I heard this phrase from David Baldacci in his Masterclass. While this may sound like he’s promoting substance use in order to produce a story, I think what he’s actually referring to is the different mindsets needed for each phase of writing.
The Coffee Phase
Coffee refers to the idea that the first draft should be a relatively fast process.
When getting the first draft down, many writers claim you want to focus on getting the idea out and captured and not worry about making it perfect. “Get it down on paper,” was the phrase we used before everyone started doing their writing on computers. Don’t concern yourself with exact wording, sentence structure, or where all those danged commas need to go. Just get that story out of you.
The Wine Phase
Wine refers to the idea that editing should be a slow process.
After the first draft is born, it makes sense to do a few passes to clean up obvious issues but the key is to set that draft aside for at least two weeks before trying to edit it.
When you do sit down to work on your story again, you need to be in a place where you have a different perspective. This time, your efforts need to be slow, deliberate, and discerning. This time, you do need to focus on where the commas go.
I think this is one of those things where there are as many approaches to writing as there are writers. Let me know your process in the comments below.
David Baldacci made an interesting comment in his MasterClass. He mentioned how he does not to write down story ideas when they come to him. He avoids the standard advice to keep a notepad and pen on your nightstand. Instead, he feels that any worthwhile story idea will tend to stick around in your head. If it’s good enough, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it, let alone forget it. This is also a concept shared by Stephen King.
While the “nightstand” method really didn’t work for me, I do capture my story ideas. My current method is to jot down the ideas as I get them, typically as a word Doc on my phone. They usually take the form of a of a couple sentences saved with a filename resembling concept for the story. Often something along the lines of “Story idea about AI that lives inside food.DOCX.” Most of these are rarely revisited. Many of these even get deleted when I look back and shake my head – AI inside of pears? Why did that ever seem like a plausible idea to me?
The other thing I’ve noticed is that I don’t usually have an idea for a true story, but rather I tend to capture the general concepts a story could be built around. For example, “AI food” is a premise that I could work with (yet probably shouldn’t), but that idea tells me nothing of the conflict or of the characters motivations. There is no plot line being described. It’s merely a premise, or perhaps better thought of as a base framework, on which to hang the plight of the characters.
Sometimes a premise can be enough of a spark to get a story started, but I find the real creative work comes as I trudge through getting the story down, line by line, word by word. In Stephen king’s terminology it is where the story is “unearthed.”
I recall a conversation with my mom after she read something I had gotten published. She asked “How did you think of that?” If you have tried your hand at fiction at all, you know the ideas rarely come to you in full form but rather it is a slow unearthing. You see a bit of something shiny sticking out of the ground that catches your eye so you start to dig away. You carve out the dirt around it and sweep the surfaces clean until you are able to completely pull it from the soil, hold it up to the light and be in awe you were ever able to get at a thing like that.
That analogy was a bit much to try to explain to my mother, so I think I said something profound like “They just come to me.” It really is something you have to experience to understand. Ideas are only the starting point that lead to more ideas which then, with persistence and practice, morph into craft.
My point being whether you capture your story ideas or not, isn’t even be that important. It’s the ass in chair unearthing that matters much, much more.
Let me know in the comments below how you capture the ideas for your stories.
I remember the first time I received my assigned slush (story submissions) from the editor of Allegory. Twelve unread submissions, each hoping to land in the publication. It was exciting, daunting, and very eye-opening for me. Once into a routine of reading stories for a publication, you can really get a feel for which kinds of stories editors see too often and what makes one story stand out from the pile.
Here are some of the common problems I came across when reading slush:
Telling instead of showing
There is a ton of information on this out there already, but in essence, telling is useful for moving through information quickly, but at the potential cost of distancing the reader. Showing brings us into the story and paints a picture in detail.
The blurb I used when providing feedback went like this: Telling has its place. It works well for quickly covering a lot of ground, but it tends to distance the reader. We would much rather see the bouncing knee and infer the character is anxious as opposed to reading “Bob was anxious.”
