Five questions with five Shimmer staffers this time around. Victims Participants this time include: Beth Wodzinski, Sean Markey, Grá Linnaea, Sophie Wereley, and Keffy Kehrli.

What kind of story would you pay good money to never see again?

BW: That’s not a very good business model! I would never do that. Besides, just when I say I never ever ever want to see another Adam and Eve story, or a Hell Is A Bureaucracy story, or a Surprise! The Narrator is a Cat! story, a really good one will come along. I don’t like unicorn stories, for example, but Shimmer’s run three of them now.

SM: Any story where the characters are constantly addressing each other in dialogue.  It drives me crazy and I can’t get through the story!  No one talks like that in real life except infomercial hosts…

GL: My God, if I never see another “poor struggling author who is at the mercy of evil editors” story it’ll be … well, it’s already too late. My eyes, they burn! I mean seriously people, we’re all writers, we’ve all been there. What makes you think your frustration at not getting published is so special that the rest of us need to see it?

SW: I really dislike it when authors use their stories as substitutes for therapy. I know there’s a lot of attraction to writing characters with messed up psyches, and I do it all the time, but once the story starts touching on issues that the author has… it gets a little weird. You can tell if that’s what’s going on based on the writing, and I’ve never responded well to it.

KK: I feel like I should be able to snark on demand for this one, but I can’t think of anything. (I’ve already ranted about time travel and heaven vs. hell stories. Basically, your chances don’t improve when you’re starting with the same tired concept that a million other people have already used and been rejected for…) I suppose I’m most frustrated by stories that start with a really intriguing idea-germ and then plug the Neat Idea I Haven’t Seen Very Often Or At All into a standard plot. So I start out thinking “WOW, this is a great voice” or “WOW, you could really do some neat things with that,” which just means that the disappointment is that much worse when I get halfway through the story and find a big steaming pile of MEH in the middle of it. Yes, yes, drugs are bad, people like to get revenge, detectives solve crimes and fairy tales still end with fairy tale endings…

Next time: What stories do we not see enough of?

Your story submission to an editor is the first impression you make to them. Just as you would not go to a job interview barefoot (even if it was for a lifeguard position), there are certain things you need to do with each and every submission. As I write this, it’s been an incredibly curious week in the slush pile, so I thought I would throw some examples/suggestions your way.

Story One:

“The Bees Knees” arrives and looks pretty normal. Cover letter, and the attachment is in the DOC format. So far, so good. But the story itself is 8000 words long when I open it. I look back to the cover letter. “As per your guidelines,” the author writes.

The problem: If the writer had read Shimmer‘s guidelines, they would know we don’t accept stories longer than 5000 words, unless one queries and attaches the first page of the story.

The solution: Read the guidelines. Always and forever. If you cannot afford to snag a sample issue of every magazine you want to submit to, read their guidelines. Everything you need to know is there. Know them. Follow them. An editor will love you for this simple thing.

Story Two:

“The Honey Hive” arrives and at first glance, there’s not much to see. Looks like the author attached an RTF, but, that’s all there is. No cover letter, no bio, no background.

The problem: Receiving a story like this often feels like a slap to the face with a wet fish. While newspapers are thrown onto porches throughout the world, stories are not newspapers and should not be thusly flung.

The solution: Learn how to write a basic cover letter. We aren’t asking for an essay, and certainly not a summary (these aren’t novels), just a hello. This is your first impression–make it a good one. “Dear Editor, please find my story of #-words enclosed for your consideration. I have published here, there, but not yet everywhere. I am a member of SFWA, thank you for your time.” (Gra has written about cover letters, and so have I before!) There’s no need to include your complete bibliography; your three most recent sales will do. And if you don’t have any yet, don’t sweat it.

Story Three:

“Sweet Stings” arrives, and the author has written a great cover letter; no story summary, just telling us the basic facts, and mentioning our guidelines. At first glance, it looks like it fits what we want, but then, the attachment says DOCX.

The problem: The author has sent us a format we can’t read.

The solution: Shimmer accepts stories in DOC and RTF formats. The end. Word 2010 and onward makes this a challenge, as Microsoft saw fit to change their standard, but it’s not impossible. When you send the proper format, it makes for a smoother process for everyone, and you, the writer, don’t have to go back and do it all over again. Read the guidelines. Submit accordingly.

And write on, bees. Write on!

