The No. 1 Mistake I See in the Slush Pile

This month I realized I’ve been editing and reading slush for about a year now.

I started volunteering at a speculative magazine I love partly to give back but mainly to grow as a writer. And as I come up on my first anniversary in the position, I’ve started to make a list of the most common problems I see to make sure I don’t repeat them in my own work.  

On the top of the list is a certain type of story I give a lower score almost every time– even when the prose within the story sings.

It begins with a bit of mystery; something strange is happening and the protagonist doesn’t understand what or why. The tension and/or wonder grows until the climax, when we learn that the strangeness has a supernatural cause. The house is haunted. The boyfriend is an alien in disguise. Fairies are real, after all.

When I put it this way, the problem seems clear: The story “twist” is too obvious. So why do I see it written this way so often? I think it has to do with three things:

• Some great, classic short fiction that many of us first read in high school follows this format. When we love a story at a young age, we imprint on its structure.
• This structure mirrors the way a lot of early career writers come up with ideas. You ask yourself “What if …” and answer with some cool concept. Then you make that concept your surprise ending and think your major brainstorming is done.
• These endings can work beautifully if the story is written for a general audience (which is who a lot of those classic short story writers targeted back when more general interest magazines existed). For a modern example, think of the now infamous twist at the end of the movie The Sixth Sense.

The reason I almost always reject them, however, is because the magazine I edit and read for only publishes speculative fiction. Our readers already know there’s a fantastical element, and they don’t want to wade through 5,000 words to find out what it is.

But even magazines that cater to a more general or literary audience may have limited patience for this sort of thing because it can be a bit of a let-down. As soon as you learn the unique idea behind everything, the story’s over.  The reader’s left wanting more, and not usually in a good way.

A Fix, Although Not a Quick One

If you want to submit to science fiction, fantasy and horror magazines, the solution to fixing this sort of story is simple, but not easy: Start with the ending.

That’s right. Give the entire spooky, magical, or future-tech angle away in the very first paragraphs. Make it your hook and then – and this is key — spend the rest of the story exploring the concept in deep, meaningful ways.

For a perfect example of this, check out the surprisingly heartwarming story “Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell. From the first line, you know the house is haunted. The specific way it’s haunted, what it wants, how it uses its powers to try to get it, and the tension the reader feels knowing the whole time that it’s haunted, is absolutely delightful.  

Happy writing!