Last time, I talked about worldbuilding techniques. Those are the ways authors build a world in the readers' minds--the world the characters live in. Every story requires worldbuilding, even if your story is set in an environment your readers know well.
The mistake a lot of unpublished authors make in worldbuilding is the "information dump." I don't know who invented that term, but it's the mistake of providing much more information than the story needs, especially to an audience who doesn't yet have reason to care about any of it.
My theory is, you can get away with any amount of exposition if the reader wants to read it. The trick is to make them want to read it. So whenever you're building your story's world, and you, through exposition, start telling readers all about the last five hundred years of chaos your world has gone through, please hesitate and ask yourself one question:
Why would my readers care about any of this?
This question is not rhetorical; it's essential. If you can provide a good, solid answer, keep writing that exposition! But if you can't...
Oh. Here's a bad answer to that question: "Because if they don't have this information, they'll never understand the implied threat of murder Vanessa's making in Chapter Six when she looks behind the mirror and talks about ghosts." The only time this answer is good, is if you're writing Chapter Six, and Vanessa just now looked behind the mirror and talked about ghosts.
What many beginning fiction writers don't get is, you don't want your reader to understand everything right away. Questions, remember? You want to raise questions in your readers' minds because questions make readers keep reading. If Vanessa's combination mirror move/ghost talk seems really out of place, readers are going to suspect they can't take her action at face value. That's when you tell the readers what her actions mean--right when they want to know the most. Or maybe in the very next scene, if stopping the action for an explanation would wreck the story's rhythm. But soon. Do it soon, or the reader will put stop reading and say "Nothing in this story makes any sense."
One other worldbuilding hint. I promised you a preview of one of the stories we're publishing in Issue #19. The story is our third place winner, The Gear Master's Wife, and we think it contains some of the best worldbuilding our magazine has ever received. The author, John Burridge, manages to mix questions with suggested answers in such a way that, even though we don't fully understand the world the story takes place in, we feel we understand enough. I want to draw special attention to one sentence in that story. The main character makes ice sculptures, and is making sculptures with religious meaning for his city's big holiday. Here's the sentence:
The next morning, the Guild of Bakers came to collect his ice statues for the Longnight Folly.
What kind of world names their biggest holiday "Longnight Folly"? The answer is, this story's world, which is cold, austere, and formal. So does everyone act stupid and foolish for a night on this holiday? No, it's a serious religious holiday. Yet in the context of the story, it works... even though you never really understand what the holiday's about or why it matters so.
So why would a guild of bakers come by to pick up the ice sculptures? I have no idea, but I bet the author does, and his confidence shines through in every description.
See, the story isn't really about the holiday or the guild of bakers. That's all background. The story is about a man who just suffered a terrible loss. The important thing is, he suffered it in this story's world, which is so stark and formal that readers can intuit the sculptor isn't going to get much help for his pain. This story's world doesn't have a lot of use for clumsy, awkward feelings. So, people in this world have a real problem when they're overcome with emotions too strong to contain. Since an act like crying or getting roaring drunk would be unthinkable here, the man's feelings escape him in a rather unorthodox way that causes a lot of trouble, and that is what the story is really about.
Every description and every action characters take hammer home the world's formality. Who cares why bakers collect the ice statues? It's interesting--it makes the world seem more real, because somebody (the author) put a lot of thought into that choice--but it's not important. What's important is what's shown in every line, and demonstrated in every description: this is not a place where you'll get comforted when you're sad.
So when you're building your characters' world, figure out what its most important element is, and focus on that. In The Zen Thing, the story I discussed last time, it was the bizarre relationships among deeply flawed people. In The Gear Master's Wife it's the world's coldness. What is it in your story's world?
Showing posts with label evaluating stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evaluating stories. Show all posts
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Worldbuilding
The term "Worldbuilding" dates at least back to the 1970s and refers to the work involved in creating a fictional world. When referring to prose ficiton, worldbuilding is all about giving fictional characters an interesting (to the reader, anyway) place to live.
(Remember, the world has to be interesting to the reader, not necessarily to the story's characters. The purpose of writing fiction is to make readers, not characters, experience specific thoughts and feelings.)
Stories that are set in the real world require just as much worldbuilding as stories set in galaxies far, far away. The difference is, readers can generally be assumed to have a basic knowledge of the real world.
That's not always true, though. At OTP we get a fair number of submissions from countries where life is rather different than it is in the US, or even the US and the UK and its related countries. For issue #19 we received, liked, but ultimately had to reject a story that couldn't be fully appreciated unless you knew a lot more about Serbian history than we do, and that we suspect our readers have.
A couple of times we've published stories by African authors, and we've had to ask them to be a little more explicit about what certain objects are, or whether it's going with custom or against custom for a character to do some act that, in the story, annoys neighbors. I'm sure some African readers probably wondered why the author bothered explaining something "everybody knows," but the point is, OTP is a global magazine and there's very little in this world that "everybody knows." (For one thing, all of our stories are written in English and only about 1/8 of the world's population can speak English. Reading it is a different question, and even harder to answer.)
Even stories set in today's America and aimed at educated audiences in today's America require worldbuilding. Here's a good example from "The Zen Thing" by Emma Duffy, recently published in One Story magazine. Watch this combination of family history, characterization, mood setting, and scene setting. Anita is the story's main character and the setting is a family get-together.
