There are things you write that aren't for public consumption—writing exercises, for example, or personal diary-like stuff. I strongly recommend that you keep these to yourself. There may be times when a writing exercise turns out so well it might be worth developing into a real story, and the same thing can happen in diary/journals. Generally speaking, however, such writing is only meaningful to you, and showing it to others is asking for trouble.
| If you give your story to six professional writers, they’ll give you six different answers about what needs to be done. That’s seldom useful. On the other hand, if they’re all talking about the same scene, you can be pretty confident that the scene needs to be fixed. They’re saying the scene doesn’t work; the possible remedies they offer may or may not be useful to you, but it’s obvious something has to change. |
What kind of trouble? People won't know what to make of it. ("Is that supposed to be funny?" "But what happens next?" "Are you writing about me?") They may say, "It sucks," or just as bad, "It's really good." Such responses don't help you at all.
Showing anything to non-writers—even finished stories—is a crapshoot. They probably don't know enough to give you useful advice; they may not even give you good feedback. Usually, they'll say just enough to undermine your confidence, without saying anything to help you improve.
Writers' groups have a better chance of being useful...but they're never sure things. If the writers in your group actually have writing skills, they may be able to contribute; if a group is just made up of beginners, they may be no better than showing the story to your mother.
Even when you get advice from a professional writer, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Other writers will tell you what they would do with a bit that isn't working...but you have to make your story your own.
Some people spend years futzing around on the same story, getting advice from friends and relatives and writers-in-residence, changing whatever they say, rewriting and revising incessantly. Past a point, this is just another way of avoiding the future—get the story out of your life by sending it to a publisher, then immediately start a new story.
Of course, the story may get rejected. Tough. Send it to someone else and try again. After you've exhausted the professional markets, there are dozens of semi-pro publications and fanzines you can try. Have a look at the sff.net web site for listings.
If an editor sends back a personal note with any sort of suggestion on it, it is not a rejection. For example, if the editor says, "I liked it, but I don't think the ending worked," that is not a rejection. That is a statement saying, "If you change the ending, I'll read the story again."
| You may be tempted to say, “The story’s not good enough to send anywhere, I’ll just put it away in a drawer.” When someone said that to John W. Campbell (the most important editor in science fiction’s “golden age”), Campbell yelled, “How dare you reject stories from my magazine? That’s not your decision. Send me the story and I’ll make up my own mind.” This is something all writers should take to heart: it’s not up to you to decide whether your story is good. Send it out and let an editor decide. |
If you get such a note, what do you do? You think of a way to change the ending and send back the revised story with a cover letter that says, "I've changed the ending as you suggested. What do you think?" How much do you change the ending? That's a tricky decision. I once got an editor to say yes by changing a single sentence; some niggling problem with the first version of the sentence left a bad taste in his mouth, but the change cleared everything up. On the other hand, editors have a bad habit of saying, "I'm just asking for a tiny change," when they're actually asking for a total rewrite.
It's a judgment call, and you have to develop your
own judgment. If there's something in the story that
you've always been unsure of, correct that and send it off
again. The important thing to remember is that if an editor
gives you any sort of suggestion for improvement, it's not
a rejection—it's encouragement to fix the problem and resubmit.
|
There are few things in writing that are cast in stone, but
manuscript format is one of them. Go to your
library, get The Writer's Market, and memorize
what manuscripts are supposed to look
like. You don't have to get the latest version of The
Writer's Market—the format
hasn't changed since the invention of the typewriter.
Duplicate the format as shown in the book, and
don't try to get fancy. It doesn't matter if you can make
something "prettier" with your laser printer;
editors want to see the same format they've been seeing for
the past hundred years, and you won't win
brownie points by deviating from the standard. And no, you cannot submit by email or fax unless the editor explicitly tells you it's okay. |
Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner