What we want (And don't want!)
What we are looking for at the moment
What we are not looking for
at the moment
Common Story Problems
Common Poetry Problems
FAQ
What we are looking for at the
moment:
- We're chockful of stories set in modern-day America, so we are going to be less inclined to take one of those than something set elsewhere.
- Dark, gritty, nasty horror stories. We do print
horror, but not the sort of stuff that leaves us wanting to go and wash
after reading.
Common problems with stories:
The story is too long!
It's amazing how often a story needs to be trimmed before
it's acceptable. It is the single most common problem I
see. A short story has to be tight ... every sentence,
every word, needs to carry its weight. It's not a novel where you
have a hundred pages to develop each character, and develop hundreds of
sub plots. My most common advice (to nine out of ten
submissions:) "Trim 10-20% from the word count." The story almost
always benefits from it. Even if you trim too much and need to
put stuff back in, the exercise will improve the story.
This story has no plot!
As far as we here at Andromeda Spaceways are concerned,
a story should have a plot. A story should, in short,
be about something! It is surprising how often we see
marvellously detailled atmospheric pieces during which nothing
happens!
Pace!
The Siamese twin of the "This story is too long!" problem. The
reader is 10 pages into the story, and we are still wondering when
something is going to happen. Something has to be keeping
the reader interested, or they will stop reading and pick up something
else.
It's a Cliche!
There's no getting around it - our slushers see a lot of variations on certain types of stories. There's not much point in providing a list of SF/F/H cliches here when there are so many other good ones around, but any writer should develop a feel for their genre and a knowledge of what's gone before. People have been writing robot stories since the early twentieth century, fairy-tales-with-a-twist since the days of the French salons, and gods-walk-the-earth tales since before the dawn of recorded history. On the other hand, we understand there's nothing new under the sun - at some level, all stories are variations on something that has gone before. The difference between good story and cliche is not necessarily the plot, but the treatment.
Why should we care?
Again, surprisingly common. Really nasty things are happening to
the main character, and the reader goes: "So? Kill him off
already, let me get on with the next story..."
We should care what happens to the characters. They should engage
us in some way. They don't have to be likeable, but we should
care what happens.
And then he/she woke up...
Please, no. "It was all just a dream" stories - they elicit nothing but groans. Trust me, your story is unlikely to get through the first round of readers if it's one of these.
Spelling
Proof read your work. While we are all well aware
that typos happen, you should still take every effort to make sure that
your submission is as typo free as you can manage. If it looks
like you haven't taken the time to do even a basic spell-check, your
manuscript will not be well received. However, we don't get
uptight about use of US vs British spelling. Australia usually conforms to British
usage (in theory) but in practise most US spellings are acceptable.
We'd rather you didn't try to use British spelling unless you're
familiar with it, as a half-converted document is hard to deal with.
If you are interested, there is a list of alternative
spellings here.
Grammar
None of us here at ASIM are Grammar Nazis*. Nobody is
going to get bent out of shape over a split
infinitive or a dangling
participle provided the story is good. However, there are
some things that drive even the most mild mannered editor to
distraction, and chief among these is the incorrect use of homonyms:
explicitly, it's/its, there/their/they're, and your/you're. Get
it right!
As a reminder:
- it's = it is
- its = belonging to it, used exactly the same way
as his or hers.
- there = A location, as in: over there, there it is.
- their = belonging to them, as in: Their house,
their car.
- they're = They Are, as in: "They're coming right for us!"
- your = belonging to you, as in: your hat, your glove.
- you're = You Are, as in "You're starting to annoy me."
These are basic. Editors and slush readers will forgive a lot,
but incorrect use of these is likely to get your MS rejected promptly
and painfully. For more details, try here.
* OK, some of us are.
Common Poetry Problems
What common problems are you seeing with poetry submissions?
Ian: Can I get you to do up a couple of paragraphs on
common "poetry" submission problems for my "slush" page?
I would assume you would include "No Haikus, Tankas or
Blank Verse. Sonnets had better be funny. Blank
verse need not apply ... poems should actually rhyme and
have rhythm..."
The most common problems with poetry are, oddly enough, not
with the form -- although there are people who do not know what rhyme
actually is, and still try to write rhyming verse
-- but with the force behind them. A haiku such as:
Automobiles are
Eating up our resources
We will all die soon
contains the right number of syllables, but expresses no genuine
understanding of the force which drives a haiku:
A tree in starlight
May not be seen by men's eyes
But still casts shadows.
Which is not particularly good, but contains more of the idea
of a haiku than the first.
When it is unrhymed, less formal poetry, the problem of what
drives the poem still emerges:
Cats
Are creatures
Who
Will curl
Up in your lap
is just a sentence about cats cut up into five lines. This isn't
poetry.
Another major problem is one which is shared by the short
story. Many of the writers simply haven't read very much poetry, and so
they present tired old tropes with effervescent
belief in their originality. We are all familiar with the idea that the
ecology of the world is being screwed, so any poem which takes this as
its theme had better shed some new light on it.
But keep sending the poems in. Most poets find that they write
fifty poems before they write one that works.
Poetry submitted to a Speculative Fiction magazine should
contain some Speculative Fiction
What it says. ASIM prints Science Fiction, Fantasy and
Horror. Or any reasonable combination of the above. Poetry
submitted to us should have something to do with those themes.
FAQ:
What are the most common problems with
manuscript formats?
We have a page outlining our preferred Manuscript format, (here) and it would be really nice if
people could stick to it as closely as possible. However
the most important issues are as follows:
- Always include full contact details in the body of
the MS ... it's how we keep track of which story belongs to which
person. Always include an email address. Don't
put your name and address in the document header.