[Frank] and Anita's grandmother are eighty years old. They met five years ago at Fresh Seafood, where Anita's grandmother worked as a cashier. They were both living in mobile homes at the time, but Frank's was a double-wide, and so they decided to move in there. Everyone is glad for it, especially Frank, who seems to have no family to his name whatsoever and will now, he knows, have his ass wiped by Anita's parents when the time comes. He has already asked Anita's mother, who is a nurse, to be his medical power of attorney. Everyone is pretty sure Frank is gay, and possibly black, though Anita's grandmother, having never had any experience with either, is unaware of this.
That's 100% worldbuilding. You can't understand this story until you understand the family and the world they're living in. In this case their world is one of unrealistic hopes, long-smoldering grudges, and nasty intrusions from the uglier parts of reality the characters intend to ignore for as long as possible.
Worldbuilding is much more difficult, though, when a story is not set in a world that shares most of its features with the one the audience lives in. When I was active on critters.org, I read a lot of unpublished (and unpublishable) SF/fantasy novels, or at least their opening chapters. I've seen authors desperately try to stuff six books' worth of notes about their world's history into the reader without once asking the question, "What must the reader know to fully understand my story?" The answer to that question is, "Much, much less than what you need to know to write your story."
In other words, we can read and enjoy The Hobbit without having to read The Silmarillion. (Good thing, too, if you ask me!) That's because the best writers figure out how to imply or suggest what readers need to grasp about a world without having to write "information dumps"--those heavy, leaden walls of text that previously speedy and nimble stories crash into and die from.
As an example, in the excerpt above, readers could not be expected to guess that Anita's grandmother has had no experience with gays or black people, so the story told them. Readers also couldn't be expected to guess that Frank may well be both gay and black, so the story told them. But now that you know these two things, and that Anita's grandmother and Frank have been living together for five years, what can you guess? See, that's the art of worldbuilding--giving the readers just enough pieces of the puzzle for them to assemble the rest. The finished picture in the reader's mind doesn't have to be exactly the same as the one in the writer's mind, just close enough to provide a useful framework for the rest of the story.
Next week I'll give you a preview of a story we're publishing in Issue #19. That story does one of the best jobs of SF worldbuilding I've ever seen from an author who isn't already famous for writing great SF, and I'll go into some detail (with the author's permission) about how I think he does it.
(Remember, the world has to be interesting to the reader, not necessarily to the story's characters. The purpose of writing fiction is to make readers, not characters, experience specific thoughts and feelings.)
Stories that are set in the real world require just as much worldbuilding as stories set in galaxies far, far away. The difference is, readers can generally be assumed to have a basic knowledge of the real world.
That's not always true, though. At OTP we get a fair number of submissions from countries where life is rather different than it is in the US, or even the US and the UK and its related countries. For issue #19 we received, liked, but ultimately had to reject a story that couldn't be fully appreciated unless you knew a lot more about Serbian history than we do, and that we suspect our readers have.
A couple of times we've published stories by African authors, and we've had to ask them to be a little more explicit about what certain objects are, or whether it's going with custom or against custom for a character to do some act that, in the story, annoys neighbors. I'm sure some African readers probably wondered why the author bothered explaining something "everybody knows," but the point is, OTP is a global magazine and there's very little in this world that "everybody knows." (For one thing, all of our stories are written in English and only about 1/8 of the world's population can speak English. Reading it is a different question, and even harder to answer.)
Even stories set in today's America and aimed at educated audiences in today's America require worldbuilding. Here's a good example from "The Zen Thing" by Emma Duffy, recently published in One Story magazine. Watch this combination of family history, characterization, mood setting, and scene setting. Anita is the story's main character and the setting is a family get-together.
[Frank] and Anita's grandmother are eighty years old. They met five years ago at Fresh Seafood, where Anita's grandmother worked as a cashier. They were both living in mobile homes at the time, but Frank's was a double-wide, and so they decided to move in there. Everyone is glad for it, especially Frank, who seems to have no family to his name whatsoever and will now, he knows, have his ass wiped by Anita's parents when the time comes. He has already asked Anita's mother, who is a nurse, to be his medical power of attorney. Everyone is pretty sure Frank is gay, and possibly black, though Anita's grandmother, having never had any experience with either, is unaware of this.
That's 100% worldbuilding. You can't understand this story until you understand the family and the world they're living in. In this case their world is one of unrealistic hopes, long-smoldering grudges, and nasty intrusions from the uglier parts of reality the characters intend to ignore for as long as possible.
Worldbuilding is much more difficult, though, when a story is not set in a world that shares most of its features with the one the audience lives in. When I was active on critters.org, I read a lot of unpublished (and unpublishable) SF/fantasy novels, or at least their opening chapters. I've seen authors desperately try to stuff six books' worth of notes about their world's history into the reader without once asking the question, "What must the reader know to fully understand my story?" The answer to that question is, "Much, much less than what you need to know to write your story."
In other words, we can read and enjoy The Hobbit without having to read The Silmarillion. (Good thing, too, if you ask me!) That's because the best writers figure out how to imply or suggest what readers need to grasp about a world without having to write "information dumps"--those heavy, leaden walls of text that previously speedy and nimble stories crash into and die from.
As an example, in the excerpt above, readers could not be expected to guess that Anita's grandmother has had no experience with gays or black people, so the story told them. Readers also couldn't be expected to guess that Frank may well be both gay and black, so the story told them. But now that you know these two things, and that Anita's grandmother and Frank have been living together for five years, what can you guess? See, that's the art of worldbuilding--giving the readers just enough pieces of the puzzle for them to assemble the rest. The finished picture in the reader's mind doesn't have to be exactly the same as the one in the writer's mind, just close enough to provide a useful framework for the rest of the story.
