There’s a particular kind of story that shows up in my slush pile with depressing regularity. It’s characterized by the ending. Here’s an example (and pretty bad one, at that!):

Rodney aimed his gun at the betentacled horror that loomed over him. The creature roared at him in a voice that sounded like that of his beloved wife, Sheila.

“No, Rodney, no!” the foul creature roared.

But Rodney was not fooled. His beautiful Sheila was gone, long gone; she had been transformed by unspeakable eldritch powers into this drooling, ravenous beast. He pulled the trigger. The creature shrieked in agony and then died.

As Rodney stood over the body, panting, his vision seemed to clear, and he was aghast. It was Sheila laying at his feet, not a creature from the abyss! Oh no! He dipped his finger in her blood and wrote a message on the wall.

Then he raised the gun to his temple, and squeezed the trigger.

* * *

“Ewww,” said the cop, a rookie who had never worked a homicide before.

“Seen it a million times,” said his partner, a grizzled veteran. “Just don’t puke on the evidence.”

“You mean evidence like that message written in blood on the wall? That says ‘I KILLED THE MONSTER FROM THE ABYSS. I AM NOT CRAZY. REALLY.'”

“Yup,” said the veteran. “Tragic, ain’t it? Guy reads Lovecraft, goes insane, kills his wife, then himself. Yep, that’s what happened here. You can tell because she’s dead, and he’s crazy. That’s what happened. Saddest damn thing.”

Then they went to the old cop’s retirement party.

THE END

OK, see why that sucks? (I mean besides the clumsy prose, clichéd characters, and the tired reworking of Lovecraft.)

It’s insulting. I am smart enough to figure out that Rodney killed his wife and himself without the cop explaining it. Really.

It’s disengaging. Any time you shift POV in a short story, you risk losing the reader. You’re interrupting the connection I’ve formed with the character, and it takes a lot of skill to bridge that interruption so that the reader is transported easily. How much more disengaging is it when I’ve spent the entire story in Rodney’s head, watching with horror and empathy as his world disintegrates around him, only to find myself abruptly shoved off to two new characters that I don’t know about or care about?

It’s unnecessary. If the body of the story has done its work, you don’t need an extra scene to explain. If you find that your critique group is confused by your story, the answer is not to tack on an explanation, but to strengthen and clarify the main story so that your intent is unambiguous.

It’s oversimplified. Lots of stories create tension by ambiguity throughout–is Rodney insane? Or are there really eldritch forces at work? It’s Rodney’s story, and it’s his vision of the events. Don’t betray poor Rodney’s vision by replacing his experiences with a quick summary by a bored cop at the end. Stay true to Rodney.

It’s insecure. Have faith in your story and your skill and your audience.

About This Series

Once or twice a month, I get questions from new writers about how to submit fiction. Good for them for doing their research – but that tells me is a lot of new writers have questions about things I take for granted.

For those writers (and for all the writers in my slush pile who clearly never researched the subject at all!) we’re kicking off a series of blog posts, offering helpful information to newcomers, in bite-sized chunks. It takes some effort to learn the rules, and we’d like to help.

Let’s start with guidelines.

If you’re like most new writers I know, you may not look at much in the guidelines besides the pay rate and response time. Those are the most important things, right? And the rest is boring and arbitrary stuff that’s just there to make writers jump through hoops, isn’t it?

Not at all. Even a relatively modest magazine like Shimmer gets hundreds of submissions a month. It’s in your best interest to make sure your story stands out because of the writing, not because you didn’t respect us enough to follow our guidelines.

Without further ado, the three things editors wish you’d pay attention to in the guidelines:

Submission Mechanics.

If you don’t follow the submission directions, your story may not even be read. For example, Shimmer has a distributed staff and we do all our reading online. If you send us a print submission, we just can’t process it, and it will be rejected. Similarly, if you don’t use the subject line we specify, there’s a good chance your submission will get diverted into spam and lost forever. Or if you send us a WordPerfect file instead of the .doc or .rtf we require, we simply can’t open it. Do yourself a favor: make sure we can read your story.

Manuscript formatting.

Unless otherwise directed, use standard manuscript formatting.  (Some magazines have other requirements; they’ll be spelled out in their guidelines. Be sure to follow them!)

Why? What does it matter? Who cares about font?

That’s simple: A double-spaced manuscript in 12-point font is much easier to read than a manuscript in single-spaced 8-point Comic Sans. When you’re reading hundreds of submissions a month, formatting really matters. Make it easy for us to read your words. Don’t tempt us to dismiss you before your story has had a chance to charm us!

Editorial taste.

Often, editors let you know what kind of stories they’re looking for. Shimmer says “We’re most drawn to contemporary fantasy, and seek out stories with a strong emotional core. We like unusual stories with a fluid and distinctive voice, with specific and original images.”

On the other hand, Analog wants stories in which the science is an integral part of the story.

Now, you can’t overthink this and talk yourself out of submitting. When in doubt, send it in! But at the same time, why would you send Asimov’s a story with no science? Or send Shimmer a space opera story? Let the guidelines guide you.

Your Turn

What do you think about guidelines? Got any questions? Tell us in the comments!