yet more tips

We are going through our mountain of slush. Thanks for sending us your stories. :) Since we can't critique stories, here are some gleanings from the slush pile...

• Length. If your story is 7,000-words, or almost 7,000 words, we are going to be less enthusiastic about it. It's more work to edit such a long story. If your story is less than 1,000-words it's tough to tell a whole story in that length. If you can write effective flash, however, we want to see it!
• Sensory details. We do enjoy stories that make use of all the senses: sound, sight, touch, smell and taste. Life makes use of all these senses and good fiction makes us experience life in a new way.
• Character. If you can make the reader think your protagonist is a real person: huzzah for you! Good characters seem real. They are multi-dimensional with good and bad qualities and unique perspectives. One way to create this is to be very specific, and to be very subjective. Your character should have unique thoughts, reactions and opinions on everything. Show us. You can never be too subjective in fiction.
• Plot. The bare bones of plot are:
  1. problem
  2. effort
  3. resolution
  As an editor, I don't care what any of these are, but they should all be there. Usually, the effort is related to solving the problem. The resolution is just letting the reader know if the problem was solved or not.

Don't forget the submission deadline for the last issue of 2015 is this week: October 15, 2015!