Next week I'll give you a preview of a story we're publishing in Issue #19. That story does one of the best jobs of SF worldbuilding I've ever seen from an author who isn't already famous for writing great SF, and I'll go into some detail (with the author's permission) about how I think he does it.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Our Reading and Rating Process
Every once in a while, we get communications from people who don't understand how we can announce the results of a short story contest just two or three days after it closes. They wonder if we're somehow reading 200+ stories in two or three days. No, we read and rate them as they come in. But that raises an important question:
If you send us a story ten days into a contest and we judge it to be the 12th best story of the 20 received up to that point, why don't we send you a rejection slip right then? Why wait until the contest is over?
We're open to changing that practice, if you can come up with a strong enough counter-argument. Here is our reasoning for the current practice.
1) We want each author to enter our contests only once. Since we read all stories blindly, however, we don't have a good way to prevent somebody from sending us a story on Day 1 of the contest, and then submitting something else on Day 75. Our nightmare scenario is dealing with a writer who would submit a different (rejectable) story every day if we rejected stories as soon as we realized they had no chance to get published.
2) A point from Bethany: We have rejected stories that turned out to be from authors who, in different contests, took first place (with a different story of course). By rejecting an early entry right away, we're giving that entry's author a chance to submit a different story that we might like a lot more. Rejecting stories right away gives those stories' authors a big advantage over other contestants, and we think that would be unfair.
3) I know from experience it's annoying to wait 2-3 months to find out how your story did, but a 2-3 month wait time is not that far from an industry average. So while I'm not thrilled with it, I don't feel we're treating our writers in a way that the industry would condemn.
4) What would we do with a story we receive on Day 2 of a contest, and is so good, it remains in contention all the way to the end, but on the last day we decide it can't quite crack the top ten? That author's going to wait three months for a reply no matter what.
5) Another point from Bethany: Just about every contest, at least one author withdraws his or her entry for some reason. We've had that happen just before a contest closed! In fact, twice now it's happened with stories we were strongly considering sending to the prize judges. That meant some story we were originally going to reject took the withdrawn story's place, and in at least one case, won a prize.
6) Finally, every alternative we've considered sounds worse to us than the current practice. We've even considered a "halfway" notice, in which halfway through a contest, we'd tell all non-contending authors that they didn't make it. But what would we do with the contending authors, if anything? I don't want to get their hopes up because many times, a story that is in the top ten halfway through a contest doesn't make the final round. (Two-thirds of our entries tend to come in the last half of the contest.) Plus there's still the one-entry-per-author problem.
It seems like the only way to give feedback in something closer to real time would be to pick on the authors who sent the stories that did the worst. We don't want to do that. So, we file our notes and decisions away and hold them until the end.
Having said all that, if you can make an argument for faster rejections that's stronger than the argument for our current system, please do, and we'll think about changing. Over the years, we've adjusted a number of our practices because our readers and writers had better ideas than we did. We're willing to do so again.
If you send us a story ten days into a contest and we judge it to be the 12th best story of the 20 received up to that point, why don't we send you a rejection slip right then? Why wait until the contest is over?
We're open to changing that practice, if you can come up with a strong enough counter-argument. Here is our reasoning for the current practice.
1) We want each author to enter our contests only once. Since we read all stories blindly, however, we don't have a good way to prevent somebody from sending us a story on Day 1 of the contest, and then submitting something else on Day 75. Our nightmare scenario is dealing with a writer who would submit a different (rejectable) story every day if we rejected stories as soon as we realized they had no chance to get published.
2) A point from Bethany: We have rejected stories that turned out to be from authors who, in different contests, took first place (with a different story of course). By rejecting an early entry right away, we're giving that entry's author a chance to submit a different story that we might like a lot more. Rejecting stories right away gives those stories' authors a big advantage over other contestants, and we think that would be unfair.
3) I know from experience it's annoying to wait 2-3 months to find out how your story did, but a 2-3 month wait time is not that far from an industry average. So while I'm not thrilled with it, I don't feel we're treating our writers in a way that the industry would condemn.
4) What would we do with a story we receive on Day 2 of a contest, and is so good, it remains in contention all the way to the end, but on the last day we decide it can't quite crack the top ten? That author's going to wait three months for a reply no matter what.
5) Another point from Bethany: Just about every contest, at least one author withdraws his or her entry for some reason. We've had that happen just before a contest closed! In fact, twice now it's happened with stories we were strongly considering sending to the prize judges. That meant some story we were originally going to reject took the withdrawn story's place, and in at least one case, won a prize.
6) Finally, every alternative we've considered sounds worse to us than the current practice. We've even considered a "halfway" notice, in which halfway through a contest, we'd tell all non-contending authors that they didn't make it. But what would we do with the contending authors, if anything? I don't want to get their hopes up because many times, a story that is in the top ten halfway through a contest doesn't make the final round. (Two-thirds of our entries tend to come in the last half of the contest.) Plus there's still the one-entry-per-author problem.
It seems like the only way to give feedback in something closer to real time would be to pick on the authors who sent the stories that did the worst. We don't want to do that. So, we file our notes and decisions away and hold them until the end.
Having said all that, if you can make an argument for faster rejections that's stronger than the argument for our current system, please do, and we'll think about changing. Over the years, we've adjusted a number of our practices because our readers and writers had better ideas than we did. We're willing to do so again.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
What makes a good story?