My conversation with writers concludes with thoughts on how one crafts the perfect ending to a story. Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan. Next time, I pick on some Shimmer staffers for an entirely new round of interrogation questioning.

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How do you craft the perfect ending for a story? How do you keep an ending from falling flat?

LR: I think a lot of the artistry comes in here, because the ideal ending, to my mind, is surprising but also inevitable. That’s difficult, because if readers can predict what will happen at the end of the story, they’ll tend to check out, but the ending has to be contained in what has come before–or at least be something that brings together the important pieces of what’s come before.

Take Lord of the Rings, for example: of course the Ring has to be destroyed, and of course Sam and Frodo have to be the ones to get it to Mount Doom, because for Sauron to win or for Frodo to fail would be like a kick in the face after everything Tolkien has asked us to invest in the characters. But if they just get there and Frodo tosses the Ring in, then first of all it’s an anticlimax, because what’s exciting about tossing a piece of metal into a crater? Secondly, the corrupting influence of the Ring would have counted for nothing despite being a central theme of the story.

So it usually seems important to have the ending be not just “will this happen or not?” but rather “how can this possibly happen?” For instance, Frodo absolutely wouldn’t turn away from his quest, but if the Ring really has that strong a hold on him, how could he possibly destroy the thing?

Of course, I’m really talking about the climax rather than the ending, but the ending–the denouement–is just an easy wrapping up of the little unanswered questions, like “how do they go back to their old lives?” or “how does he cope with the terrible things he’s experienced?” Once the climax has been reached, everything else is coasting. Making things like buildup and climax work well in a story, on the other hand, are the hardest tasks, some of the things that make writing an art and not just an assembly process.

KHL: Endings are even trickier than titles.  Jeanne Cavelos at Odyssey taught me the importance of the ending being both surprising and inevitable, in order to be most satisfying to the reader, but that’s easy to say and hard to do. I find that if the ending surprises me, that’s a good sign, and usually means other folks won’t think it fell flat. But it has to be true, too. And that often means being brave enough to depart from what I think the ‘perfect’ ending is. Imperfection often makes an ending tug harder at the heartstrings. Partial resolution is one of my favorite tricks. And, this is controversial, but I’m always a fan of stories that leave the reader in the mystery, in the wonder. Which means risking not explaining everything, thus (hopefully) leaving the reader the space to make it perfect.

DM: I’m a little better at endings. I write horror and action, so my endings can be pretty violent with a high body-count. I often add a short section after the big climax—a chance for the characters to think about what had happened and to put it all in perspective. There’s a fancy literary term for doing that. Gene Wolfe once told me the term, but I forget what it was. (I should write stuff down). But the key to a “perspective” ending is brevity.

Of course I get it wrong sometimes. I once got a reply from an editor that I’d mixed up whose story was being told, and that the ending fell flat. But he liked other elements of the story enough to consider a re-write. Luckily, I didn’t have to change the POV to fix it. I just re-wrote the ending to resolve certain conflicts, which in turn, fixed my flat ending. My critique group (which I heavily rely upon) said it was a much better story, and the editor acquired the re-write.

JH: An ending should give off a tone, as if the story were a bell struck by a hammer. The reader should go away still hearing that sound. I avoid perfection. That way lies madness. I strive for some place beyond my best, beyond my last story, going after that moment when the story surprises me. That surprise should be the ending.

VK: If you’ve been writing the story well all along, you should be narrowing it down to the only ending possible given what’s come before. If you get to the end and you aren’t sure if the story will end happily or not, you’ve messed something up in the middle. Almost always, when the ending is broken, it’s because the middle isn’t supporting it. Think of a house of cards. To add the top story to your creation, you need a stable and supporting middle. If it’s not there, the house falls. Furthermore, you can’t put a middle in your house of cards and expect the top to float off to one side; it must sit squarely on the foundation that came before. That’s what your ending is like: balanced on the prior scenes. An ending should close the conflict you’ve set up and add new depth to everything that came before it. If you continually suffer from weak endings in your stories, learn to write middles first.

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at point of view. Which is most effective? Of course that completely depends on the story you’re telling… Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you decide whose story is being told? Do you have a favorite POV to work in?

LR: I usually seem to go for whatever character is in the biggest trouble: the kid who won’t leave the dangerous magical family alone, the girl who teaches herself about shipbuilding when she’s supposed to be cultivating charms to attract a husband, the old ladies who are interested in suicide protests, or young man who gets exiled from his village for stealing apples. For point of view, if the character seems like someone who wants to tell their own story in their own voice, I’ll go with first person, but otherwise I tend to use third.

