Contest Judge Dean Wesley Smith discusses why he rejects stories

Editing Observations… – Dean Wesley Smith

Reasons:

• Lack of depth. The story doesn't involve him via character/setting/problem. One or more of these elements is missing.
• Pacing. Too many long paragraphs, or too many short, or inappropriate length for the context.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part Two… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Walking to the story. Starting too soon and not getting to a reason to care.
• Fake details. Descriptions that are too vague to actually describe.
• Forbidden topics. This definitely varies by market, but it's good to research them. At Clarkesworld, for example, you will never sell a zombie story. Don't even try. (Seriously, Neil Clarke is firm on this.) For Dean, it's children in danger or killing animals.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 3… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• No character voice. Don't be perfect, be distinct.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 4… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Low-hanging fruit. The story is just like stories he has seen multiple times. No surprise.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 5… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Don't care. The reader finds no reason to care what's happening. The reason may be because the character doesn't seem to care.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 6… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Author picked the wrong character to tell the story. It happens. Try again.
• TSTL: Too Stupid To Live. Character does stupid things solely to advance the plot.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 7… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Titles are important! He looks for titles that are intriguing, that raise questions. (I need to work on this.)

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 8… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Writing in second person. If that's your thing, don't send it to Dean. Sorry.
• It's all a dream. We all know (right?) that this is a bad way to end a story. For Dean, it's also a bad way to open a story unless you establish that it's a dream and why you care. Don't do a dream for shock value.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 9… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Forgetting there are readers on the other side of the words. Don't obsess over pretty words. Focus on giving those readers great stories.
• Horrid topic choices. Repeats an earlier lesson because it's a recurring problem.

Editing and Reading Observations… Part 10… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Born on page one. Character has no past, no background.
• Killing the viewpoint character. It's not as clever as you think, nor as easy.

@martin-l-shoemaker Oh no! My WoTF submissions have children in danger, and the death of a pet. Does this mean my stories have no chance of winning? I wish I had known this before.

Posted by: @crlisle

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@martin-l-shoemaker Oh no! My WoTF submissions have children in danger, and the death of a pet. Does this mean my stories have no chance of winning? I wish I had known this before.

Keep in mind that these aren't the Contest's rules, they're Dean's rules for Pulphouse. Dean is one if the Judges for one of the quarters each year, so he might reject for that; but only one, only for one quarter. I'm not aware that either of these is forbidden in the Contest.

That said... They're uncomfortable. Children in peril is a tough sell in many markets. (It's actually a little easier in YA, where one of the themes is children learning to conquer peril.) Dead pets are a hard sell in many markets. You've set yourself a challenge.  

Posted by: @martin-l-shoemaker

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That said... They're uncomfortable. Children in peril is a tough sell in many markets. (It's actually a little easier in YA, where one of the themes is children learning to conquer peril.) Dead pets are a hard sell in many markets. You've set yourself a challenge.  

Okeydokey. Good to know. Pulphouse submission rules. Anyways...

Child in peril similar to Dr. Smith putting Will Robinson in front of him as a shield in Lost In Space.

I will have to heal the poor pet.

Thanks! Very valuable information.

John Wick has his pet killed.  So... it can work at least occasionally.

Anything can work. But when a market says no, assume no. Zombie stories are popular, but don't try to send a zombie story to Clarkesworld. All you'll do is convince Neil that you can't read his guidelines.

Just trying to give @crlisle a little hope

@crlisle The way I see it - children in danger and deaths of pets are real life situations that absolutely should be explored in fiction. The danger is that many writers have used these situations as a cheap way to evoke emotions, and so they now have a danger of feeling forced.

It's like cooking with essences/extract - they can add great flavor, but if you use too much, you can taste the artificialness of it.

But even if you get the balance exactly right, Dean has decided he doesn't like this particular flavor at all. But he is not the only judge, and there are multiple markets with different tastes out there. 

@crlisle My published finalist has SPOILERS a child in peril throughout and ends with the death of an animal. END SPOILER So it can work for WotF Maybe that's why that story didn't win that quarter, but Dave loved it enough to include it in the book, so it wasn't a hard no.

