Chapter XVII: Appendix: Your Manuscripts and the Editors

To new writers, and to most old ones, a magazine editorial office is, among other things, a mystery, not the least mysterious of its contents being the editors. It is, of course, no more mysterious than the office of any other specialized business, and editors are merely one small class among many classes doing various kinds of specialized work. Certainly there seems no justification for the traditional awe in which editors are held by so great a majority of people. This awe is undeniably present and does more than a little to prevent more comfortable relations between writers and readers on one hand and editors on the other. Partly it is a "hangover" from a past age when editors better earned an atmosphere of awe as individual molders of public opinion, and partly it is due to people's insistence on regarding with a peculiar and undiscriminating reverence {228} anybody or any thing connected, however remotely, with "literature."

It shouldn't be necessary to say so, but, if the testimony of one of them can be accepted by those who persist in considering them something very much above--or below--the normal, editors are just ordinary humans no different in essentials from any other people of ordinary education. As in any collection of people, there are all kinds among us, even those who breathe a rarified atmosphere and hold themselves superior to their fellows, but, heavens, think of waiters you have known! While as to barbers and policemen--

Just humans, whose job happens to be that of trying to choose from many manuscripts those the reading public will like best. If the manuscripts they handle happen to be fact articles as well as fiction, there is also the job of selecting with an idea of education, or of advancing some cause or principle advocated by the particular magazine, but even here there is also the job of pleasing the reading public. Besides that, if the editor has a plain or social conscience, the desire to leave people the better, rather than the worse, for their reading. That's all.

{229}

A word more about that job, so that we editors may not seem quite so mysterious, inconsistent, arbitrary and other things as we do at present. Take the editor of any fiction magazine--or any magazine, for that matter. So long as he works on that particular magazine his job is, generally speaking, not to test a manuscript by its general literary or its general magazine merits, nor to choose according to his own personal tastes, but, to the best of his ability, to choose first according to its suitability to _that particular magazine_. If John Jones is editor of magazine B and then becomes editor of magazine C, his manuscript tests will change instantly. He will accept some stories he rejected for B and reject some others that he would gladly have taken for B. That is, if John is a good editor and has not deliberately taken up the task of making C as much like B as possible.

Each fiction magazine aims at a special type of reader, or a special group of readers. Therefore it tries to individualize itself in such manner as to get and hold the interest of _that_ type. Its "policy" may undergo changes, but it is always a more or less {230} individualized one. What is one magazine's meat may be another magazine's poison.

There are other reasons why the rejection of a manuscript is "not necessarily a reflection upon its merits." It may fall fairly within the individualized field of a magazine and be recognized by the editor as of entirely sufficient merit, yet be sent back. A grocer or a druggist or a delicatessen man acts exactly the same way. If one hundred cans of corn is the number a grocer is justified by sales in carrying on his inventory and he already has one hundred cans of corn, he doesn't buy any more cans. If an editor estimates that his readers' demand justifies him in buying about fifty love-stories, five tragic stories, ten business stories, etc., per year and he already has in stock the full quota of each that should be on hand at any one time, he, like the grocer, buys no more of these types.

Length, as well as type, is also a factor that an editor must consider in the light of his inventory.

Of course, there are all kinds of exceptions in applying the inventory test to manuscripts, for stories are not standardized like {231} cans of corn nor do all magazines adhere to so rigid a basis of selection. Then, too, there is the fact that some types are, permanently or temporarily, difficult to secure and, when sufficiently well executed, are likely to be seized upon at any time. Really good humorous stories, being notoriously difficult to find, would hardly be rejected even by a magazine with its normal supply of humorous stories already in the safe.

Also, manuscripts come in waves, not only as to number but as to setting, material, theme, and so on. For six months, a year, three years, there may be, for example, an oversupply of stories of diplomatic life, rural stories, stories laid in Latin America, and a dearth of stories of golfing, stories of olden times, sea stories. By the end of a year or two the situation may be completely reversed on any or all of these types. In most cases the change from dearth to plenty or _vice versa_ is without warning or discernible cause. After being caught by a few dearths an editor is likely to stock up with a reserve on types that have shown themselves subject to fluctuation in supply. On the other hand, he may decide that writers as a whole, in {232} their fancy or lack of fancy for a type, are a fairly safe index to the fancy of the public in general.

In any case, many factors besides merit, recognized or unrecognized, and besides bad judgment by editors, decide the fate of manuscripts. On the other hand, most manuscripts are rejected for the all sufficient reason that they do lack sufficient merit.

Some ideas are prevalent that seem worth meeting.

