This continues a series of posts outlining things I’ve noticed in reading short story slush for our upcoming Carnvah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords,” and in reading slush for ezines and submissions for critique groups. I’m going to highlight things that got stories bounced from consideration. I won’t identify authors or specific stories, because my purpose isn’t to embarrass anyone. And I should add I’ve committed most of these slushpile sins myself, so if you recognize yourself in any of these posts you should realize you’re not alone.

Deja Vu

Anyone who reads much fiction knows the feeling. “I’ve seen this before.”

Well, nothing turns up the volume on that deja vu feeling like reading slush. Guaranteed. By the time you’ve gotten to your third or fourth sexy elf wench in one reading session, you’ve had more than enough. You never, ever want to see a sexy elf wench again.

I know what some of you are saying. Everything’s been done, it’s impossible not to repeat something somebody did before, all the good plots are taken …

Well, maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But I do know that writers absorb pretty much everything they read, watch, encounter, hear, etc. It all goes into a blender-brain, and it comes out when we write. Something we saw or read decades ago — so long ago we don’t remember knowing it — can end up in a story we wrote yesterday. That happens, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With artistry, you can make all those things mere brushtrokes in something new. I mean, painters all use the same colors, right?

But, for crying out loud, when your brain starts tossing that stuff into your fiction go back into the story and get rid of the stuff that everyone saw in the theaters just a few years ago. and definitely eject the stuff they’ve probably seen on DVD a dozen times. Yes, I’m talking “Lord of the Rings.”

Some submissions for “The Infinity Swords” could almost have been cut-and-pasted from the screenplay. I recall reading one story and wondering why the writer didn’t just go ahead and call his character Aragorn.

I have no idea how many subs featured mass combat at a portcullis, a la the siege at Minas Tirith. One or two even featured winged creatures swooping down on the combatants. One story, full of really strong prose, lost me when the giant battering ram was drawn up to the city gates.

I recall a while back reading a story in which a man turned into a big snake — the author thought it was the most original thing ever, but all I could think of was James Earl Jones doing the slither in “Conan the Barbarian.”

So stay away from iconic movie images — especially recent ones, especially from blockbusters, and most especially from blockbusters directly related to the genre you are writing in. Because the last thing you want to have happen when an editor is reading your story is to have him stop and think, “Damn, I really need to watch ‘Conan’ again.”

– Steve

This continues a series of posts outlining things I’ve noticed in reading short story slush for our upcoming Carnvah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords,” and in reading slush for ezines and submissions for critique groups. I’m going to highlight things that got stories bounced from consideration. I won’t identify authors or specific stories, because my purpose isn’t to embarrass anyone. And I should add I’ve committed most of these slushpile sins myself, so if you recognize yourself in any of these posts you should realize you’re not alone.

Visualize, Please

Sometimes, writers don’t clearly think through the things they write. They just write things that make the reader go, “huh?” It’s a very quick way to get bounced from a slushpile. Read more »

This is the first in a series of posts outlining some things I’ve noticed in reading short story slush for our upcoming Carnvah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords,” and in reading slush for ezines and submissions for critique groups. I’m going to highlight some things that got stories bounced from consideration. I won’t identify authors or specific stories, because my purpose isn’t to embarrass anyone. And I should add I’ve committed most of these slushpile sins myself, so if you recognize yourself in any of these posts you should realize you’re not alone.

Uneven Tone

This is a common problem. Basically, the story starts in one vein, then shifts into something else entirely, then zigs back into the first mode, then on to something else. Read more »