Advice

How to Avoid Default Rejection

Table of Content

Preamble

I’ve spent years sending stories out and getting the standard rejection slip from magazines that went along the lines of, “Thank you very much, but this isn’t quite for us.”

A kind and apt way of putting it, but unhelpful for a new writer looking to improve.

We would love to send our writers individualized commentary on their work and where it fell short, but we small publishers are often working on our projects out of passion and are rarely able to give such advice. There’s also the fact that many of the comments we would theoretically give would be much of the same advice over and over again.

For this reason, I’ve tried to cover the most common things that make stories unappealing for me. I encountered many of these things in workshops at university courses, slush piles for other small magazines, or works of people on the various Facebook groups I’m a part of.

I stress that these aren’t commandments. Nothing listed here that is included or missing from your story makes your story unpublishable or unpopular. Nor does it mean that by covering every item in this list, you guarantee yourself at least a personal rejection note from us or anyone else.

Most of the time, “This story isn’t for us,” means just that.

But, if you wanted to increase your chances and learn a bit about what we at Somewhere are looking for in a piece, this is a good place to start.

1. Story

Elements of a story are the most important aspects of consideration for us and many other readers. LitWorldInterviews.com conducted a survey on why readers put down a book, and only sixteen precent of responders reported it being because of bad writing. Almost half of readers say they drop books because the book or characters are boring.

If you need a case study of how much more important an engaging story is than writing quality, take a look at Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James. It “objectively” has bad writing, yet it must have brought some joy and entertainment to 95 million dollars worth of readers.

Some writers insist the new writer should avoid adverbs (you’ll find similar advice down below), yet J. K. Rowling uses 140 adverbs for every 10,000 words in her Harry Potter series. Despite this, Harry Potter was a beloved series of books for some time, and still is for many.

Make no mistake; excellent writing is important. It is what makes the experience of reading enjoyable. I order my advice in this way because if you aren’t going to read this entire list, I hope you at least take this these first few points to heart:

Show something no one has read before.

What is valuable in this industry is unique ideas. This is the number one thing you can bring to the table.

An editor can tighten up prose that’s messy. We can survive an info dump. But only you can show us an idea no one has ever had before.

A skilled writer can emulate Ray Bradbury, but Ray Bradbury will always be the best at telling Ray Bradbury stories. Likewise, only you can tell stories like yourself.

So, avoid retreading a tired trope—the zombie apocalypses and the heartthrob vampires. Better to take these tropes and show them to us from a different angle: your angle.

For this reason, do not send us fanfiction. The practical reason is that the content is most likely copyrighted, and we cannot publish it legally.

But, even in the case of something in the public domain (for example: Lovecraft), we would be much more impressed by the horrid, fantastic monsters you come up with.

Invest in characters.

Characters are what add life to the story. If the characters are dull, the story will likely be dull.

How do you create interesting characters?

They should all at least have these two things: a belief and a want. Most of the time, they should also have a need.

All your characters should have different beliefs, wants, and needs, which should create conflict as they get in each other’s way. Characters should always be motivated by what they want.

“Wanting to do the right thing,” does not count. That is an act of selflessness, characterizing a lack of a want.

Please make—at least— the major characters complex. We’ve read enough of the businessman whose only characteristic is “greedy” and the ex-girlfriend whose only characteristic is “crazy.”

Your characters should be complex because people are complex, both good and evil from different angles. If you phone it in and rely on archetypes, no one’s going to believe your story, because people aren’t easily categorized.

Show change.

Ever since the days when myths explained the world and how we should behave in it, stories have been about the causes and effects that lead to change.

Change can be internal or external. Internal change is when a character changes their belief over the course of the story.

External change happens when the characters don’t change, but their strong sense of values (good or evil) changes the setting and characters around them. Since change is what makes stories interesting, the change in these types of stories should be drastic.