@crlisle My children and pets are killed on page 2... doubt I'd make the cut!

To be fair, my MC had a really good reason for microwaving that cat.

@martin-l-shoemaker Great post. Thank you for sharing.

Second Person POV seems difficult to pull off. I've seen it done well in a WotF winner (why they are a winner), but otherwise it is hard to get a reader/hero bond going and I struggle to read with those POV kind of sentences.

Glad there was a mention about titles. I just became aware of that and started putting more thought into my titles. 

@martin-l-shoemaker This is a great post, thank you! Appreciate it 😊

I find this point very interesting "Author picked the wrong character to tell the story. It happens. Try again."

Would you happen to have any examples of that? I'm not sure I have read any book or seen any film where I thought so (of course it might not get published if that's the case 😄). But would be very interesting with some example of it or how it could be. 

Is it for example meant in the sense that you create an unlikable character? 

Any one else here with any ideas/examples? 

Thank you! 

Posted by: @patricia-a

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@martin-l-shoemaker This is a great post, thank you! Appreciate it 😊

I find this point very interesting "Author picked the wrong character to tell the story. It happens. Try again."

Would you happen to have any examples of that? I'm not sure I have read any book or seen any film where I thought so (of course it might not get published if that's the case 😄). But would be very interesting with some example of it or how it could be. 

Is it for example meant in the sense that you create an unlikable character? 

Any one else here with any ideas/examples? 

Thank you! 

Like anything in writing, it's a complicated question. There are many different examples; yet wouldn't you know it, I'm having trouble coming up with specifics. But I'll discuss.

One specific example is Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, which aren't told by Holmes but by his friend Dr. Watson. There are at least two reasons for that. One, as you allude to, is that Holmes himself is an unlikeable character. Superior, smug, prone to moods, and snarky. All of these are amusing through Watson's eyes but might be overpowering through Holmes's. But even more important: As unlikeable as Holmes is, Watson likes him anyway; and we like Watson! So Watson lets us see Holmes's better nature. He's the Holmes Whisperer.

And another personal example is my Captain Nick Aames (who was definitely influenced by Holmes). We never see his POV, only the POV of his loyal friends and his wife. I have made a conscious decision that even though my Nick Aames stories are largely about him (although not exclusively), I will never tell a story from his POV. (Spoiler alert: If I ever tell a story from Nick's POV, it will almost certainly be the last Nick Aames story. I think I know what it is.)

So those are two very specific examples why you might not tell the story from the protagonist's POV; but on top of that, you might have the wrong protagonist in the editor's opinion (which doesn't make them right). One frequently stated piece of advice is that your viewpoint character should be the person who suffers the most in the story. It's more complicated than that; but if a new invention makes one character rich and costs another character their job, you'll find a more emotionally powerful story if you tell about the unemployed character, even if the other character does a lot of exciting things. Pain is story potential.

Of course, it can be more complicated than that. Suppose the rich character is the unemployed character's brother. What if he suffers emotionally on his brother's behalf. What if he jumps through hoops for his brother's sake, risking or even losing his job in the process? So "Who suffers most?" can be difficult to answer.

For an example of this from 1994, I offer the Marvel Comics miniseries Marvels. Short summary: It's the story of four (and more) pivotal events from the Marvel Comics history, events that true fans have likely read for most of their lives; but it's told not from the POV of superheroes, but from newspaper reporter Phil Sheldon. He has no superpowers, he's just an ordinary person. The book is about the impact of superhero stories on ordinary lives. If the same story had been told from the POV of Iron Man, it wouldn't work.

It can be difficult to figure out which character has the most emotional investment in your story; but editors have strong opinions about it when they think you "missed".

I hope this helps!

I'm listening to a novel called Archer's Voice. I waited four months for it on Libby. Gotta be insanely popular, right?

I am struggling to listen to it. Why?

Chapter 1, or prologue, shows Archer as a boy, listening to a long conversation between his mother and uncle and they ultimately decide to bug out, leave her husband/his brother, and go somewhere.

