uniqueness and action

We, the Editors, had our production meeting this past weekend. This means our awesome August 2013 issue is well on its way to creation. All the authors who were in hold-for-voting and not selected have been emailed. Remember, if your story made it to hold-for-voting, your story is publishable. Kudos, for almost making it into the issue! I think some selectees have yet to be emailed--but it's coming soon.

IMHO, we had an extra tough time selecting which stories to include in the issue because we had a lot of strong finalists. I thought I'd pass along some discussion points for your consideration. At Electric Spec we really like unique stories. This means your story will have a better chance with us if it has a different take or unusual twist in it. Try to subvert our expectations. For instance, if a man falls in love with a ghost woman, you might expect the problem would be that the love-interest is a ghost; but what if that's not the problem? One clever way to create something unique is to combine multiple genres, for example, zombies and artificial intelligence. I think you get the idea. The bottom line is if two somewhat similar stories are in final contention and one has a unique twist and one doesn't ==> we pick the unique one.

The second issue that was a deciding factor at the recent meeting was: does the protagonist act to solve his/her/its problem? (Notice this means the protagonist has a problem.) In other words, the main character has to do something to change his/her/its circumstances. For example, if evil robots are running rampant across the countryside killing everyone and the protagonist is saved when they're cut down by a virus --> not great. On the other hand, if evil robots are running rampant across the countryside killing everyone and the protagonist tries to lure them away from a settlement to save the people there ==> very nice. Especially if you add in a unique twist like the protagonist is a little girl and some other stuff...
I think you get the idea here, too.

As you may have gleaned, we have some great stories for the awesome August issue. Stay tuned this month for more info!