Keep in mind: stories that focus on internal change are often more engaging than stories that focus on external change. Writing about internal change offers greater opportunities for emotional depth. Characters in a story about external changes will often have a “crisis of faith” moment, but as they never change their mind, this is as far as the characters can go.

Also, by having a character that doesn’t change, you run the risk of creating a flawless character, which isn’t believable, and thus jeopardizes the suspension of disbelief you are trying to cultivate.

That isn’t to say there aren’t great stories where characters don’t change. You will have to use your judgement on what feels right.

Hurt your characters—or at least intend to.

An important part of creating change is to have conflict. If everything is going well in a character’s life, why should they bother to change or act?

A lot of new writers shy away from putting characters in conflict. Most writers are generally nice, conflict-averse people who love their characters. They don’t want to hurt anyone, real or not. They may worry about what the reader will think of them, the writer, by having such awful things happen to a character.

You must hurt your character, or at least really threaten them. Remind yourself this is only fiction. Everything’s cool here. Nothing is real.

The best way to write conflict is to live it. If you feel you have nothing to write about, go out into the world and do something dangerous. Learn a skill you’ve never tried before. Have your heart broken. Get fired from a job. Then when you come back from your adventure, you’ll have something to write about.

Give only the essentials.

When we read novels, we often welcome worldbuilding exposition. The novel wants to submerge you in a fantastic world.

Short stories are about the emotional punch. To take Mary Robinette Kowal’s example, if stories are the Olympics, novels are the athlete interviews before and after the competition, with the climax being the competition. If stories are the Olympics, short stories are just competition.

I would encourage following Elmore Leonard’s advice on editing, which I would say applies to short stories and novels alike: “Skip the boring parts.”

If, while rereading your story, you come to a section where your mind drifts off, delete it. If you object by saying the section is important for explaining events to come, cut it anyways, and thank the gods that you live in an era where such things can be done easily, without rewriting page after page. Reread your story, and when you’re finished, ask yourself how essential that section was.

Show your world.

“Show and don’t tell” isn’t the all-holy writing commandment people make it to be. Sometimes, if the showing is laborious and boring (refer to the point above), the best choice is to tell and not show.

For the new writer, however, who often doesn’t know when they should tell instead of show, they will rarely be making a mistake by showing.

In short, speculative fiction, showing a world instead of telling us about it is hard. There is no space for the explanations that novels allow, and a reader will not forgive having a resident of the world be told something through dialogue that they should already know.

One of the easiest ways to worldbuild naturally is to have the characters make mistakes. Consider our own world, where we discover its rules through trial and error. We learn the stove top is hot because when we touch it, it burns.

This is why so many fantastical stories often have a character newly coming into the world. They’re the new student at the magic school, or just started a job as a psychic. They are naïve and curious, ready to have wiser characters explain things to them, or to make mistakes and learn the world’s rules with the reader.

Another possibility is to tell the story with no explanation, and be confident the reader will follow along. There is a very real danger of leaving the reader totally confused, but readers are also often smarter than we give them credit for.

On Troubling Content (Gratuitous Violence, Sex, Swearing, -isms, and ‑phobias).

Many magazines will flat out refuse stories with troubling content or language, regardless of what it’s doing. This is understandable, for two reasons:

A significant portion of readers (about 25% according to LitWorldInterviews) don’t want to read stories with troubling content.
So many writers send stories with troubling content that only serves as shock value, and publishers are tired of reading such stories and would rather not deal with them.

We have no such restrictions at Somewhere. We see fiction as reflections of the real world and believe fiction should have every capacity to express its representation, whether its subject matter is beautiful or ugly. To blanket prohibit these kinds of stories would be pretending these issues don’t exist, which we are against.

Remember that these tools are like a crude rocket fuel, capable of producing awesome work or blowing up in the author’s face.

Here are a few common pitfalls to watch out for:

Remember that violence and sex are not automatically interesting. This isn’t the latest Marvel blockbuster or Pornhub.