A professional colleague of mine, K. Stoddard Hayes, wondered on Facebook what my opinion was about literary vs. genre stories. Specifically she asked for my opinion on the discussion about whether a story can be good "only if it is well crafted on every level from grammar to themes" or "because people enjoy it regardless of any traditional literary standards of merit?"
It just so happens that before I launched On The Premises, my co-publisher and I worked long and hard to figure a way to rate the quality of short stories. We didn't want our winners to be chosen based solely on subjective criteria. We didn't want to hand people money and say, "I don't know why we liked that other story better, but we did so you come in second." That's one reason we rely on multiple raters: inter-rater reliability (how much judges agree) is one of our scoring criteria. It helps that I'm a professional measurement expert whose day job includes being paid to invent ways to measure non-physical aspects of life. (How do you usefully measure the "friendliness" of a customer environment? It can be done!)
Our first step was to "operationalize," as we social scientists say. In this case, that meant changing the question from "What is a good story?" to a pair of more easily answered questions: "What does a good story do?" and "What does a bad story do?"
We came up with a list. Here are some excerpts.
Good story: Makes us want to finish it. When it's over, we want to share it with friends.
Bad story: Bores us.
Good story: Either uses standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation so these elements of writing do not distract from the story, OR deliberately uses them in non-standard ways that thoughtfully enhance the story.
Bad story: Uses non-standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation thoughtlessly, and probably accidentally, and as a result these elements of storytelling interfere with our ability to enjoy the story being told.
Good story: Has characters that seem like real people to us. We'll remember them long after the story ends.
Bad story: Has characters so generic and one-dimensional, or so clichéd, that they seem like plot devices, not real people.
Up to this point, our measurements wouldn't distinguish a decent but ephermeral spy novel from great literature. This next one, though...
Good story: Uses language artistically. Surprises us with word choices, comparisons, and imagery that evokes feelings and thoughts far beyond what the surface definitions of the words normally would.
Average story: Uses language plainly but correctly, much like basic journalism is supposed to. All elements of the story being told are clearly understandable, so we are never confused about what is going on, but the language itself evokes no thoughts or feelings in us beyond what we would think and feel if we personally witnessed the events being described.
Bad story: Uses language poorly. Surprises us with confusing or inaccurate word choices that make us not believe what we're reading. ("The pillow clanked against the bed.") Evokes thoughts and feelings in us that go against the ones the story is trying to create in us. Relies on flat or clichéd descriptions that bore us because we've seen them so often. Uses esoteric or unusual language that detracts from, instead of enhances, the effect the story is trying to produce.
We had others, but I hope I've illustrated my point. I don't think asking what a good story is is as useful as asking what a good story does.
So let's return to Hayes's question: can a story be good only if well-crafted at every level, or just because people enjoy it?
For most readers, enjoyment is enough. I think that's fine. I can't see any point in forcing readers to read something they get absolutely no enjoyment from. (Even in high school English class? Yes, even then. Are schools TRYING to make tomorrow's adults hate reading fiction? They seem to be.)
Publishers who want to sell lots of copies of books probably don't have to evaluate a story much past the "will people enjoy it" question either. Oh, they need to make sure standard (and therefore non-distracting) grammar and punctuation are used, but beyond that, they just want to know if people will stand in line to buy it.
If you have learned to enjoy language itself, however, you might want more out of a story than just plot and character. Plainly written stories might bore you because there's not enough innovative and elegant writing involved.
(Some people, in fact, value the writing itself so much more than the story that they actively dislike plot, because plot frequently takes a reader's attention away from the language. Heavily plotted stories, such as nearly all genre writing, are frequently better served by ordinary language than "beautiful writing," which is one reason certain literary types disdain genre writing. These types prefer the form of language over its basic communicative function. They probably also like poetry because poetry is 100% language--no characters or plot required. Writers who disdain characters and story might be happier abandoning prose for poetry so they can concentrate exclusively on language.)
To me, the best stories excel in all the areas I've mentioned. They contain fully developed and interesting characters in a complex, interesting situation that's written about using language that enhances every effect produced by whatever it describes.
So to answer your question, K. Hayes, I think a story can be great even if it's just a fun read, and the more enjoyable it is, the better it is. But it can be even better than that if it meets all those "traditional literary standards of merit" as well.
It just so happens that before I launched On The Premises, my co-publisher and I worked long and hard to figure a way to rate the quality of short stories. We didn't want our winners to be chosen based solely on subjective criteria. We didn't want to hand people money and say, "I don't know why we liked that other story better, but we did so you come in second." That's one reason we rely on multiple raters: inter-rater reliability (how much judges agree) is one of our scoring criteria. It helps that I'm a professional measurement expert whose day job includes being paid to invent ways to measure non-physical aspects of life. (How do you usefully measure the "friendliness" of a customer environment? It can be done!)
Our first step was to "operationalize," as we social scientists say. In this case, that meant changing the question from "What is a good story?" to a pair of more easily answered questions: "What does a good story do?" and "What does a bad story do?"
We came up with a list. Here are some excerpts.
Good story: Makes us want to finish it. When it's over, we want to share it with friends.
Bad story: Bores us.
Good story: Either uses standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation so these elements of writing do not distract from the story, OR deliberately uses them in non-standard ways that thoughtfully enhance the story.
Bad story: Uses non-standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation thoughtlessly, and probably accidentally, and as a result these elements of storytelling interfere with our ability to enjoy the story being told.
Good story: Has characters that seem like real people to us. We'll remember them long after the story ends.