- Never use weird fonts. I don't care how cool
it looks, we want a simple, preferably fixed
width font. Courier or Courier New 12pt is preferred.
- DOUBLE SPACING ... actually, we don't care
much either way about double spacing. It's a standard manuscript
format, so we put it in the spec to make life easier all around, but
it's not a big thing with us. Don't go manually inserting
them if your word processor doesn't support them. It just causes
headaches. Single spacing is adequate in those cases.
- HEADERS all headers get stripped off before
being sent sending to the readers, so don't waste time putting anything
in the header. Ditto for page footers, although a page number is
acceptable. Don't manually insert header or footer lines if your word
processor does not support them.
Do you ever read cover notes?
Not really, so it's not worth spending a lot of time on them.
Anything longer than a paragraph will probably be ignored. I
don't care what the story is about, the readers and editors will find
out for themselves. A short list of writing credits is
fine.
I've been rejected several times now
... you hate me, don't you?
Trust me ...rejection doesn't mean we hate you. So far, for every
story we select, we reject twenty. Apart from questions of
quality, there is a limit to how many stories we can print. What
is more, each story is sent to the readers with no author details
attached, so every story has to stand entirely on its own
merits. There are all sorts of reasons
a story might be rejected, ranging from the fact that the author
does not know how to write basic english, through to "this is great,
but we've already GOT a shapeshifting transvestite elf story in this
issue". What we do try and do is not leave you hanging ...
generally, if we do reject a story, we do it very quickly.
It's the ones that almost make it that take a while to decide. We
do try and keep you informed at every step of the process.
How does your slush-reading process work?
When a story arrives (correctly formatted as an attached
RTF!) it is entered into a submissions management program developed
explicitly for Andromeda Spaceways, affectionately dubbed
"Slush-o-matic". The author details are stripped, and the story is then
sent to a random reader. At
this stage, the reader marks it with a "Yes", "No", or a "Maybe". "No"s
are sent back to the author (often with reader comments), "Maybe"s are
sent
to another random reader for a second opinion, and "Yes"s are send to
round
two.
In Round 2, the story sent to three different readers, each of
whom gives it a rating between 1 and 5, with 1 being great and 5 being
the opposite. Once all three second-round readers have rated the story,
the ratings are added up, and compared to an arbitrary minimum number
(which varies a bit depending on circumstances). At this
stage, the reader will get either a Reject (with all the reader
comments attached)
or a Hold.
A Hold request means that your story has passed into
the Round 3, and is in with a real chance. It means that your
submission is considered good enough to go into an issue of
Andromeda Spaceways, and you should feel proud because it is in
about the top 10% of all stories received. It will be placed in the
luxurious Slushpool for the editors of upcoming issues to ogle.
However, with the number of submissions we receive, only about 1
story in 3 makes it out of the Slushpool and into print. If no
editor selects it within two-three months, the story is reluctantly
booted out of the Slushpool and back to the author (again, with reader
comments attached)
Isn't your slush reading process a bit
arbitrary/time consuming/unfair?
Arbitrary? Yes, it is. It is possible that your story could
hit a reader on a bad day and get rejected out of hand. It's possible
it could be the best story ever written, but languish in the
Slushpool for two months and be eventually dropped because it doesn't
happen to
fit into any of the upcoming issues. That, unfortunately, is life in
the
world of publishing. We do our best, though. The important thing to
remember
is that every other magazine goes through some variation of this
process. We're just more open about it than most. Most magazines have longer response
times than us.
The reader clearly misunderstood
my story!
The Comments were useless/wrong/blatantly
unfair!
Well ... tough.The comments are supplied because we here
at ASIM are bending over backwards to make our magazine as writer
friendly as possible. We make no guarantees as to the usefulness or
fairness of the reader comments, or that any will be supplied at all.
The readers are all unpaid volunteers (apart
from the ones we caught and chained in the cellar. Still unpaid, but
not so much volunteering...) and we are not a critiquing circle.
(If you're looking for one, I
strongly recommend Critters.)
The overwhelming response to our practice of supplying reader comments
has been enthusiastically positive, but once in a very long while
somebody writes back to complain that we got it wrong. Again:
tough.
However, sometimes the comments
have clearly been attached to the wrong story... it happens sometimes
when the Slush Wrangler's medication is off. In that case, he's quite
happy to sort it out.
Do you accept Resubmissions?
We don't normally want resubs. It's not a deep-seated
pathological loathing, we just have a touchingly naive faith in our
slushing process.
Sometimes, though, we'll get a feeling of unrealised /potential/, that
the piece could be exactly what we want, but isn't, yet. In those
cases, we'll make the suggestion to you, along with providing, as
usual, the heartfelt,
educated and above all free advice of our slushers.
Note that if we do suggest that a reworking might be useful, we'd want
to see the resubmission actually reworked. This may come as
something of a surprise, but we're firm on the matter.
In short, you'll know if we think it might be worth a resubmission,
because we'll tell you. If you're in doubt, you should ask.
If we say no, it's not because we hate you. We don't hate
you. That Barrow guy, we hate. Lousy, whingeing, prying...
Thanks to Stuart Barrow for
that section. He's due out of therapy real soon now...
What's a trope?
According to the Penguin Modern English Dictionary:
trope [tROp] n metaphorical expression,
figure of speech; (mus) musical interpolation in plainsong.
According to Abrams , 5th edition:
"'Figure of thought' or tropes (meaning 'turns,' 'conversions'), in
which words or phrases are used in a way that effects a conspicuous
change in
what we take to be their standard meaning."
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