A lack of conflict
Sometimes everything was fine for the character, too fine, actually. With no conflict, there’s no story. I think this can happen to a writer sometimes when they really like their character and don’t have the heart to put them through any hardship. But that hardship is needed to drive the story forward.
Scenes vs stories
This is where there is an often extensive description of the character and his/her world but nothing that resembles a story arc. The character is just hanging out at a bus stop, eating a sandwich, and waiting, and in the end, nothing has really changed (other than the sandwich is gone). Sometimes these scenes can even be beautifully written, but without a story arc, these pieces are not interesting enough to pass on to the main editor.
This one often occurs in conjunction with the lack of conflict problem.
Slow development
This is the one I saw the most. It’s when a story takes way too much time to get to the core conflict. For a 5000 word story, if I am past page three or four and don’t know what the conflict is about yet, I am probably going to pass. I also saw a lot of stories where the intro paragraph could have been omitted and the story would have been better for it. Not that the intros were necessarily bad, but often times it was unneeded. I feel like this probably happens a lot to the “Pantser” style of writer. The ones who hop in the chair, shift the keyboard into Drive, and start writing without an outline. If you operate this way it can take a bit to get the flow of the story headed in the right direction.
No ending
This one was also a frequent occurrence. Sometimes the story was really good and kept me going, but then just ended. The stories that were the most unfortunate were the ones that had a clear way to end, or several ways to end, but just stopped. In order for the reader to feel fulfilled with a story, things need to wrap up at the end in a satisfying way. The more unique and surprising the ending the better.
Downer endings
A lot of the stories coming through the slush pile end with a downer ending. It’s not that a downer ending is wrong or bad, but slush readers see a lot more of those than upbeat positive endings. You absolutely don’t have to write a happy ending but if you do, and it’s well done, your story will stand out for that alone.
Flow
Tiny issues, like awkward phrasing or inconsistent tone, can pull you right out of a story, even one with a great idea and is otherwise clear and well-paced.
One other secret I learned:
Feedback to Writers
As a slush reader, I decided early on that I wanted to offer personalized feedback whenever possible. Instead of sending the standard “not a fit for us at this time,” I made myself articulate why a story didn’t work for me.
That discipline really sharpened my editorial instincts for my own work. If you ever want to learn what makes a story effective, try forcing yourself to explain what did and didn’t work. The times you find this really challenging is when you are learning something new.
Here are a few insights I picked up about when a story is good:
If you find yourself thinking about a story you read hours or days after reading it, it has something special. A lot of times for me it was some concept the story covered (Sci-Fi nerd here). Sometimes it was a character or a character trait. I recall one story to this day where the monster had a pillow for a head. That kind of simple, clear, and unique, imagery is the sort of thing can make a story stick with a reader long after they finish it.
You shouldn’t have to work at reading or understanding a story. As soon as I have to reread a sentence to understand exactly what is happening, the story is starting to lose me. A few more of those and it’s a rejection. I liken it to a trip in the car. If the road is bumpy and you have to go around fallen trees and are always unsure of where you’re going, it’s not an enjoyable ride.
Another great sign is if you immediately want to tell someone else about the story. If you get done with a story and think “Oh, man, so-and-so would love this.” Try to take note of what made you feel that way. It’s not always easy to do, but the more you do the exercise of pulling apart a story to understand how the pieces fit together and work, the better you will get at writing a great one.
Reading slush to see the other side of short story publishing and choosing to provide authors with feedback accelerated my growth as a writer. If you’re serious about breaking into the craft, I recommend volunteering to read slush. There is a lot of need out there. You will probably be able to make a connection pretty quickly on your own, but email me if you want me to put you in touch with an editor in need.
I saw somewhere that The New Yorker gets half a million unsolicited submissions per year. Let that sink in for a second.
Half a million.
That’s a serious slush pile.