Bad story: Has characters so generic and one-dimensional, or so clichéd, that they seem like plot devices, not real people.
Up to this point, our measurements wouldn't distinguish a decent but ephermeral spy novel from great literature. This next one, though...
Good story: Uses language artistically. Surprises us with word choices, comparisons, and imagery that evokes feelings and thoughts far beyond what the surface definitions of the words normally would.
Average story: Uses language plainly but correctly, much like basic journalism is supposed to. All elements of the story being told are clearly understandable, so we are never confused about what is going on, but the language itself evokes no thoughts or feelings in us beyond what we would think and feel if we personally witnessed the events being described.
Bad story: Uses language poorly. Surprises us with confusing or inaccurate word choices that make us not believe what we're reading. ("The pillow clanked against the bed.") Evokes thoughts and feelings in us that go against the ones the story is trying to create in us. Relies on flat or clichéd descriptions that bore us because we've seen them so often. Uses esoteric or unusual language that detracts from, instead of enhances, the effect the story is trying to produce.
We had others, but I hope I've illustrated my point. I don't think asking what a good story is is as useful as asking what a good story does.
So let's return to Hayes's question: can a story be good only if well-crafted at every level, or just because people enjoy it?
For most readers, enjoyment is enough. I think that's fine. I can't see any point in forcing readers to read something they get absolutely no enjoyment from. (Even in high school English class? Yes, even then. Are schools TRYING to make tomorrow's adults hate reading fiction? They seem to be.)
Publishers who want to sell lots of copies of books probably don't have to evaluate a story much past the "will people enjoy it" question either. Oh, they need to make sure standard (and therefore non-distracting) grammar and punctuation are used, but beyond that, they just want to know if people will stand in line to buy it.
If you have learned to enjoy language itself, however, you might want more out of a story than just plot and character. Plainly written stories might bore you because there's not enough innovative and elegant writing involved.
(Some people, in fact, value the writing itself so much more than the story that they actively dislike plot, because plot frequently takes a reader's attention away from the language. Heavily plotted stories, such as nearly all genre writing, are frequently better served by ordinary language than "beautiful writing," which is one reason certain literary types disdain genre writing. These types prefer the form of language over its basic communicative function. They probably also like poetry because poetry is 100% language--no characters or plot required. Writers who disdain characters and story might be happier abandoning prose for poetry so they can concentrate exclusively on language.)
To me, the best stories excel in all the areas I've mentioned. They contain fully developed and interesting characters in a complex, interesting situation that's written about using language that enhances every effect produced by whatever it describes.
So to answer your question, K. Hayes, I think a story can be great even if it's just a fun read, and the more enjoyable it is, the better it is. But it can be even better than that if it meets all those "traditional literary standards of merit" as well.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Now More Than Ever, Use the Premise Well
I'll let you folks in on a little secret. When we launched our first contest in October 2006, we received fewer than 70 entries. Our second contest was based on a premise that was so poorly designed it turned people off, and we received fewer than 40 entries. It wasn't until contest #4, when we'd been around for a whole year, that we broke 100 entries (with 162 of them).
The secret I'm letting you in on is, the percentage of really good stories was quite small back then. I can remember sending out ten stories in the final round while knowing at least two of them had no chance of publication. One time, only nine stories made the final round.
That was a long time ago. For contest #18, we got at least 20 stories that were better than some of the stories that used to make the top 10. We got at least 15 that we'd have been proud to publish in our first year. In fact, the four stories that made the top ten this time, and did not get published, would probably have been published even three years ago.
However, our policy (which we've violated only once) is to publish no more than six contest entries: first, second, third, and up to three honorable mentions. We don't plan to change that. Our policy and the gradual rise in the quality of our contest entries have combined toproduce an unexpected effect:
How well a story uses our contest premise matters a lot more than it used to.
Long ago, a story that was great in every way except use of premise would beat a story that was merely good, but used the premise better. Now judges are comparing stories that are great in every way except use of premise against stories that are great in every way including use of premise. Guess which ones win?
Today I'm sending out the free critiques we're giving to the four runner-up stories, and in two of those cases, mediocre use of the premise is the number one reason those stories lost out. One of those stories is one of the best written pieces we've ever received. I'd bet some pretty decent literary magazines would take it in an instant. Our prize judges turned it down because its use of premise was too weak. In fact, we publishers almost disqualified it from the contest for that same reason. But it was so good in every other way, we didn't have the heart to DQ it. (That'll teach us. It got the lowest score of any of the top 10 because "time" was just barely relevant to it. Next contest, we'll know better.)
I hope you folks will, too. We're called On The Premises for a reason, and that reason matters more than ever. Keep it in mind when we launch our next contest on or around November 10. Use the premise, and use it well!
The secret I'm letting you in on is, the percentage of really good stories was quite small back then. I can remember sending out ten stories in the final round while knowing at least two of them had no chance of publication. One time, only nine stories made the final round.
That was a long time ago. For contest #18, we got at least 20 stories that were better than some of the stories that used to make the top 10. We got at least 15 that we'd have been proud to publish in our first year. In fact, the four stories that made the top ten this time, and did not get published, would probably have been published even three years ago.
However, our policy (which we've violated only once) is to publish no more than six contest entries: first, second, third, and up to three honorable mentions. We don't plan to change that. Our policy and the gradual rise in the quality of our contest entries have combined toproduce an unexpected effect:
How well a story uses our contest premise matters a lot more than it used to.