KHL: I often let my characters make those decisions, which means that on occasion I finish a story and realize that the most compelling story is still off-stage, so to speak, as a loudmouth character insisted on telling me his or her story, when really the minor bit wallflower character is the one who has the murder and mayhem to share. But that’s okay, because then I simply cajole the wallflower into spilling the beans. POV changes. I used to work exclusively in what I think of as eyeball socket third person. But eyeball socket first person has been fruitful too, as of late.

DM: I write a lot of historical stories filled with interesting characters from real life. For example, the story I’m currently working on is about a group of African-American jazz musicians who decided to enlist in World War I to help overcome stereotypes. Do I write about the dynamic leader who’s murdered before he could forge a legendary musical career? Or the poor share-cropper who became a Harvard track star and law school graduate? Or perhaps the cultured, brilliant violinist who played for the crown heads of Europe but had to hide his music reading ability from white American patrons? I think the final question is: who’s got the most to gain (or loose)? Whose triumph or death will most impact the other characters and the readers?

JH: I’m at my best when I’m not making decisions but the story itself has decided how it must be told. I certainly have favorite POVs, just as I have favorite character types and capturing their voice is what’s going to make the story exciting. A lot of the drafting process is trying to discover that voice.

VK: The POV is usually* the character with the most at stake. Who will hurt the most?  Who will suffer most if things go badly? My favorite POV to work in is the best one for that story.

*Like all writing guidelines, there are exceptions, and the corner cases can be truly amazing stories. However, unless you have a good reason to choose something different, try keeping POV with the character who has the most at stake, and you will see your stories grow stronger.

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Next time: how to end it all…when it comes to stories!

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at slumping middles and how you might avoid such–or…how you might have to write them anyhow! Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you keep a story from slumping in the middle?

LR: I usually feel propelled in writing a story from beginning to end, and that often seems to correspond to the story continuing to have interest for readers through the middle. There’s something I need to see happen or want to depict or want to figure out completely, so I write to get there. If I falter writing it in the middle, that’s a red flag for me that I may be losing interest in my own story. Maybe I took a wrong turn–made a character do something that either they wouldn’t do or that makes that character less worth reading about, resolved a problem instead of making it bigger, or set the protagonist on a course that doesn’t really make any interesting progress toward the main goal. Middles of stories are sometimes described as being a series of failed attempts to solve the central problem, but they need to build, too. Unlike life, most short stories need meaningful progression.

In terms of direct tools to recharge a story that seems to be losing steam, I usually try one of two things: either starting elsewhere in the story, for instance backtracking, or skipping ahead and writing the end; or else letting something go horribly wrong. Making things worse for the characters often seems to make things better for the writer and readers, as long as it continues to bring the characters in conflict with the key story problems.

KHL: Oh, I let the story slump and sag and slouch as much as it longs to in the first draft. Then I cut mercilessly as I revise. And hard as it may be to hear, I ask my wise readers to be brutally honest if they felt the urge to skim anywhere.

DM: Don’t know; I’m bedeviled by stories that slump in the middle. Maybe enforcing an artificial word count. After a story’s finished, decide to edit out a thousand words no matter what. If a publication has a maximum word-count, you might be forced to do this anyway. You’d be surprised how brutal you can be when it comes to making a sale (and you can preserve your story too).

JH: You write a slumpy middle then delete it when revising because the delete key is the sexiest key on your keyboard. Or delete your beginning and tighten the slumpy middle into a tight beginning. Deleting what you’ve written can be a joyous, liberating experience. “Wait. I don’t need you after all Slumpy Middle. I can just sum you up in a sentence or three. DELETE.” Ursula K. LeGuin mentions Chekhov’s Razor (it might have been in her collection THE WILD GIRLS) and once you accept that as truth, that you can delete the first three pages of most drafts and lose nothing, the rest is easy.

VK: Spiked clothespins to hold it on the line. Less metaphorically–add intense, dangerous, and hurtful experiences to your protagonist which make his/her goals harder to get. Kidnap her child, break his leg, send an evil spirit to possess him. Any sort of outside force which interferes with the protagonist’s ability to get what s/he wants. (But my protag doesn’t want anything, you say?  Well then, you have a different problem that you need to solve first…)

Next time: point of view!

