slush tips: character

We're working hard behind the scenes at Electric Spec. FYI we will be a little slower finishing up slush than usual. We will be a little slower getting back to hold-for-voting authors than usual. (Sorry!)

IMHO the most crucial element of a short story is character. Every genre of short story must have at least one character. The character has a problem. This can be a very small problem, such as a pimple or an exploding water balloon, or a very large problem such as an exploding universe. Then, the story is the character acting to solve the problem (or refusing the call).

There's a lot of debate about whether a character has to be sympathetic or not. I say, nope, the character doesn't have to be sympathetic. But the reader must be able to empathize with him/her/it. The reader must be able to put themselves in the character's shoes (or whatever). This is because a story is really a collaboration between the author and the reader. And, in general, the goal of a story is to evoke an emotional response in the reader. How do we engage the reader? By creating a realistic character.

Stories that make it into our hold-for-voting pile have characters that grab our attention. This can be achieved by a unique perspective/way of thinking, unique experiences, an especially dire or relateable problem, or insert-your-neat-idea-here. There are as many ways to create an effective character as there are writers. When I finish a story, if I can answer the question 'Who was the character and what do I think of him/her/it?' it's a very good sign. If not...

in the thick of it

The deadline for the August 2017 issue has passed. (We are accepting subs for the next issue--November 2017.) If you got your story in: THANK YOU!

Wow! We editors are in the thick of it, working hard on the awesome August 2017 issue of Electric Spec! We're currently carefully going through the slush pile. If you're not familiar with the terminology, slush pile refers to the stories authors send us. We are very grateful for the slush pile. For each issue of Electric Spec we get hundreds of stories submitted so it's a big job to go through them all. There are five editors that work their way through these submissions, and stories are assigned randomly to said editors. Each editor then decides to reject or hold-for-voting their assigned stories and send the author a relevant email.

Since we publish four issues a year this means we never take longer than three and a half months to decide on a story. Thus, if you ever send us a story and don't hear back within three and a half months something went awry. (Frankly, you should just send it in again. Querying us just slows down the whole process.)

Once we get through the slush pile we make ranked lists of the stories in hold-for-voting, I compile a ranked master list, and then is...The Production Meeting. I'll tell you more about that in August. Next week stay tuned for more slush tips. In August we'll start bragging about the upcoming issue with, hopefully, some author blog posts.

tips from the slush pile

The submission deadline for the Awesome August 2017 issue of Electric Spec is approaching: July 15, 2017.

In the meantime, we've started going through the slush pile in earnest. Thus, I have some tips:

• Do proofread your story. We don't reject automatically for a few grammar, spelling errors...but if there are a lot of errors we probably will.
• Do show your story, rather than tell it. To be honest, this is a market-dependent issue. At Electric Spec we do want some showing. Showing is being in the 'now' of the story. Often it involves dialogue and/or in-the-moment thoughts and/or actions.
• Do have a story resolution. This is also market-dependent; some markets prefer ambiguous endings. We do not. We prefer something to have changed.
• If you have death in your story, earn it. I can't tell you how many stories we get where a male creature kills a female creature. If I don't identify, emotionally connect, with one of these characters as a reader...who cares if he/she/it dies? Not me.
• Do write with a unique voice. Voice is tricky to define but involves everything: subject, tone, word choices, sentence lengths, punctuation, plot, characters, similes and metaphors, everything. Your fiction should be unique to you.
• Do be creative. We'd love to see more mash-ups of traditional fantasy/sf/horror tropes, steampunk, magical realism, nonlinear chronologies, liminal fiction, your_creative_idea here.

Get those stories in!

Celebrate!

I'm a believer in celebrating small victories. I just finished a chapter! Woo hoo! So, if you just submitted a story for the awesome August 2017 issue of Electric Spec, if today is a holiday, or if insert_your_achievement_here ...Celebrate it!