Notes From An Editor… Part 1

Make It Interesting…

When an editor reads a story, just as with any reader, they take their own personal likes and dislikes into their decision to buy or not buy. This is why you can often tell an editor’s voice on a project after reading numbers of issues or anthologies they have put together. That “voice” is their likes and dislikes coming through.

I am no different. I have certain basics I look for in a Pulphouse story. First, stunningly well written, meaning the author is in charge of their craft. Second, something a little different about the story in some fashion or another. Third, it has to be interesting right from the start.

So many of the stories I am reading at the moment for classes, judging for Writers of the Future, and for Pulphouse submission through the Kickstarter are not interesting.

Realize I am saying “Interesting to me.”

A lot of stories have great openings, great depth, great character, but I find myself fading out fairly quickly because they are just not interesting.

Sometimes writers do great depth, but forget that something has to happen. Or what happens is just a “so what?” and the writer doesn’t make us readers care.

Interesting also for me means a character with voice, with opinions, with feelings and emotions. Amazing how many stories I get that are writers thinking a flat, mundane character is a good idea. Nope, nothing interesting about that.

Reality, if I don’t find a story interesting in one fashion or another, I feel no responsibility to read into the story at any length to find that “interesting thing” on page five.

Up front. Interesting up front.

You do that and it will be stunning how many more personal rejections and buys you have with your short fiction.