Author Lisa L. Hannett joins the Shimmer blog this week and helps us navigate the perilous waters of short story collections. How does one make such a collection, anyhow? Read on.

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Imagine yourself at a party.

Not just any old party. There are no paper hats with snug elastics digging into your throat here; no streamers twisted and taped to the ceiling; no gaudy candles melting into your Dairy Queen cake.

Instead, picture a castle with many rooms, each decked out with sparkling chandeliers, priceless artworks, furniture that once belonged to kings. The bar is stocked with imported wines and a champagne fountain graces the main hall. Long trestle tables line the walls in each chamber, laden with delicious hors d’oeuvres that won’t spill down your front when you bite into them, and don’t leave any green bits lodged in your teeth. There are as many guests as you’d like—you’re the host, after all—but to really get the shindig going, let’s say you’ve got at least a dozen. Each person is eloquent or funny or mysterious or brooding in a Byronic fashion (if you’re into that kind of thing). Men, women, immortals, fées—they’ve come from worlds both near and distant. Depending on their customs, they give perfect gifts wrapped in silk, or sheets of beaten gold, or dew-beaded cobweb ribbons. Your guests have got their own quirks, costumes, histories, but you’ve an eye for matchmaking. Everyone gets along. And, really, how could they not? They’re all excellent conversationalists. So much so, in fact, you wish you could clone yourself just so you could talk to them all simultaneously. All night, you move from group to group, chatting, dancing, drinking without getting drunk.

For hours, you’re enchanted.

You wish the party would never end.

This is what it should feel like to read an excellent collection of short stories. Whether the book is a compilation of works previously published or a collection of mostly new pieces, it should leave us with the impression that we’ve been invited to a magical word-party. A place where characters, story sequences, themes coalesce to make a strong impact on our imaginations. A gathering of infinite worlds which, ideally, is one we’ll continue to think about long after we’ve read the last page.

Obviously, authors can’t control the reactions their readers will have, any more than hosts can force their guests to have a good time. But there are a few things we can focus on when collecting our stories that will ease readers’ journeys through our written worlds.

Make each new story your favorite.

This almost goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. Write the best story you can, every time. Make each new piece your current favorite, so that it can be lavished with all the love and attention you poured into earlier works. Because when it comes to collections, a good story might be left loitering outside with the valets. An excellent story will be in the grand ballroom, hanging with the cool kids on the Table of Contents.

If the glass slipper doesn’t fit, Stepsister, don’t force your foot.

‘But all of my stories are excellent!’ I hear you say.

That may be true. As I’ve already mentioned, many collections are ‘compilations’ of short works published elsewhere. And ‘elsewhere’ may indeed be the top fantasy magazine, the award-winning science fiction anthology, the most popular ’zine on the internet. There are so many examples of ‘collected works’ of this variety (by brilliant writers like Theodora Goss, Robert Shearman, Neil Gaiman, Kaaron Warren… oh, the list could go on and on) but ‘collected’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘all-inclusive’. Some stories, no matter how great, will not suit the tone, style, length of the collection. ‘Best of’ collections usually can’t showcase the author’s entire oeuvre, unless the term ‘best’ is actually a euphemism for ‘all’ (but few publishers are willing to sacrifice their readers’ wrists by forcing them to hoist a 5000 page tome). A writer’s favorite fantasy stories won’t suit a collection of their most popular space opera tales. There should be a clear dialogue between stories on a given collection’s ToC—which means that not all stories will be able to join in the conversation.

This is especially true for collections of mostly original stories. Books like Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month, Angela Slatter’s Sourdough and Other Stories, and even my own collection, Bluegrass Symphony, are constructed around central themes or conceits—each piece was either custom-written or carefully selected to enhance these ideas, and to create a coherent body of work. Throwing in extra tales just to pad the book out wouldn’t have done us any favours. When writing Bluegrass Symphony, a collection of stories all set in a pseudo-Midwest American setting (but with shapeshifters, clairvoyant cowboys, tentacle-boys and talking squirrels), I had several ideas that almost fit but weren’t quite what the collection needed. So although I’d thought of including fifteen stories, it turns out the work was stronger with only twelve. It’s much better to have a small and perfect suite of stories (as in The Honey Month, for instance) than a clunky, incoherent rabble.