Chapter 2, Bree. She's "starting over" in Maine and I know too much about her, like literally her flavor of toothpaste and how many brush strokes she uses to create that refreshing mouth feeling... But I digress.

Chapter 3, Bree. Meet cute. Ish. Archer appears for a moment to help her pick up groceries that fell on the pavement when her plastic bag broke.

Chapter 4, Bree...

See where I'm going with this? The damn novel is called Archer's Voice and he has literally not said a word. OK, OK, it's about him reclaiming his voice. Probably... I wouldn't know because I'm too busy watching Bree make toast and spread peanut butter on it twelve times left and twelve times right.

I may keep going just to see if we actually get to an Archer chapter. Part of me wants to continue because a four month wait means there's a high demand for this and I must be missing something.

OK, I just checked Amazon. 45,000 reviews 4.5* average.

So I'll continue.

Yeah, maybe I'm not the audience, but my point is, for the first 10%, I totally feel like I'm in the wrong POV.

(Oh, and I learned Archer's mother and uncle were killed, so poof goes chapter 1.)

Sigh.

@tj_knight kind of like your post above though I think there are certain instances where the MC is not the POV. Here, if Archer is mute, having him as the POV character would be weird. We would only hear his internal dialogue, or eavesdrop on others. Having a verbal MC allows them to have conversations and interact. Unless I missed the concept of the book?

I'll know more as I continue, but if Archer is mute then the title is argh-worthy.

45,000 reviewers can't be wrong, so it's on me to keep going.

You made me curious, so I read some reviews. Wildly divergent. I won’t say more so as to avoid secondhand spoilers, but I suspect you’re going to be angry.

Posted by: @tj_knight

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I'm listening to a novel called Archer's Voice. I waited four months for it on Libby. Gotta be insanely popular, right?

...

I may keep going just to see if we actually get to an Archer chapter. Part of me wants to continue because a four month wait means there's a high demand for this and I must be missing something.

Four months truly is a long time to wait for a book on Libby. However, two more weeks of drudging through a novel that sucks can be a life sentence. Einstein's law of relativity applies here. Be kind to yourself and go find something else.

@martin-l-shoemaker

Wow, thank you for this, yes it’s great! Got me thinking. 

I also find it hard to come up with specific examples, even based on your great ones. But I shall ponder on it. 

I think Sherlock Holmes was a very good example. (And if had been told through Mary Watson’s eyes, it would’ve been a very different story 😄)

Re your character Captain Nick Aames, that is very interesting too. Thanks for sharing! Based on this, I would just like to reflect on some reasons for such a choice (to never tell the story from a certain character's POV)—not in the case of your story, but in general. 

1) As already discussed above—we need to view that character through someone else’s eyes to make them more likable.

2) To maintain a plot twist secret of that character. (We couldn’t have read Harry Potter through Snape’s eyes with the same effect in the end. Also would’ve changed the whole story in quite a dramatic way of c.😄) 

3) The character has become too “sacred” for the author—perhaps after having been writing “about” that character for very long. It might be difficult or even feel “wrong” to enter the mind of said person. I have experienced this in my own writing, not with the main character but with another important character. 

4) Could there be more reasons? 🤔

Re: "The book is about the impact of superhero stories on ordinary lives. If the same story had been told from the POV of Iron Man, it wouldn't work. "

That is very true.

A general reflection on this: I have not read this specific book you mention, so might be making a poor comparison, but anyway. I can recall the excitement of how I as a child would in some stories suddenly get to see the world of such a superhero, or a special character that I had previously only been seeing the “ordinary” person or MC's viewpoint of. This was probably more occurring in films or cartoons than books I read at the time. I’m trying to think of an example... Like how they are making all these films and stories nowadays about the viewpoint of the villain, or some other character. That generally fascinates me—I want to hear more about those characters. BUT, I might not have had the same reaction or desire if I hadn’t read or seen the original MC's story first. Interesting.

Thanks again for your thorough and helpful reply, really appreciate it! 😊