Top Ten Reasons Why I Reject Flash Fiction Stories

I've blogged about being a slush reader for Flash Fiction Online, but it's been a while since I've updated you on it. In an average month, my team will have about 80 stories to review. Only stories with two votes for publication are guaranteed to move into the next round. A story can still be sent on if someone likes it enough to fight for it. So, when you submit a story for consideration your first hurdle is to get the slush pile reader to like it.

So over the last six months I've complied my top ten reasons why I reject a story. Keep in mind that the items on the list are my reasons for saying "no," other slush readers may, and probably do, have different reasons for rejecting stories. When I started the list I thought I was going to have to work to fill it up. Sadly, I didn't.

10. The "Meh" Response. Sometimes there's nothing technically wrong with a story, but it still isn't working for me. Often this is because I can't find anything "special" in it. What do I mean by "special?" If you are using one of the tried and true tropes (girl meets vampire, they fall in love, she becomes a vampire to be with him forever, for example), you need a new take on the trope to set it apart from everything else out there. Stephanie Meyers had sparkly vampires - that was new. The more tried and true your base storyline, the more you'll need those "special" elements to make the story stand out for me. It could be your main character (MC) doesn't have any particular strong traits and doesn't make me hate him enough to love him, or there's no real setting (or a "usual suspect one"). In every story you write, something and usually several somethings have to be special. It has to draw me in and make me take notice. Stories that get the "Meh" response are often at the "close, but not quiet there" level because the don't hook me.

9. The Main Character Is Too Stupid To Live. Okay, we've all done it. I've done it. If an MC is making obviously dumb choices just to move your story along, the writer will have a problem convincing me to move that story to the next level. Often this problem is because the MC doesn't have enough of a personality to make the stupid choice. We've all pick a path that was obviously wrong even when we knew it was. Why'd we do it then? Because that's who we are. The same has to be true for characters. A teenager making a bad choice (like shoplifting) on impulse, I'll find plausible. I won't find the same action plausible if the person is a fifty-year old male who is successful, rich, and a pillar of the community if  I haven't seen in advance that he has poor impulse control, or  some other credible reason why he's suddenly willing to throw his life away to snatch a t-shirt. A character's actions must line up with her personality traits and motivations.

8. Overuse of a thesaurus, "denseness" or other forms of "purple prose".  In my definition, "purple prose" or "dense writing" happens when the writer is busy showing us her style and that style is getting in the way of the storytelling. Fifty cent words are great when the character, and not the writer, would actually use them. Yes, use all five senses, but not in the same sentence. Not every noun needs an adjective. Not every verb needs an adverb. This type of "dense" writing is hard to read. My attention wants to stray to something else.

I tend to be guilty of "sparse" writing. I don't get into interior thoughts or scene setting enough. My editor's comments are often - "add more X here." As a result, when someone else is laying it on thick, I notice. Pare your work to only use the descriptions that matter. While a 66 word sentence are fine on occasion, they shouldn't be the norm. If your sentences look like paragraphs, you might have a problem to address.


7. Numerous Grammatical Errors. Bet you thought this would be higher didn't you?

No matter how many times you go over a manuscript, there will be typos, dropped words and other errors. I can forgive some. If you have a lot, you're telling me you don't care enough about the story and don't respect my time enough for me to waste any more on the story.

By the way, knowing when to break a paragraph is essential. Knowing how to write dialog, including internal dialog, is essential. Sixty-six word sentences (no joke, I do count) almost always need to be broken down as they express more than one thought.

Check to make sure your pronouns link to the noun you wanted. After a 66 word sentence with numerous nouns the word "it" in the next sentence refers back to the last noun, which is probably not the one you wanted.

6. A Forgettable Main Character  Or One I Have No Sympathy For. I don't have to like your main character, but it helps. If you are writing an unlikable main character you have your job cut out for you. You need to make me care about John the Bastard if you expect me to read his story. The anti-hero story can be wonderful when done right. And I can reject a story about a perfectly nice main character. Whether your character is likable or not, I need to have some connection to her. Without a connection, you make it easy for me to reject the story.

5. Lack of Clarity. I'm not going to work too hard to figure out what's going on. If I can't do so in a paragraph or two, you've given me a reason to stop reading. I MIGHT go back and look at the story again to see if my confusion was because I was tired or preoccupied, but I might not. Don't risk your story on that chance. Stories that I end up saying, "hu?" or "what just happened?" get voted off the island.