Seating plans were invented for a reason…

After you’ve whittled the collection down to its essential stories (a dozen or thirty? see the previous point) you need to decide in which order they should appear. What kind of mood are you trying to set? Which narratives will hook readers most deeply? Do you have two stories that feature magic lamps? If so, should they go next to each other, or will they be most effective separated by a handful of other adventures? Do some stories jar when read in succession? Is that the desired effect? Do you want to leave your readers crying, laughing, wishing the collection will never end?

As the author of these works, you know them best; their rhythms, themes and tones. Most editors will place the strongest stories at the beginnings and endings of collections, so that readers are immediately drawn into the books and reluctant to put them down. This is something you may want to consider when assembling your own published works. Of course, there are no hard and fast rules. A collection of original stories may work best chronologically, building towards a climax in an overarching narrative—in which case, you may not want to present the conclusion as the first piece in the book. (Then again, you might want to do just that.)

The beauty of short stories is that they are precise. Elegant. Concise. They enchant without wasting any words. A collection of such finely-crafted works should aim to do no less.

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In just over two years, Lisa L. Hannett has sold more than 20 stories to venues including Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy, Weird Tales, ChiZine, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. Her work has appeared on Locus‘s ‘Recommended Reading List 2009’ and Tangent Online’s ‘Recommended Reading List 2010’. ‘The February Dragon’, co-written with Angela Slatter, won the Aurealis Award for ‘Best Fantasy Short Story 2010’. She is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop. Bluegrass Symphony, her first collection, is published by Ticonderoga Publications. A second collection, Midnight and Moonshine (co-authored with Angela Slatter) will be published in November 2012. You can visit her online at http://lisahannett.com.

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at titles and how one approaches them. Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you go about choosing a title for the story? Do titles present themselves before the work begins, or when it’s complete?

LR: Titles for me come before, during, or after writing the story. I have strong opinions about what titles should do: I have a whole rant about them . While they do serve as postscripts and labels for stories, my feeling is that their biggest job is to convey why someone might like the story so that they can attract the readers who would be most interested. This means my story titles often come out on the long side, though.

When a title doesn’t jump out at me automatically, I tend to go through the story looking for something that broadcasts what’s interesting about the story to me, like “My Girlfriend the Mentalist,” “On the Talking Horse Circuit,” or “Bottomless” (which is admittedly a title that’s vulnerable to off-color jokes). It’s not difficult to guess that these are stories about a mind-reading girlfriend, a performing talking horse, and a bottomless pit, respectively. With any luck, those titles will tend to interest the kinds of readers who like stories with those kinds of premises.

KHL: Finding titles is tricky. I’m a sucker for a good title, but choosing my own can be a bit of a challenge. Almost always, the title is the finishing touch, only apparent after the story is complete. The marvelous poet Matthea Harvey has come up with a series of categories for titles (in reference to poems). My favorite category illuminates just how powerful a good title can be. She calls those titles “helium balloons,” where the titles lift the work into whole new stratospheres of meaning and resonance.

DM: I’ve given up trying to think of titles before hand or during the writing process. It’s only when the piece is finished that the title emerges.

JH: Either before or during. I don’t think I’ve ever written a story and afterwards sat around wondering what to call it. Normally the hard part will be trying to decide between a few contenders. I do have a list of titles in need of stories, and whenever I start a new story, I get a bit excited wondering if, yes, now, finally I will get to use that awesome title I’ve been saving.

On a side note my friend, Jay Ridler, came up with this challenge where we made a list of titles and gave them to each other and some friends. We named the challenge after horror producer Val Lewton who was given a similar list by his studio executives. (It’s because of this that I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE is such a great movie.) Jay wrote about the experience over on his blog.

VK: Titles are like little advertisements for the story. A good title makes the reader say, “What could that be?  Wow, I want to read it.”  Strong titles have motion, just like a story. They may have a verb to give them some action, or pair two words that don’t belong together and cause friction between them. Single-word titles rarely work unless they are a very interesting word. (Of course, like any writing guideline, there are a zillion exceptions. But my point remains.)  The other point about titles is that it’s impossible to get a perfect title for every story. About 50% of the time, I can find a great title with some thought. 25% of the time, I find a decent one. And the other 25% of the time, I just give it the best one I can think of and then stop worrying about it.

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How do you title your stories? Leave us a comment to let us know. When we next meet, we’ll talk about the dreaded middle slump of a story!