A "pull" is seldom of service in gaining acceptance for manuscripts; of none at all so far as my observation extends, and I can not now recall, even from hearsay, any case in which "pull" took the place of merit. Doubtless there are such instances, but, ethics aside, progress through "pull" is not worth a writer's practical consideration. Many beginners believe they will get a better hearing for their stories if they present them in person instead of mailing them. It's an editor's business to select manuscripts according to their values, not according to his opinion of their authors, and I think most editors do so. If he is subject to personal influence, don't forget that you may make an {233} unfavorable, instead of a favorable, impression. In any case you're taking from him time that he probably needs badly and is not likely to be happy over losing. What you have to say to him can almost always be said equally well by letter, perhaps far better. A letter takes less of his time and--he can choose his time for reading it.

I know of no fiction magazine that has a "regular staff" of writers in the sense of its having no opening for new writers. Often a magazine comes to depend for the bulk of its supply upon a comparative few who have proved themselves best able to provide that supply, but that does not mean that it hasn't a welcome for others.

The oft-heard wail that "a new writer has no chance with editors" is merely silly. Weren't all the "old" writers once new? How, pray, did they gain their first footing? In one sense, to be sure, new writers have little chance with editors for the sweet and simple reason that a majority of beginners haven't sufficient merit to earn them a chance with any competent, fair-minded judge. Some of them will never have. Some have not yet developed and are worthless to {234} magazines until they do. If a writer can't develop unless encouraged by acceptances before he has developed, he almost surely hasn't in him the ability to develop in any circumstances.

Don't be discouraged by rejections. They are merely the usual thing. They only class your manuscript among the eighty-five to ninety-nine per cent. that every magazine turns back. Along with yours many manuscripts of successful or even famous authors are rejected, and some of these rejected stories, possibly yours among them, will be accepted by other magazines. The only disgrace is in being discouraged. If, instead of the usual printed slip, you get a note from one of the staff, be glad, for your manuscript has raised itself above the others and earned attention for its merits; your rejection is really a step forward--the big first step.

Often the beginner's discouragement is due to his trying his wares on the wrong market. Would you try to sell a lady's slippers to a civil engineer, a soldier's boots to a dainty dame of fashion, a policeman's brogans to a child? Yet that is exactly what so many of you try to do with manuscripts. I {235} am, though an editor myself, quite incapable of saying just which magazines will buy which manuscripts, for an infinite variety of factors and circumstances are involved, but the total ignorance of magazine markets displayed by many beginners can be due to nothing but failure to give the field even a rudimentary consideration before trying to master it.

The elementary rules for the actual submission of manuscripts have been printed thousands of times, but the need for them abides:

Every manuscript should be typewritten. No matter how good handwriting may be, it imposes a heavy handicap on any manuscript, for, in comparison with other manuscripts in typewriting, its story can unfold only on leaden feet even to the most patient, kindly and self-sacrificing editor.

Double-space the typewriting. It reads more easily, allows you sufficient space to make your own alterations and corrections without messing parts of your story into illegibility, and, if the manuscript is bought, gives space for editing it as copy for the printer to follow.

{236}

Write on only one side of the paper. This custom is so firmly established that it's folly to violate it and almost no one does. There are plenty of reasons for the custom, but its mere existence is practical reason enough.

Leave a fairly wide margin on the left-hand side of each sheet--as a kindness to the editor in case your manuscript is bought and to the compositor who must read and set what you have written and the editor edited.

Type your name and address on the first page of your manuscript. For common-sense reasons.

Number your pages. Consecutively straight through from beginning to end. Especially if you hope for any chance of detailed criticism from the editor.

Unless your manuscript is to be returned express collect, enclose stamped, self-addressed envelope of sufficient size and strength, or at least sufficient postage. As a matter of common honesty. A surprising number of writers are not honest in this respect.

If you write to the editor when you submit a manuscript, see that the letter is enclosed with the manuscript, not sent under separate {237} cover. If your idea in writing is to further the chances of your story, you're going about it in a poor way if you add to the editor's troubles by making him handle your case in two parts instead of one. Or by making him read your autobiography in full.

Several things will help toward a better understanding of the editorial attitude toward manuscripts. First, tell me, did you ever know a merchant to work hard day after day for the purpose of _avoiding_ buying stock for his customers' demands? No, the editor desires to buy; he spends his time trying to get stories, not to avoid them. When he finds one that meets his needs he rejoices. A minority of magazines seek first of all for authors with "big names," because of the following they command among the reading public, but the editors of even these are inclined to pat themselves on the back when they "find" a brand-new author of merit.

Second, to balance the above, remember that your manuscript is merely one among thousands that come to an editor.