But I did notice that famous people are constantly getting published in the magazine. This makes sense for The New Yorker. No matter how good the piece is, why take a risk on an unknown when you can tap celebrities whose names will draw in readership. We are all beholden to someone or something, publications need content, but they need readership first and foremost. And this strategy worked on me. I ordered some old issues of the magazine on Ebay and saw that Bob Odenkirk had a piece under their Shouts and Murmers section. Bob is a very funny actor and comedian. I loved him in Better Call Saul. His piece in The New Yorker, entitled A Biblical Rough Draft, was just OK though.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some incredibly funny phrases, like one part where he refers to biblical storytellers as those who “tromped from village in floppy sandals, swatting at flies, sipping beads of dew from the undersides of donkeys, and fighting dogs for scraps of meat.” That donkey thing—that’s my kind of humor. But overall, the piece was not nearly as funny as I would have expected.
I can’t help but think that Bob’s fame played a significant role in him landing that piece. If a complete unknown (like Yours Truly) had written the exact same words, I am sure it would have been rapidly rejected. We could rebel and shout “The world isn’t fair!” and “They should evaluate the story on its own merits, no matter who wrote it!” And while I do agree with the idealism of the latter, my belief is that the world is fair. Bob worked hard to obtain fame. Having an inside track to publication is one of the fruits of his labor. And can you blame the magazine for using the tactic of publishing the work of celebrities? Bob is a very safe bet. Prestigious literary publications, places like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or The Onion have reputations that could be damaged if they publish writing from an unknown author and it turns out that person is a white supremacist, or a cannibal, or worse yet, a cannibal white supremacist racially-biased to eating only Caucasians.
Okay, so maybe “just get famous” isn’t practical advice. To be honest, if I had this completely figured out, you would have already heard of me before stumbling across this post.
So, what am I doing to stand out?
My strategy is to go wide and deep — but with quality! I am writing every day to generate content, working hard to refine it so that it stands out when it is eventually considered, and submitting all the time. Right now, I have ten stories out for consideration. I figure if my name starts to look familiar to the editors, they will know I am taking my writing seriously.
As a tactic I mentioned in a previous post, I am also targeting a specific market: Points In Case. I am tailoring my writing to fit that market. It will be interesting to see whether this strategy improves my acceptance rate.
I will keep you posted as to how well this works — at least until I get famous and don’t have to worry about silly things like having a “strategy” anymore.
Let me know in the comments below whether you have a strategy for standing out in today’s sea of competition. I am interested to hear your thoughts!
I’ve heard that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. For fiction writing there is truth to that, as you have to be a bit insane to pursue fiction writing with an expectation of getting paid to do it.
The saying has me thinking about changing my approach to see if I can a few more land sales.
My current process is:
Wait until inspiration strikes (if ever) and write a story
Find a market that the story might fit and submit
Get a rejection then GOTO step 2
A better approach might be to:
Target a market that suits me
Write something appropriate for the market and submit
Get a rejection and GOTO step 2
The new approach requires me to abandon that whimsical, spur-of-the-moment, writing that occurs when an idea for a story hits me. There is fantasy in my head that all of the great fiction authors operated by writing whatever the hell they felt like. It feels wrong to force myself to deal with the hand-cuffing constraints of catering to a specific market. My creative side wants its freedom, dammit!
But there is also an analytical side of me that likes this surgical approach — dissecting the stories they have bought, feeling through the structure, the language, looking for the fingerprints in the tales that made those first readers and editors salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.
So who is my victim target market?
I have picked out Points in Case. They do funny well and I do like me some funny. They publish funny lists and I feel like a funny list is a reasonable bar to hurdle; the word count is relatively low so my thinking is that I should be able to come up with list stories pretty quickly.
In practice, however, making a funny list is harder than it seems. As the individual “funny” items are added to the list, you start to question your ability to determine if something is funny or not. Sometimes things I think are funny are just weird, or worse yet, offensive.
I have already submitted one list story to P.I.C., which was promptly rejected. I currently have another one sitting with them that I like a lot better. Whether or not it gets accepted is up to the fiction gods at this point (and we know how finicky they can be) but, then again, that’s all part of the craft.
Have you tried writing to specific markets before? If so, let me know in the comments how that worked out for you.
Breaking Into The Craft 