4. Telling me the character's bored or it's just an ordinary day. If the character's bored why should I want to go on a journey, even the short one in flash, with her? The same issue exists with telling me that "the day started out like any other. . ." I groan a bit when I see that. While common wisdom says start your story before your MC's world gets blown to heck, common wisdom is also wrong. If you need an "establishing shot" of every day life, it needs to be short and absolutely required for me to understand what happens.  I'll give you a paragraph (which in flash is generous) to give me an issue or a character to get involved with.

3. Not submitting a complete story.  This is actually easier to do than you would think, especially in the flash (500 - 1,500 word) format. I've seen some wonderful character sketches and scenes, but that doesn't make them publishable. A complete story has a beginning, middle and end. If your story doesn't have all of these it will get the "NAS" (Not A Story) label and a reject vote. Check out my post on the Hollywood Formula for Flash Fiction for more on this one.

2. Withholding the main character's name.  You aren't creating mystery; you aren't making your main character "any man." You are annoying me as the reader. There are a precious few times when you should withhold the main character's name like when your story is told in the first person, but the MC doesn't interact with other characters right away. But as soon as the MC does run into someone else, you should tell me the MC's name.

1.  Withholding information the Point of View character knows as a means to create a mystery or a twist.  This is PET PEEVE #1 for me so be warned. I see many stories where the writer withholds a critical piece of information that the point of view character knows, like the ghost in the story is really the main character's little sister, to "create suspense" or a "twist." If your suspense is based on hiding information from your reader, you don't have suspense, you have a trick.

The Sixth Sense worked because the main character didn't know the twist, and early on in the story the viewer is told the critical piece of information that makes the main character's lack of knowledge credible. If you dissect The Sixth Sense, you'll see hints scattered throughout the movie leading up to the "twist." It's why we accepted it.

If you are going to withhold information you have to be very careful which point of view you use so that person doesn't know the truth and the reader figures it out with him. Otherwise it's a quick trip to the reject bin for the story.

Anyway, those are some of the reasons I'll turn a story down. They apply to whether you're writing flash or an epic fantasy. Hopefully knowing how this slush reader thinks will help you get published. Good luck and keep submitting.

If you want to critique my work to see if I violated my own guidelines,  you can find my two short story collections, Paths Less Traveled and Shots at Redemption, at Musa Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and Smashwords.

Work in Progress Update

I just finished the first draft of my latest short story, A God's Quest, in which Apollo tries to break Daphne's curse and restore her to her proper form. It's the third act of my short story collection, Apollo Rising. The newest short story needs a week or so to "cool" before I start the editing process.

In the meantime, I'm back to work on my urban fantasy novel, The Nocebo Effect. The novel features Vonna, one of the characters from Paths Less Traveled, my upcoming short story collection.

Paths Less Traveled will be published by Musa Publishing http://musapublishing.com on May 11, 2012. I'm anxiously awaiting the comments on the collection from my editor. I'm sure I'll be blogging on the editing and publishing process, including the blurb and excerpt, as we get closer to the release date.

Flash Fiction Online

A few months ago, I was asked to be a slush reader for Flash Fiction Online. Unfortunately, at the time, work and family commitments consumed all my time, and I didn't feel like I could give FFO the attention it deserved. While I'm not sure my time commitments have lessened, I decided to join FFO anyway.

So, I'm currently diving through my first pile of submissions. It's been an educational experience in a number of ways. In the coming weeks, I'm hoping to add a feature called "Lessons from the Slush Pile." Stay tuned.

Q&A

I recently participated in Love Romances Cafe's Publisher Day for Musa Publishing. There was a question and answer section of the day. I've reproduced some of the questions and my answers below.

How long have you been writing? What inspired you to pick the pen up one day and create characters that capture the imagination?

I've been writing since at least 6th grade, and that's a long time ago. I stopped writing after high school and didn't start writing fiction again until about 12 years ago. I'd had a very vivid dream and woke my poor husband up to tell him about it. I knew I had to get the scene on paper before I forgot it forever. Once I did that, I needed to figure out what happened before and the conclusion.


What influenced you to get published? How long did it take for your first book to get published?

I wanted to get published to share the characters I loved so much with other people. My first published short story was in October, 2011. Musa will be publishing my first books in 2012.


What makes your characters so vulnerable yet strong? Can you describe them to us?

