This year, I'm not just trying to write more, but write better. I have a sense that my skills have plateaued. It's been over three years since I was a Writers of the Future finalist; I've had a smattering of professional short story sales, but without any sense that I've tuned in to the editors' wavelength. The Submissions Grinder tells me I've an acceptance rate of 2.5%. One in forty overall - one in fifty this year - even if that is skewed by a shotgun approach to submissions, spurred on by sci-fi being a broad church and many editors explicitly saying they'll know it when they see it.
In striving
to improve my craft, I've absorbed the various 'Over the
Transom' editorials on
AEscifi, which is, after all, exactly where I'm trying to pitch my submissions. Using that,
and the T Gene Davis pieces cited earlier, I've distilled a set of structural criteria that a story should (normally) have. These are the marks that editors say a story should hit - or be
very clear why it doesn't.
(I've said structural criteria, so I'm not including the old threesome of a great title, opening line, and paragraph, as they're not really structural. You could have a story that fails miserably on all three and, with a few dozen very bon mots, tick them off. Like 'It was a Dark and Stormy Knight' as a title. You can have that one for free).
So, let me share them with you, together with an as-objective-as-I-can-be assessment of my shorts, thirty published and thirty-eight still homeless.
Low passives & reading age
I've scored myself 77% for published and 68% for unpublished stories. Despite all their strengths, I think this explains why they don't fly.
One from T Gene Davis, and the only one that can be objectively measured, in that Word spits out a variety of analytics. For this, I've simply multiplied reading grade by the percentage of passive sentences. So, a piece at fifth grade level, with five percent passive sentences will score a decent 25. Looking at thirty published stories, they score 29.7; thirty-eight unpublished ones, most edited since reading that T Gene Davis piece, score 24.3. It looks like I'm on top of that one, albeit with potential to make my writing more active and accessible.
Stakes - something to win or lose
This is one that I’ve already said I have an issue with. On the one hand, I can see the point entirely. If your hero doesn’t have skin in the game, then neither will your audience. But I’m British, a nation that prefers a life of quiet desperation, hence I’m more likely to write about the frustration of lending your newspaper to a fellow traveller, hearing the snapping, rustling and tearing, and wondering about the state it’ll be returned in, than saving a planet from a black hole. But look at Nineteen Eighty-Four: within a dystopian world, the story itself is about small personal victories and defeats, not saving the universe. Stakes don’t need to be big to be meaningful.
For that reason, I’ve tried to be generous in deciding whether my characters have something to win or lose, with that being true for 83% of my published and 92% of my unpublished tales. Perhaps the surprising thing is not that more than nine in ten of those searching for a home qualify - I have been writing and rewriting with this rule in mind for some months now - but that 17% of stories editors like enough to pay for don’t have much if anything at stake.
Main character has a real choice to make
In looking at my stories through this lens, I found myself making the same notation over and over: helter-skelter cliff-hanger. Characters are tipped out of equilibrium, only to suffer a series of indignities before finally discovering their fate. At no point in their descent into their personal hells do they get to make plans, engage in counter-strategies, or even spot a tuft of grass to hang on to. Only at the end, when I leave them dumped on their arses, are they in a position to start their fight back.
About half of my published, and a quarter of my unpublished stories suffer from this failing, although many of my published stories are really flashes, where a lack of agency is less surprising. In many cases, what's missing is to bring the choice front and centre, or give the story some travel time as the decision is made. Some of them need more fundamental work, of course.
Main character changes
Another one I struggle with, and, arguably, another symptom of a single syndrome. Fifty-seven percent of my published stories see the character or world change; only about two-thirds of the tales doing the rounds tick the box. Again, if all I do is throw my characters in a mixer and see what happens, they haven't been given a chance to put their lives back together and emerge triumphant.
Main character has a setback
Even when I do write a three act story, all too often there's something a bit too linear about it all, a lack of twists on the road. Problem, plan, implementation, pat on back or, more typically, banging from the inside of a coffin that's already been nailed shut. Or else they end on the setback, needing one last rise from the ropes to knock the monster down. Or possibly an entire third act - yes, I've spotted at least one story which qualifies as two acts in search of a third. I've left it just when that last switchback is needed. Maybe I don't see life as being about rising from the ropes? Where's Freud when you need his opinion?
Even so, about four in five of my stories have something that could be described as a setback, however lame. A decent analysis, but I do have a worry about the quality of the setbacks. Note to self: be more cruel.
Is this a complete story?
This to me is the big one. I recently received a very nice rejection email from Jeff Georgeson at Penumbric Speculative Fiction where he concluded, "I wanted ... more, somehow." And that's the thing. Essentially, I have a habit of writing act ones. I turn characters' lives upside down, and leave them on the ceiling, without ever bothering how to get them back on the floor. I have four 1000 to 1500 word vignettes, each of which I now see need another two acts and 3000 to 5000 words to make proper stories. I should be pleased. A handful of strong openings, foundations to build on.
Put through that mill, of my thirty-eight stories, only twenty are fit to be set loose, of which two or three are only being allowed to roam on the basis that they've been rejected by so many editors that it's only the penny-a-word merchants left, and I'd rather prioritise my time elsewhere. Of the rest, it's mainly polishing, emphasising choices or decision points. But there are four which require an additional two acts, one that needs a third, several where the third act needs to be rethought to make it emotionally satisfying. A few with 'total rewrite' next to them.
Get it all right and who knows when I'll have a second one of these available?
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