What I’ve Learned About Writing From Slush Editing

Just like every other writer out there, I’m always on the lookout for things that will improve my fiction. Whether it is advice in a writer’s magazine, inspiring tips in a how-to-write book by a favorite author, or a variety of websites, critique groups, or outside inspiration, there is always something new to learn. Slushing, however, is one of the best sources for insight.

All authors seem to make similar mistakes, and I’m no exception; I see myself rejecting stories for things I know I have done in my own fiction. That’s why I began making this list, and why I’m sharing it with you.

1. If it’s Science Fiction or Fantasy, does it have some hint of that in the first page or two? Time and time again, I see stories in which the speculative element doesn’t appear until more than halfway through the story. In almost all of the stories I’ve seen pass through our ranks to the second or third reading, you know almost immediately that it’s speculative. The clues don’t have to be blunt: even subtle foreshadowing or the perspective of the POV character can imply that this is SF/F/H before you have so much as mentioned an alien, a dragon, or a deranged serial killer.

2. Does it have a “Surprise Ending”? Surprise endings almost never work, and it’s not just because they can be predictable. The story has to spend the bulk of its time leading up to the “shocking surprise” at the end, usually to the detriment of the tale itself. It’s an inefficient structure weighted too heavily on the finish, which is usually the best part of the “surprise” story. The problem is that the idea presented in the finale should have been the idea explored throughout the story instead of being tucked away at the end.

3. Is the setting well-thought-out and developed, even if the story is set in the modern day? This may be a slightly more personal preference, but most of the stories I’ve seen pass through from slush to second and third readings are stories with rich backdrops. This doesn’t mean they spend paragraphs describing the landscape or the society—in fact, it’s usually the opposite. Most of the backdrop is revealed through the characters as they live. The background (as strange as it might be) is as natural to them, and it is as intricately connected to them as our environment is to us. How often do we stop to consider the impact of needing to eat at least three meals a day due to the structure of our digestive system? Our lives revolve around this means of gaining energy, but we don’t think about it because it’s so ingrained in who we are. Meanwhile, an alien visitor who absorbs energy from light might find all the technology, architecture, and instruments involved in our breakfast/lunch/dinner lifestyle very odd indeed.

4. Do the characters act realistically? This is a point of debate between writers and readers, from what I’ve seen, but it is still something I often find jarring while slushing. If the first instinct of a reader, upon witnessing your character do something, is to sit back and say “What?!”, there’s something inconsistent in the way the character has been presented. Either the action needs to change, or there needs to be a hint earlier that the character is fully “in character” when they perform the action.

5. Is the tense correct? Over and over, I see mistakes with tense. Stories which begin in present tense often fall back into past tense randomly, which makes the stories read as though they’ve been poorly edited. And it’s not just in present-tense stories, either. I’ve seen past-tense stories that flop all over the place with respect to tense. I’ve also done it often enough myself to realize it’s worth mentioning here.

So there’s a taste of what I’ve learned while slushing. There are many other, smaller things, but these stuck out the most because I see them so often—in my own writing as well as in the slush pile.

Born and raised in the dark woods and twisted apple orchards of New Hampshire, Maggie Jamison is a summa cum laude graduate of SUNY Albany with a double major in English and Asian Studies. She brings a bit of fresh blood to Apex from her experiences interning both in the marketing department of Tyco Electronics and in the IT and marketing departments of SUNY Press. Her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has been published in a number of small venues and anthologies. Maggie is a Submissions Editor and Marketing Editor at Apex.