I try to show that my characters are as flawed as the rest of us. They have some real strengths as well as weaknesses and blind spots. In an upcoming story from Musa, Sea Serpent's Tale, one of my characters is a sea dragon. She destroys ships and the men who sail them because hundreds of years earlier a mage sailed into her waters and slaughtered her children. Needless to say, it would be easy to make her a monster. In this story, however, she spares the ship because it has a child on board. She befriends the child. To find out what happens next, you'll have to wait until Musa releases the story.

What do you do when characters stop talking to you when writing?

I've been lucky enough not to have this happen often. Usually, it means I've lost the story thread. I need to stop forcing words onto the page. I'll then try to visualize the scene and let the characters move about without my overt interference. So far, the technique’s worked, and I've been able to convince the characters to start talking to me again.

What about the heroines for these strong determined heroes? What makes them equal to the heroes and capture the heart of one of these alpha males?

I usually start with the heroine and try to ensure the hero is good enough to capture her heart. My heroines are experts in at least one area and very self-sufficient. The hero has to provide her with some trait or characteristic she needs, and vice versa.

When a new book comes out, have you ever been nervous over readers’ reactions to it? How much does reader reaction mean to you as an author? What do you hope readers get from your books?

I get nervous about readers’ reactions when I send the story out to my beta readers. The nervousness doesn’t seem to stop. Obviously, I want readers to like the stories and care about the characters as much as I do. Reader reaction is very important, which is why I ask people whose opinion I trust to read the story before I submit it for publication. I hope my readers enjoy the time they spend with the characters and that the story stays with them.

What is your writing process? Do you outline, fly by the seat of your pants or a combination of both? Do you use mood music, candles, no noise, when you write?

I’m still playing with the writing process. Until about 2 years ago, I was completely a “pantser” or discovery writer. I usually started with a character, idea or scene and go from there. The down side was that I spent a lot of time re-writing to find the story. Then I tried outlining “everything” and found that writing became a chore. I’d done all the discovering and writing the story didn’t bring me joy. Lately, I’ve been outlining the story high points and conflict and discovery writing the rest. It seems to be a good balance for me. I have a rough outline, which keeps me from falling down the rabbit hole, but I have enough room to go off the path if a better road to the conclusion presents itself.

I need noise in the background to write. Generally, I’ll have the music playing. Sometimes I will have the TV on. Experience has shown that if the TV is on, it needs to be set to something I’ve seen before otherwise the TV will win the ADD tug-of-war and no writing will get done.

What do you feel is the most important aspect for all new authors to remember when writing or creating their own stories? Any advice for aspiring authors?

Keep writing, and learn to effectively use critiques. Even if you only manage a page a day (about 250 words), you need to write. The story won’t get written if you don’t spend the BIS (Butt in Seat) time.

Critiques are your friend. Try not to get defensive when someone points out an issue they see with what you’ve written. Breathe deeply, and then look at the comments with a more dispassionate eye. If more than one reviewer/ beta reader points out an issue, they probably are onto something. It might be time to go back to the story to address the issue.

What is on tap for the rest of 2012? Do you have other WIP’s you want to get published? Can we get a taste of what is to come from you in the future?

Musa has contracted for six of my short stories which should come out in three anthologies in 2012.I mentioned Sea Serpent’s Tale earlier in this post.

Three stories – Kalypso’s Song, Best Dressed and Obsessed, and Laurel Branches – are Greek Myth retellings. I’m working on a fourth retelling – Pythia in Training – that I hope Musa will offer a contract on when it’s complete.
In Lightning Strikes, Falcon must find a stolen horse before her wrongfully accused best friend is put to death for the crime.
Flashes of Life is an urban fantasy. Vonna is a psychic whose talent defies classification until she’s assigned to a murder investigation.

I’m also looking to sell my high fantasy novel, The King’s Falcon. Falcon, the main character in Lightning Strikes, has given up her life as a princess and become a spy. As the trusted agent of Queen Sabryna of Fayette, Falcon never lets her investigations get personal. Yet, when she is ordered to Fayette for an assignment, she’s drawn into a conflict that requires her skill as a princess and spy to resolve. Mordent, a sorcerer and lord, uses the wealth of Falcon’s realm to rebuild his own war torn country. When their lives collide, neither will ever be the same as their clash draws Falcon inescapably closer to her abandoned throne.

I’m also working on an urban fantasy, The Nocebo Effect, in which Vonna, from Flashes of Life, tracks a serial killer.

Submission News

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I sent the manuscript for The King's Falcon and outlines for the next two book out to the agent who requested them today. Now I wait.