There is a wide-spread feeling that many manuscripts are rejected only because they are read, not by the editor himself, but by {238} some assistant. There are two "schools" of manuscript-reading. One method is to let the most inexperienced readers weed out the bulk of submitted manuscripts, thus saving the more experienced readers much time. The other method reverses the process; a more experienced reader does the first sorting. The latter seems to be gaining ground; personally I believe in it strongly. My own experience may serve to illustrate the situation. For years every manuscript came to my hands first. As their number increased this became a physical impossibility. Manuscript-reading is only one of an editor's many duties, a fact that many lose sight of. At present from one to two working days per week is probably a generous estimate of the time I give to manuscript-reading. The reading is done mostly in bits--in the evenings, on trains, in days spent at home for the purpose. In the office itself I can't get time to read a dozen manuscripts a year. And much of the other kinds of work also is done outside. Many other editors are in similar case.

But in delegating the bulk of the work the most experienced editor on the staff is the one who first reads the stories from {239} "unknowns." Except in cases of appeal, stories by our "regular" writers do not pass through his hands at all, but go first to editors of less experience and from them to me.

Some magazines have a special "fiction editor," who is often the court of final appeal, may have been chosen by the editor as superior to himself in this branch of editorial work and may or may not be the first to read manuscripts.

The thing to remember is that if the editor delegates the first reading it does not follow that he minimizes its importance and he generally takes care to put it into as capable hands as he can. Remember, also, the general rule is that a first reader is instructed to mark all doubtful cases for a second hearing; also that it's to his own personal interest to "find" every good story he can if he wishes to hold his job.

How much of a manuscript does a reader read? A sentence, a paragraph, a few pages, maybe all of it. Unfair and inefficient not to read all of each? My personal opinion is that manuscript-reading is one of the things that can be learned by experience only. But, having the experience, an editor can reject {240} the "culls" very swiftly and with a good deal of sureness. He can tell all the hack plots at a glance, knows the kinds of opening that are never followed by a good story, can tell in a few sentences or paragraphs whether a writer has sufficient skill in handling his tools to be able to turn out an acceptable story and--has at his finger-ends all the kinds of material, setting, plot, treatment, etc., that his particular magazine does not use. If in doubt, he reads further or samples it out here and there and glances at the end. If still in doubt, he reads it all. Sometimes knowing the story to be unusable, he reads it all because the author's possibilities are worth serious consideration even if the story in hand isn't.

As to the final reading I think, from what data I chance to have, that I'm not in accord with the majority custom. When I'm familiar with a writer's work and he's fairly steady, the endorsement of the man who passed it over to me is often sufficient, since he too knows that writer's work and would have noted any let-down or doubtful points. In other cases, sometimes a few pages--with maybe a glance at the remainder--is {241} sufficient for rejection, unless the other editor, having read it all, has voted for it or makes the point that we can help the writer revise it into suitable shape. But what I do read I read word for word page after page until I find definite cause for rejection, for I can't believe that I can judge from the reading public's point of view unless I read as I think most of the reading public reads--word for word. Maybe other editors can, but, at least in most cases, I can't.

But be sure of this--whatever their reading methods, editors are trying to find good stories, not to reject them.

Many magazines contract in advance for stories by well-known writers, buying sight unseen and trusting wholly to the writer's steadiness, conscientiousness and popular following. In some cases this is perfectly safe; in others decidedly not. It means, essentially, that the writer has left the merit system and works on a sure-thing basis, which is not good for most writers.

Do not decide that your story was rejected because an editor read it when he was tired or his liver was out of order. Editors get tired and their livers are as undependable as {242} anybody's liver, but they know this and make allowances accordingly. In fact, it's a pretty safe rule to decide that your story was rejected for lack of merit or for unsuitability to the particular magazine. If not convinced of the former reason, keep sending your story to other magazines. Many a story has been rejected by five, ten, twenty, fifty magazines and yet found an acceptance, perhaps by a better magazine than some of those that rejected it, though the majority of manuscripts submitted probably never find a taker.

Oh, yes, the editor is fallible like everybody else including yourself. But after all he's an expert of experience in his own particular line, experience has given him a perspective you lack, and he has an understanding of his magazine's particular needs that no outsider can have. In the long run you'll make progress faster if, allowing for the fallibility of the genus editor, you decide to accept his verdict as more dependable than that of your friends or yourself. Anyhow, there's more to be gained from looking for weak places in your work than from striving to prove its excellencies by argument.

{243}

This is a rambling, hop-skip-and-jump chapter, but there are a thousand little points that bob up one after the other and choosing among them is haphazard work at best. All I've tried to do is to give you a sketchy idea of editorial offices and their working so that sending manuscripts to them will not be quite so much like sending them out into a hostile unknown.

{247}

INDEX

Academic methods of teaching fiction: 5, 10-4, 38-9, 42-4, 51, 108, 134-5, 154-5, 168-9, 171-2, 180-96.

Action: 96, 129-30, 135-7, 205-16.

Ambiguity: _See Words._

Art Process, The: 17-25, 217-26.