Short prose fiction isn’t visual. If violence or sex is present in your work, it should be developing the plot, the characters, or a theme or setting. If it’s just there, like a pile of fish guts dropped in a white bucket, it probably won’t go down well.

Swearing often characterizes. People swear in moments of heightened emotion or when they don’t care how they’re perceived.

Using swearing to emphasize is as bad as using a word like “very” or “really.” It might be appropriate depending on your character, but not as evocative as a strong verb or noun would be.

When a character uses a racial or cultural slur or deadnames, you make your story about these issues, as the reader will draw real-world, present-day comparisons. What are you saying about these issues?

If the answer is, “Nothing. It’s just worldbuilding or the character,” then you have a problem. The use of these words is likely to distract from what you want to do.

Having a world or a character that uses this language as a shortcut to get the reader to hate an antagonist is lazy and not very interesting. Give your antagonists more depth. Give them a philosophy that, under different circumstances, we or you might agree with.

It should go without saying that we will not publish anything we find to be deliberately discriminatory or hateful to any group. Don’t email and ask us to “clarify” what we mean, or to explain how your story is different, or to decry how this violates your free speech (your rights end where they infringe on another person’s rights). If you truly believe your story isn’t hurtful, then it is likely fine. Send it and let us handle the rest.

We’re not going to automatically blacklist a writer because we find they crossed a line. We take the position that most people mean well, that we’re all trying things, and that we make mistakes.

In these very fringe cases, we’ll probably say in our rejection note, “Hey, this came across as a little problematic for XYZ reasons.” This is not meant to admonish you; you’re welcome to disagree. We still think you’re cool, you’re welcome to submit a new story, and we’re all going to move on with our lives.

You should not, however, email us to apologize or to explain how your story actually isn’t problematic, because that would get you blacklisted.

Repeat offenders, however, is another issue. If we continue to receive stories from you that seem to intentionally be attacking a people, community, or ideology, then you will be blacklisted.

2. Prose

Imagine someone wants to build a house. They have a good idea of what they like in a house: how they want to decorate it, and maybe what the structure should be. However, they don’t know anything about the tools, techniques, or materials involved in building that house.

Think they’ll make a very good house?

Maybe not the first one, or the second one. They’ll certainly get there eventually if they keep at it, but it certainly would help if they knew some techniques to start.

So, here are some techniques:

Know the basics.

Know the tools you’re using and care about them. If you don’t know how the language works, learn. If you think you know how it works, review it anyways. Knowing how nouns, verbs, objects, and phrases interact with each other will help you untangle why sentences read off.

Use original similes and metaphors…

“White as snow,” “red as wine,” “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Readers have read these lines a thousand times before. Surprise them with your novelty.

Here’s a tip: use similes and metaphors to describe a sensation other than sight. Many sight and emotion similes are clichéd, but how you interpret a sound, a smell, a taste, or a feeling will probably be unique, given how subjective these sensations can be.

… but don’t get too strange.

It’s not all about writing things in new ways. Don’t push your metaphors and similes into the realm of absurdity. Sometimes, saying something plainly is your best bet.

Vary your sentences.

I love the literary style of Hemingway. Minimalist. Efficient. Rife with emotion.

Those who try to emulate his writing style, however, often write prose full of simple sentences, and thus their prose reads monotone.

It’s a good instinct to try and keep to the essence of your sentence’s meaning, but that is not an excuse for boring, repetitive writing. Nor is the previous statement an excuse to bloat a sentence with meaningless jargon, adjectives, and adverbs.

You’re not in school anymore. You’re not trying to meet a word count. You need to make your words matter.

If you find you have a lot of simple sentences, try combining some into a complex sentence with a phrase at the beginning of the sentence, the end, or both, like in this sentence.

A compound sentence like this can take two sentences with the same subject and make them one and goes a long way towards varying sentence structure.

Use adjectives and adverbs effectively.

