as bold, small caps, or italics. They can be hard to read, and will confuse the printer if we accept the story. If you want the story to contain italics (which are useful, for example, for showing thought), underline the parts you want the printer to set into italic.

The printout must be clean, and crisp. After several hours of reading, the last thing an editor wants to find is a manuscript with pale gray type. This sort of thing causes eyestrain, makes our eyes ache, and makes us unhappy with you (you don't want that).

You must use your spelling checker intelligently. The damn things don't distinguish between pairs such as its/it's or mothers/mother's. They also don't distinguish between homonyms, such as heel/heal or yoke/yolk. And, sometimes, if what you write stymies them, they make suggestions that are just plain wrong. I recently heard about a story in which a young man, thinking of the strange read life his father had lead, wondered at the "enema of his father." The author probably meant enigma.

Remember, spelling checkers will do nothing about grammatical errors (and grammar checkers don't do that good a job); before you send anything out, you must proofread it - the editors of the magazine (or publishing house) have neither the time nor the inclination to do this for you. Mistakes should be crossed out - not erased - and the correction should be printed between the lines, showing both caps and lower case letters. If there are more than five errors in a page, reprint it.

Cover letters are not necessary, unless you have something to tell us, e.g. "this is the revision you requested." Don't waste your time giving us a summary; we'd rather find out what the story is about by reading it. Don't make threats, and don't say things like "I don't know why I'm sending this to you..." Don't offer to change something outrageous (we once got a guy who offered to tone down his "light-hearted view of the Holocaust" if we found it offensive); that merely shows us you're not too confident about your work (on the other hand, remember nobody's words are graven in stone except God's). And don't tell us about the awards you've won, unless they're the kind that will make us sit up and take notice, for example the World Fantasy Award.

Cover letters sometimes do get separated from manuscripts, so identify your manuscript: Put your name and address in the upper left hand corner of the first page, the word count (rounded up to the nearest 100 or so) in the upper right hand corner, and the title of the story and your moniker centered about a third of the way down. Number the rest of the pages, putting your last name, the first word of the title, and the page number in a header - it's easier for us if the header is flush right.

A couple of other places to look for tips: Mark Twain gives a concise set of recommendations in his essay, "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." It's hard to believe he manages to pack so much into a half page. And for a more general treatise on style, it's hard to beat Strunk and White's Elements of Style (third edition). As George Scithers says, "Get hold of a copy, and you'd better believe it!"

Finally, once your story is as good as you can make it, submit it, including SASE for the editor's reply. A man once told Campbell (one of the great editors of science fiction) he'd written a story but it wasn't any good, so he hadn't submitted it - Campbell replied, "How dare you do my job!" The worst that can happen after you submit is "no," which is not a rejection of you as a person, while the best that can happen is that you make some money, and see your name in print. Now that's a wonderful feeling!

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