Art: 17-21, 127-32, 217-26.

Beginning a story: 75-6, 167-9, 176.

Big words: _See Words._

Brackets: _See Frames._

Brevity: 87, 113-7, 147.

Chapter headings: 110-1, 119.

Characters: 76, 168-9, 170-1, 175-6, 179. (_See also Characterization, Proper Names._)

Characterization: 100-1, 113-4, 117-8, 127-32, 132-9, 143-5, 170-81, 212-3.

Classical references: _See References._

Classics, The: 208-10.

Clearness: 21, 70-86, 88.

Coincidence: 104.

Color: 57, 58-9, 59-62, 75, 77, 89-90, 105, 117-8, 197-204.

Condensation: _See Brevity._

Contrast: 150-1, 160-5. (_See also Relief Scenes._)

Convincingness: 38, 52, 94-108. (_See_ also Illusion.)

Copying: _See Imitation._

Dialect: 62, 77, 89, 105, 106.

Dialogue: 76.

Distractions: 52-69, 88.

Dramatic element: 109-19.

Editorial offices: 227-43.

Ending a story: 147-50, 165-7.

Fiction, What it is: 17-24, 32-4, 64-6, 127-32, 140-2, 154, 212.

Fiction as a vehicle: 24, 32-4, 64-6.

Fictional references: _See References._

First-person narratives: 68, 104-5, 151.

Force: 22.

Foreign words: _See Words._

Frames or brackets: 68, 91-2, 104-5.

Friends as critics: 55, 63, 72-3, 198.

Happy endings: 123-5, 165-7.

Historical references: _See References._

Horror story, The: 123-5.

Illusion, Imposing and preserving the: 10, 23-5, 30-45, 52-181, 197-204.

Imagination response: 197-204.

Imitation, Evils of: 102-3, 104, 187-8, 191-5.

Improbabilities: 95-101.

Individuality: 118-9. (_See also Imitation._)

Individuality _vs._ technique: _See technique, Academic methods._

Literary, Being: 51, 195-6, 205-12, 214-5. (_See also Literature._)

Literature: 1-3, 25-9, 80-2, 85, 195-6, 215. (_See also Literary._)

Literature _vs._ Magazine fiction: 25-9.

Manuscript reading by editors: 182-4, 227-43.

Manuscripts, Preparing and submitting: 227-43.

Market, The: 227-43.

Material: 88, 95-101, 105-7, 117-8, 123-7, 143-5, 217-26.

Mistakes, Effect of on reader: 62-3, 77-9, 105-7. (_See also Convincingness, Improbabilities._)

Models: _See Imitation._

Moral values: 136, 139-45.

Motion pictures, Effect of: 115-7, 140.

Mystery stories: 92-3, 111-2.

Obtrusion of author: 66-9.

Overstrain of reader: 7, 87-93, 112.

Plot: 39, 79, 88, 93, 96-100, 101-3, 109-19, 145-7, 149, 154-69, 171, 212-3.

Plot, positive _vs._ negative: 145-7.

Proper names: 59-62, 73-5, 75-6.

Readers, Your: 7, 20, 22, 46-51, 71-3, 105-6, 120-3, 150, 151, 153, 160-5, 197-204, 215-6. (_See also Illusion, Imagination Response._)

Realism: 126-32, 133-4, 140-1, 161-5.

References, Classical, historical, etc.: 59, 75, 89.

Rejections: 227-43.

Relief scenes: 90-1, 112-3.

Repetition: 86.

Repression: _See Brevity._

Rules: 44-5, 51, 121-3, 134-5, 150-1, 154-5, 160-5, 172-5, 181, 182-96, 226. (_See also Technique, Academic._)

Sentence length: 88, 117, 220.

Setting: 117-8, 152.

Simplicity: 1-2, 8, 22, 79-86.

Slang: 77, 89, 105, 106.

Structure: 23, 156-7. (_See also Plot._)

Style: 27, 38-43, 44-5, 63-4, 64-9, 79-85, 104, 117-9, 121-2, 150, 191-6, 217-26. (_See also Technique._)

Surprise: 111, 160-6.

Suspense: 110-1, 151.

Sympathies, Enlisting readers': 22, 120-53.

Tags: 175-80.

Technique, Over-emphasis on: 10-4, 38-44, 182-96. (_See also Academic._)

Titles: 119.

Unconvincingness: _See Convincingness._

Unity: 23, 157-8, 222-4.

Unusual words: _See Words._

Words, Ambiguous: 73.

Words, Big: 55-8, 79-85, 117.

Words, Foreign: 58-9, 75, 89, 105, 106.

Words, Technical: 75, 89.

Words, Unusual, 55-62, 89.

Words, (_See also under Slang, Dialect, Proper Names._)