{"id":3522,"date":"2017-01-15T20:35:23","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T20:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=3522"},"modified":"2017-01-15T20:35:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T20:35:23","slug":"want-submit-story-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/want-submit-story-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"So You Want to Submit a Story \u2013 Yet Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re back for our latest look at the trials and tribulations of what happens when you submit a story to a magazine or an anthology. Come with us into the murky world of editing, where we shall reveal… something vaguely relevant, maybe. And very little of what follows will do you any permanent damage. So that’s good.<\/p>\n

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a typical day’s submissions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We’ve looked at hundreds of submissions in the last few months alone, many for Occult Detective Quarterly<\/em>, some for an anthology, Their Coats All Red<\/em>, and even a few for other mysterious projects and private critiques. Today’s reflections are based on all of these, but mostly on the experience of editing Occult Detective Quarterly<\/em> \u2013 a matter of sheer numbers.<\/p>\n

Last time on ‘So You Want to Submit a Story…’<\/em> we mentioned three areas \u2013 Lovecraftian horror<\/em>, Victorian & Edwardian<\/em> period stories, and Clive Cussler Syndrome<\/em>, aka the art of over-description. This time we’re raising a few more issues you might want to consider when you submit a story to any magazine, anthology or similar creature.<\/p>\n

What follows isn’t really aimed at the seasoned writer. <\/strong>Unless you’re so seasoned that you fear you’re fossilising. Nor do we pretend to be authorities on this sort of thing. We merely offer a few observations, which are meant to be helpful (that’s what they all say), and let you decide what you want to do. That way we end up in fewer court cases.<\/p>\n

Firstly, we must raise an over-arching problem, the bane of many editors’ lives…<\/p>\n

The Mystery Parcel<\/h1>\n

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People do not follow the guidelines when it comes to the subject line of submission e-mails. Why is this important? With hundreds of emails, they have to be assigned to the right folders. If the subject line doesn’t say whether it’s a story, art or non-fiction, each email has to be opened to assign it. If there isn’t a title given in the subject line, then the editors and subs readers have to search and match the story to the name of the e-mail sender.<\/p>\n

So we might get an email from hellkitten47 at aol.com<\/em>, with no subject other than (maybe) the project name. We don’t know what’s attached, and if it’s a story, we don’t know what the story is called. There might be a story called The Lecherous Leprechaun<\/em> by Amelia Susan Standish (Mrs). Or maybe a charcoal sketch of Sherlock Holmes eating a radish. It may even be cunningly disguised spam. Who knows? The temptation, which we try to resist, is to bin it.<\/p>\n

Put simply, when you submit a story, absolute adherence to guidelines like this is the way to make sure that you at least end up in the correct folder.<\/p>\n

That’s out of the way, then. So here are two other topics \u2013 The Strange Incident<\/strong><\/em>, and The Distressed Dame<\/strong><\/em>. These both relate to stories that we’ve had to reject. The first is general; the second is rather specific. If you disagree, feel free to comment – you may well know more than we do.<\/p>\n

The Strange Incident<\/h1>\n

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This is when you submit a story that doesn’t really have anything to it in terms of plot and internal drive. Typically, a Strange Incident story describes an event which may be unusual or unexpected, or an encounter where the sense of the weird predominates. It’s more of a situation report or an observation than a structured tale. ODQ receives a number of these, some of them really interesting. But…<\/p>\n

You may have produced an unusual mood piece, but you have to be a pretty good writer, able to deliver high quality characterisation and atmosphere, to get away with it for publication. Some of what you might call the New Weird writers can do it. But we’re not all them.<\/p>\n

And the longer the story you submit, the more any weakness here become apparent. Sometimes a short story can get away with sheer atmosphere. Sometimes.<\/p>\n

We’re not against vignettes and slices of the strange, of mood pieces and almost poetic fragment. We love some of them, but this isn’t about individual taste. It’s about getting published.<\/p>\n

On the whole, most magazines and anthologies are looking for something which does have a certain drive to it, which will satisfy the broad range of readers. They might take tales which are stylish meditations on the weird, but you have to research the market to know that it’s what they particularly want.<\/p>\n

So if you must explore the strange incident, it has to be impressively done. Something odd which happens down the road is\u2026 just that, usually. Think about whether your submission is more of an exemplar of style rather than a story for which someone would pay. Because that’s the bottom line in many markets.<\/p>\n

We had to decline a number of stories, even though they revolved around a weird concept which was different from the usual. We were actively looking for this sort of thing, and were always disappointed when we had to let one go. The point is that almost invariably in these cases, the concept was more interesting than the story<\/strong>. And that’s a hard one.<\/p>\n

We wouldn’t want to discourage the flow of new ideas and approaches in weird literature. All we can ask is that when it comes to formal submissions, you consider aspects such as:<\/p>\n