Yzabel / January 9, 2006

A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing is a blog I follow at regular intervals, and a few days ago, its author, Joe Konrath, has posted an entry regarding his experience in being a judge in a short story contest. In his own words: “I can tell within ten seconds of looking at a story whether it will go on to the finals or not”. He then proceeds to list eleven points that will ensure a story, not to be published, but to go on the junk pile from the start. Of course, this is as usual a matter of perspective, and not every editor/judge/critic will proceed the same way; on the other hand, these points seem quite valid in my opinion, even if I know very well that following them all faithfully isn’t all there is to a good story.

The article is up on Joe Konrath’s blog. Here’s a summary of the points he lists (in fact, a general rule would be: “Present your story well, to at least show that you respect it”):

• Chosing the wrong font: no fantasy fonts, let’s pick something that goes easy on the eyes of a person who’s had to read many other stories before yours.
• Paper: cheap paper always speaks ill of your story.
• Ink: bad printing also speaks ill of a story.
• Spacing, and lack thereof: nobody wants to read 30-lines paragraphs.
• Typos: not proof-reading one’s own work is a sure way to tell “don’t take me seriously”.
• First sentence: especially in the case of short stories, it needs to draw the reader in from the start.
• Dialog: lack of dialog often means “all tell, no show”. Not always, but often.
• Ending: if the story is strong enough to be read, its ending must be even stronger.
• Conflict: stuff needs to happen, and better early than late.
• Avoid autobiographical stories: only known people stand a chance to see their memoirs being read. If we take part in short stories contests, chances are we’re not known, therefore not interesting enough to tell our lives.
• Adjectives and Adverbs, Exclamation Points, Repeating the same words, using the passive ‘was’ a lot, onomatopoeia, dialects, a first paragraph of nothing but setting, explanations, preaching, and anecdotes. Avoid like the plague.