Many writing advisers encourage striping all manner of adverbs, and sometimes adjectives, from your writing. Before you go blindly deleting every word that ends in “-ly,” let’s talk about how adjectives and adverbs can help or hinder your writing.

Adjectives and adverbs add information to nouns, verbs, and maybe other adjectives. As you write, there will certainly be situations where an adjective or adverb is the only way to convey what you want to communicate.

But be wary. Before you commit an adjective or adverb to your text, ask yourself if it’s doing essential work that a single, more-specific word couldn’t do.

Understand that the more you fill your sentences with words, the weaker they become as the reader’s attention is divided among them. Make sure that you aren’t stating the obvious when you write something like “the rough rock” or “the blue sea.”

Consider if a more specific word could replace the need of an adjective or adverb. “He slammed the door.” vs. “He forcefully closed the door.”

Be cautious if you are using an adverb to modify “said.” Actually, be careful if you are using a verb other than “said” on a dialogue attribution. Far too often, the information provided by the verb is apparent in what is being said or the context in which it is being said.

Sometimes, using a verb other then “said” results in something completely absurd. I will never forget the line in Harry Potter, “‘Snape!’ ejaculated Slughorn.”

Use the verb ‘to be’ only when necessary.

The verb “to be” is extremely common in the English language. It’s a reality of how the language works. Almost every sentence in this section uses the verb “to be.”

First, because it is so common, readers are used to reading these sentences, and they are therefore not very interesting.

But second, and more to the point, is that this is a verb that doesn’t do anything. Every other verb tells how something is happening.

The subject moves. The subject imposes.

The subject is?

Nothing happens. Because “being” is static. The statement of fact. Your story isn’t moving forward. You’re expositing.

Of course, sometimes you do need to stop and explain what there is. Just be aware of what you’re doing.

When you are looking at a boring sentence where the working verb is “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” or “been,” ask yourself:

How necessary is this explanation?
Can the same idea be expressed with an action? A more interesting verb?

Use the passive tense effectively.

The verb “to be” can also be an indicator of the passive voice. Again, some writing instructors will encourage the removal of the passive voice, rightly understanding that the passive voice can make the doer of the verb ambiguous, and again, creates a sentence where nothing is actually happening.

Some beginners, such as I, take this advice too far and never use the passive tense. This is a mistake.

The passive voice is useful when the doer of the verb is absent. It can also be helpful if you want the readers focus to be on the subject of the verb instead of the object.

The worst thing you could do is change every verb construction from a passive voice to an active voice, while forgetting that you are writing a sentence in the perfect continuous or the pluperfect continuous tense, and thus your verb construction is not only active, but the only correct way of writing what you mean.

These are the pitfalls you run into when you don’t know the mechanics of the language.

Use specific words.

“Thing. Stuff. One of. Something. Someone. Somehow”. Sometimes these words are useful if the matter under discussion is undefined or vague. Before you commit to these words, ask if there’s a more specific word you could use.

Use simple words.

Often, you will want to use a simple word instead of a complex one. Again, this depends on your intention. Maybe there’s a nuance to using the word “emolument” that you couldn’t get from writing “salary.” Maybe it fits the voice of the character or the narrator.

If, however, you are only using the word to show off, you’re better off using a simple word.

A List of Common Typos

Here is a list of common typos you should pay special attention to when editing your own work. Most are avoided by reading through your story out loud. Be sure to edit your work before submitting and do so when you are most awake.

Was (refers to a single event that happened and then ended) vs. Has been (refer to something that began and continued for some time.)
Its (possessive) vs. It’s (contraction of “it is”)
Your (possessive) vs. You’re (contractions of “you are”)
There (preposition), Their (plural possessive), They’re (contraction of “they are”)
Tough (as in sturdy or strong), Thought (past tense of think), Though (as in “despite the fact”)
We’re (contraction of “we are”) vs. were (second person singular of “to be”)
Homophones (sale vs. sail)
Words that mean different things with doubled consonants (Desert vs. Dessert)