Hi Folks,
As the title implies, I suspect what I’m about to write will do little good, if any, but I guess I kind’a sort’a gotta write it anyway since I took on the role of Writing Instructor what sometimes seems like a millennium ago. Okay, so here goes. Ready? Okay. Here it comes.
DON’T SUBMIT WORK THAT ISN’T READY!
Now I can understand submitting work that you believe is ready. For example, say you’ve finished the third necessary (notice the emphasis on necessary) draft of your novel, all your friends have proofread it and an editor has told you it’s good to go. Probably it’s time to go ahead and submit that work to agents (if you’re still glued to the New York Dream) or publishers.
Or say you’ve written a short story, checked the guidelines twice or three times to be sure 1) your story suits the contest and 2) it’s formatted correctly and 3) the right length. Say you’ve finished the second or third or fourth draft and are finally satisfied that you’ve worked out all those niggling little kinks that were bothering you. You’ve read it aloud to make sure you don’t stumble anywhere as the story progresses. Probably it’s all right to go ahead and submit that story to your target contest.
But what if the guidelines call for tension and intrigue, a terse, “hard-nosed” sense of action that will have the reader leaving fingernail prints in the arm of his chair? Or in the alternative, what if the guidelines call for a parody of such a tale, one that will have the reader snickering throughout and laughing out loud in selective places? And what if your story, wonderful as it is, just doesn’t fit either of those categories? Then you shouldn’t send it. Not to that contest anyway.
Ah, but what if your story is chock full of tension and nail-biting intrigue, expertly delivered by a true Sam Spade type who’s up to his elbows in hard-nosed gumshoe action? Or what if his idiot cousin has come to town and is solving a crime in his own slapstick, giggle out loud reminder that even detectives (dicks, tee hee) shouldn’t take themselves all that seriously? Either or both of those seem to suit the guidelines to a tee, don’t they? Of course they do. But as hard-charging as the serious tale is and as water-sliding-in-your-underwear giggly as the spoof might be, neither is worth a flip if, at the end of a scene with a massive buildup—nothing happens. Neither is worth the time it takes to read it if you’ve managed to spend an inordinate amount of time describing things that exist in your mind but have nothing to do with the story. Or if you’ve allowed your narrator to focus all the reader’s attention on him as he rambles on, delivering info dump after info dump and only occasionally touching on something, anything, that has to do with the story. And neither is worth the effort the reader has to exert to force his way through misspellings, wrong words (too for two), confusing paragraphing or misuse of punctuation.
I just finished the final reading of the third short fiction contest I sponsored through StoneThread Publishing. Frankly, I felt fortunate to be able to select twelve publishable short stories from among almost two hundred entries. Those twelve ranged from Excellent to Pretty Good. All are worth reading.
Of the stories that ended up in the No folder, several were simply not appropriate for the contest and several more fell far short of the minimum word count. Several more were written in present-tense narrative (in violation of the guidelines) but I attempted to read them anyway. I made it all the way to the sixth paragraph (almost 1 1/2 pages) in the best of those before the present-tense narrative shoved me out of the story. The others kicked me out much sooner. There were stories in which the writer had very obviously and intentionally avoided using the word “had,” probably because some moron told him that word creates passive voice or some other nonsense. (Still, if a story held together, it went into the final round. I am an editor after all, so I can fix little things like that.)
But I guess what surprised me most was the number of stories that simply weren’t finished. In some, it was as if the writer had simply lost interest and stopped writing. In others, the main character was performing a major, very interesting action, but for no reason discernible to the reader’s senses. In several scenes in several stories, the writer set up expectations that were then abandoned or otherwise never brought to fruition. In other stories, the writer allowed the narrator to just ramble on, delivering info-dump body punches over and over and over until finally, breathless and exhausted (and not in a good way), I stopped reading and went on to the next story.
I think what bugged me about all this more than anything is that I actually know and respect some of these writers, not only through their work, but on a personal, shake-hands-and-smile basis. I’ve had a beer or two with a couple of them, and I’d like to with the others. So to them I say, “C’mon, guys and gals, you know better than that.” And to the others I say, “Hey, don’t submit work that isn’t ready.”
‘Til next time, happy writing.
Harvey