Long ago, a story that was great in every way except use of premise would beat a story that was merely good, but used the premise better. Now judges are comparing stories that are great in every way except use of premise against stories that are great in every way including use of premise. Guess which ones win?
Today I'm sending out the free critiques we're giving to the four runner-up stories, and in two of those cases, mediocre use of the premise is the number one reason those stories lost out. One of those stories is one of the best written pieces we've ever received. I'd bet some pretty decent literary magazines would take it in an instant. Our prize judges turned it down because its use of premise was too weak. In fact, we publishers almost disqualified it from the contest for that same reason. But it was so good in every other way, we didn't have the heart to DQ it. (That'll teach us. It got the lowest score of any of the top 10 because "time" was just barely relevant to it. Next contest, we'll know better.)
I hope you folks will, too. We're called On The Premises for a reason, and that reason matters more than ever. Keep it in mind when we launch our next contest on or around November 10. Use the premise, and use it well!
Sunday, September 30, 2012
The Most Annoying Syntax Error
It looks like Blogger is back up and running correctly! At least for me. We'll see how long it lasts.
I know a couple other editors read this blog, so I'm asking you, as well as anyone else with an opinion: Does the following syntax error bother you as much as it does me?
"Thank you." She said.
Of course, that text should be:
"Thank you," she said.
Dialogue with improper grammar—specifically, that improper grammar—is one of the most frequent errors I see in OTP submissions. It's happening so often, I can think of only two plausible causes:
1) An entire generation of writers has grown up learning how to use grammar correctly in other situations, but not dialogue. Quite often, that mistake is the only one I see in a well-written story, yet it happens multiple times in that story, as if the author learned different rules than I did. (It happens in poorly written stories too, but so do a dozen other kinds of errors, so I doubt the causes are the same in that case.)
2) Microsoft Word and other word processors are applying grammar rules of normal writing to dialogue. The stupid programs keep saying "a sentence can't end in a comma," and following that up with "the first word in the next sentence needs to be capitalized."
What frustrates me is, I don't know how severely I should punish authors for this mistake. What if the last thing an author does before submitting a story is run "one last" spell and grammar check, and has the program set to fix errors automatically, and doesn't notice what the program is doing to dialogue? In that case, a good writer is being a bad software user, and those are different skills.
True, for the last 20 years or so, all good writers had to learn to be good users of word processors, but this particular grammar "fix" seems to be a fairly recent development. And I've learned that even in 2012, a number of very good writers don't know crap about computers, word processors, or anything IT-related. Not even when they're younger than word processing itself (which floors me, but it's true--today's 20-somethings are NOT all skilled computer users, even though they grew up with computers even more than I did).
There's going to come a time when not knowing how to take full advantage of a word processing program's features will be as inexcusable as not knowing
"Thank you," she said.
is correct dialogue grammar. But until that day arrives, I think I have to be a bit lenient with this particular error.
What do you think?
I know a couple other editors read this blog, so I'm asking you, as well as anyone else with an opinion: Does the following syntax error bother you as much as it does me?
"Thank you." She said.
Of course, that text should be:
"Thank you," she said.
Dialogue with improper grammar—specifically, that improper grammar—is one of the most frequent errors I see in OTP submissions. It's happening so often, I can think of only two plausible causes:
1) An entire generation of writers has grown up learning how to use grammar correctly in other situations, but not dialogue. Quite often, that mistake is the only one I see in a well-written story, yet it happens multiple times in that story, as if the author learned different rules than I did. (It happens in poorly written stories too, but so do a dozen other kinds of errors, so I doubt the causes are the same in that case.)
2) Microsoft Word and other word processors are applying grammar rules of normal writing to dialogue. The stupid programs keep saying "a sentence can't end in a comma," and following that up with "the first word in the next sentence needs to be capitalized."
What frustrates me is, I don't know how severely I should punish authors for this mistake. What if the last thing an author does before submitting a story is run "one last" spell and grammar check, and has the program set to fix errors automatically, and doesn't notice what the program is doing to dialogue? In that case, a good writer is being a bad software user, and those are different skills.
True, for the last 20 years or so, all good writers had to learn to be good users of word processors, but this particular grammar "fix" seems to be a fairly recent development. And I've learned that even in 2012, a number of very good writers don't know crap about computers, word processors, or anything IT-related. Not even when they're younger than word processing itself (which floors me, but it's true--today's 20-somethings are NOT all skilled computer users, even though they grew up with computers even more than I did).
There's going to come a time when not knowing how to take full advantage of a word processing program's features will be as inexcusable as not knowing
"Thank you," she said.
is correct dialogue grammar. But until that day arrives, I think I have to be a bit lenient with this particular error.
What do you think?
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Why Fiction Based on Real Life Often Fails
Since late 2009, we've sent out over 130 paid critiques of rejected stories, and only two have generated what I'd call unhappy responses. In both cases, the authors felt I'd either missed or misinterpreted critical information in the story. And in both cases, the stories were based on real life to such a degree that I'm not sure either contest entry qualifies as fiction. I don't think it's a coincidence that my most negative reactions came from critiques of stories based on real life.
For one thing, it must feel kind of insulting to be told we don't believe your story that really happened. There's no solution to that problem, though, because On The Premises is a fiction magazine that emphasizes creativity, so we're going to keep assuming that the stories we receive are at least 90% made up. (If you want to write about your real thoughts and feelings, then give your real thoughts and feelings to made up characters and put them in made up situations that would evoke your real thoughts and feelings.)
To show why stories based on real life can often fail, I'll transcribe a conversation between me and an imaginary author who wrote an imaginary story called "Sister From Hell." (We have never received any story with that title, or any story similar to the one I'm about to describe.)
ME: ...so to summarize, we didn't believe the extreme behavior change shown by the narrator's sister at the end of the story. Since the whole story hinges on that change in behavior, it's fair to say we didn't believe the whole story, and that's why "Sister From Hell" didn't make the final round of judging.
AUTHOR: Well of course you didn't believe it. She fools everybody.
ME: ?????
AUTHOR: The story's based on my real sister, who fools everybody into thinking she's the nicest person in the world, then stabs you in the back.
ME: Okay, but we're talking about the narrator's sister in "Sister From Hell."
AUTHOR: I'm the narrator! I'm writing about me and my sister.
ME: First, if we'd known the story was non-fiction, we'd have disqualified it from our contest. Second, we're not concerned with your real sister here, we're concerned with the character as described in "Sister From Hell."
AUTHOR: I just told you they're the same thing.
ME: Look, you have a great deal of personal history with your real sister. How did you learn she's lying when she's acting all nice to everybody?
AUTHOR: [Gives many long, detailed examples of sister's deceitful behavior, and the clues the author discovered that proved the sister was lying.]
ME: Great. The problem is, none of that information appears in the current draft of "Sister From Hell." The story we received spends ten pages showing the narrator's sister performing such selfless, kind acts that we were ready to nominate her for sainthood. Then on page eleven she burns down an orphanage and laughs at all the dying children.
AUTHOR: Okay that never really happened, but it's the kind of thing she'd do if she could get away with it.
ME: My point is, there's nothing IN THE STORY to make us believe she's anything except what she appears to be: nice, sweet, etc. Not until she burns down an orphanage. To us readers, that act came out of nowhere. I think the real problem here is, you know your material so well, you forgot that we DON'T already know it. If we knew all along your sister was a psychopath, "Sister From Hell" would probably have worked better for us. Since we didn't know that, the last part made no sense to us.
AUTHOR: My gosh, you're right! [Author goes on to write best-selling novels, win a Pulitzer Prize, and publicly credit me as a mentor, thus helping me teach creative writing somewhere. Like I said, the author's imaginary.]
I think the biggest problem with the advice to "Write What You Know" is, it's too easy to forget your readers don't also know it. If you write what you make up, you'll ask important questions about your characters, plot, and story's world because you probably don't know the answers to those questions either. As you develop the answers to those questions, many of them will appear in your story, probably because that's how you're coming up with the answers. If you already have all the answers, you might leave out something your readers will need to know.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Not a "Setup" Story
A "setup" story is our term for any piece of fiction that promises the reader a good story, but never gets around to delivering it. We get a few of these in every contest. Sometimes they read like the first chapter of a novel. The problem is, stories like that don't work without the rest of the novel.
The first time I read our third Honorable Mention story in Issue 16, The Hand of God, I wondered if it was a "setup" story. I felt closure at the end of it, though, so I didn't think it was. I took a deep look at it to figure out why I found the ending so satisfying, when one could argue the story leaves enormous, and important, questions unanswered.
Without spoiling anything, here's why I think the story is complete, rather than just a setup. The first key is, the reader knows more than the protagonist. The protagonist is a kid, and is interpreting everything through a kid's eyes. We can read between the lines and see more about what's going on, and more importantly, what's going to happen next, than the kid can.
I think this story exemplifies OTP's theory of what a story does and needs to do. Does the story raise questions in the reader's mind about the story's elements? Definitely. Does it address those questions? (Note that I didn't say "answer," I said "address.") Yes, it does. Does it answer them completely? No, but it does answer one question pretty thoroughly, and that's the question of how life in this town has coped with its weird event, and how this kid is coping. Furthermore, we think we can extrapolate what's going to happen next, at least to a degree.
That last point might be the most important. Because we can guess with some certainty what's going to happen to the characters after the story officially ends, we don't need to read about it. Adding more scenes to the story would make the story dull unless those scenes added believable, but unexpected, new events.
In fact, the only way to make The Hand of God longer would have been to add a new series of events that fit the world, but did not fit our expectations. Since the story doesn't do that, we can assume our suspicions about what comes next are correct. That means the story does not tell an ending or even show an ending. Instead, it evokes an ending in our minds by leading us to a conclusion that we can't avoid.
Therefore, to us, The Hand of God is not a setup story, but a complete story that evokes an ending we supply ourselves. And we liked it enough that it made "Honorable Mention."
For fun, compare the evoked ending to The Hand of God to the ending of A League of Pity (first-place winner), which leaves absolutely no doubt in any reader's mind about what happens next: nothing of consequence. League's last paragraph ends the story completely. (Is that why it takes first place? No. I'm just making the comparison to show you there's more than one effective way to end a story.)
The first time I read our third Honorable Mention story in Issue 16, The Hand of God, I wondered if it was a "setup" story. I felt closure at the end of it, though, so I didn't think it was. I took a deep look at it to figure out why I found the ending so satisfying, when one could argue the story leaves enormous, and important, questions unanswered.
Without spoiling anything, here's why I think the story is complete, rather than just a setup. The first key is, the reader knows more than the protagonist. The protagonist is a kid, and is interpreting everything through a kid's eyes. We can read between the lines and see more about what's going on, and more importantly, what's going to happen next, than the kid can.
I think this story exemplifies OTP's theory of what a story does and needs to do. Does the story raise questions in the reader's mind about the story's elements? Definitely. Does it address those questions? (Note that I didn't say "answer," I said "address.") Yes, it does. Does it answer them completely? No, but it does answer one question pretty thoroughly, and that's the question of how life in this town has coped with its weird event, and how this kid is coping. Furthermore, we think we can extrapolate what's going to happen next, at least to a degree.
That last point might be the most important. Because we can guess with some certainty what's going to happen to the characters after the story officially ends, we don't need to read about it. Adding more scenes to the story would make the story dull unless those scenes added believable, but unexpected, new events.
In fact, the only way to make The Hand of God longer would have been to add a new series of events that fit the world, but did not fit our expectations. Since the story doesn't do that, we can assume our suspicions about what comes next are correct. That means the story does not tell an ending or even show an ending. Instead, it evokes an ending in our minds by leading us to a conclusion that we can't avoid.
Therefore, to us, The Hand of God is not a setup story, but a complete story that evokes an ending we supply ourselves. And we liked it enough that it made "Honorable Mention."
For fun, compare the evoked ending to The Hand of God to the ending of A League of Pity (first-place winner), which leaves absolutely no doubt in any reader's mind about what happens next: nothing of consequence. League's last paragraph ends the story completely. (Is that why it takes first place? No. I'm just making the comparison to show you there's more than one effective way to end a story.)
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Contest #16 is over!
I swear this gets harder with every contest.
Contest #16 received 237 entries, not counting resubmissions (authors replacing their own entries) and one we had to disqualify. Out of those 237, about 40 seriously impressed us, and by the time we woke up this morning, 16 stories were fighting for the 10 finalist slots. Bethany and I have debated and argued and pointed out strengths and weaknesses in those 16 stories, and we're still not down to 10.
It's a sign of our maturation as a fiction market that we are now turning down stories that, at one point in our history, would have easily made the final judging round. I'm not convinced that the best stories in contest #16 are better than the best stories we've published in previous issues. I am convinced that the 16th best story we received for this contest is heads and shoulders above the 16th best story we received for our early issues. It's probably better than the 8th best story we received for our early issues.
What that means is, we're looking at stories that we both like and we're still forced to turn them down because each contest forces us to get even pickier about stupid little mistakes and minor problems. Three years ago, I'd have said, "This story has a significant flaw, but let's put it in the top 10 and if it gets published, we'll fix the problem in editing." Now we say, "Sorry, story--you're out."
Stories that it absolutely killed me to turn down include:
...a heart-rending story in which the last 85% of the prose was as good as anything we've ever received. Too bad we thought the first ten paragraphs were not just unnecessary, but detrimental to the story, which in our minds, begins with its eleventh paragraph. Writers! Deep in your heart, you know where your story really begins. Cut everything that comes before that point, okay?
...a highly believable story about Earth's possible future, which would have enthralled us except that the main character is taking a stubborn stand against something for no reason we can figure out. Writers! If your character is doing something unusual, please give that person a reason we can relate to, okay?
...a story that we're convinced would be a contender, except it's set in a culture we know very little about, and the story thinks we're much more familiar with that culture's basic concepts than we really are. Writers! Even the most real-world story requires worldbuilding. Are you sure your American audience will understand your culture's subtle elements?
Anyway, we're not down to 10 stories yet, so the debate will continue. I expect to have figured out our finalists by Wednesday. Sincere congratulations go out to the increasing number of writers who improve with every submission, and who make our job harder with each contest.
Contest #16 received 237 entries, not counting resubmissions (authors replacing their own entries) and one we had to disqualify. Out of those 237, about 40 seriously impressed us, and by the time we woke up this morning, 16 stories were fighting for the 10 finalist slots. Bethany and I have debated and argued and pointed out strengths and weaknesses in those 16 stories, and we're still not down to 10.
It's a sign of our maturation as a fiction market that we are now turning down stories that, at one point in our history, would have easily made the final judging round. I'm not convinced that the best stories in contest #16 are better than the best stories we've published in previous issues. I am convinced that the 16th best story we received for this contest is heads and shoulders above the 16th best story we received for our early issues. It's probably better than the 8th best story we received for our early issues.
What that means is, we're looking at stories that we both like and we're still forced to turn them down because each contest forces us to get even pickier about stupid little mistakes and minor problems. Three years ago, I'd have said, "This story has a significant flaw, but let's put it in the top 10 and if it gets published, we'll fix the problem in editing." Now we say, "Sorry, story--you're out."
Stories that it absolutely killed me to turn down include:
...a heart-rending story in which the last 85% of the prose was as good as anything we've ever received. Too bad we thought the first ten paragraphs were not just unnecessary, but detrimental to the story, which in our minds, begins with its eleventh paragraph. Writers! Deep in your heart, you know where your story really begins. Cut everything that comes before that point, okay?
...a highly believable story about Earth's possible future, which would have enthralled us except that the main character is taking a stubborn stand against something for no reason we can figure out. Writers! If your character is doing something unusual, please give that person a reason we can relate to, okay?
...a story that we're convinced would be a contender, except it's set in a culture we know very little about, and the story thinks we're much more familiar with that culture's basic concepts than we really are. Writers! Even the most real-world story requires worldbuilding. Are you sure your American audience will understand your culture's subtle elements?
Anyway, we're not down to 10 stories yet, so the debate will continue. I expect to have figured out our finalists by Wednesday. Sincere congratulations go out to the increasing number of writers who improve with every submission, and who make our job harder with each contest.
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