Dealing with Rejection and Story Mechanics

By Jacob Baugher

Jacob Baugher was a slush reader for Flash Fiction Online from 2014–2016. He holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University (2017) and currently teaches creative writing and English literature at a small university in the Ohio Valley.

His fiction appears in Deep Space and Storming Area-51 from Black Hare Press, as well as the Dark Drabbles anthology series. His work has received Honourable Mentions from the Writers of the Future Contest and he was a finalist for TechDirt’s Working Futures anthology.

authorjbaugher.com

As someone who's read slush before (not for BHP, for Flash Fiction Online) and as someone who subs to pro markets fairly regularly and has their MFA in fiction, and who teaches fiction writing at the university level,  I just want to offer my thoughts. Hopefully they're helpful.

• Just because you got a rejection doesn't mean your story isn't good enough to be accepted elsewhere. Stories get rejected for a lot of reasons, from "we already have one like that" to "this is a good story but it doesn't fit in with the rest" to, yes "this wasn't good enough to make the cut."
• When I was in grad school, my second mentor made us promise that we wouldn't "retire" a story until after we've subbed it 100 places. I urge you all to make the same commitment. Just because BHP said no, doesn't mean the story will never find a home.
• Before you send it back out, revise your beginning. Ask yourself if it makes a promise to the reader. Ask yourself if we have a sense of who the character is and what they want in the first paragraph. Ask yourself if you can cut down and tighten your language.
• Make sure your story is actually a story: A problem is set up in the first page, complicated in the middle, and resolved in the end.
• Make sure your descriptors are clear and concise and utilize the 4 types of description (scientific, sensory, emotional, poetic).
• Make sure your story is asking a question or posing a problem relate-able to everyone who will read it. Focus on emotion. Summarize facts.
  • When in doubt, fall back on the seven-point story structure:      
    a) a person      
    b) in a place      
    c) with a problem      
    d) that they try to overcome and fail      
    e) so they try to overcome and fail      
    f) so they try to overcome it again and      
    g) they either succeed or fail
• When in doubt, make sure your character is struggling with their misbelief throughout the tale. Check out Lisa Cron's story genius for more info on what a "misbelief" is (or her Tedx Talk on "Wired for Story).
• On a similar note, make sure your character is struggling with something internally that reflects the external conflict of the story. Generally, this is something in their past that they must emotionally triumph over in the climax in order to complete their story arc and have a satisfying ending. In other words: the past informs perception. Really, all stories start in medias res. You should have some idea of the “origin scene” of your character’s internal conflict, and that scene should be referenced somewhere in the first pages of the story. 
• Make sure your character actually wants something that they absolutely cannot have. Make sure your character actually tells the reader what they want specifically. I tell my students: if the character can’t close their eyes and imagine specifically what they want and what this would mean to them, then the story isn’t ready to be written (Cron).
• Make sure your character is going through a complete arc. Your first page should make a promise to the reader: “This is the kind of story we’re going to be telling,” “This is the character who we’re going to be with,” “these are their issues,” and “this is, in general, where the plot is going next,” and “these are the stakes of the story if the character’s internal and external goals are not accomplished.”
  Big-name author Examples:           

a) Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
b) Changes by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files)
c) A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay           

Black Hare Press examples:           

a) “Afterglow” (my story in Deep Space)
b) “They had to Come from Somewhere” (my story in Storming A51) 
c) “Unbeknownst” by K.R. Monin (Deep Space)
d) “Bradley Lutkins” by Stephen Herczeg (Storming A51)

• On the subject of first pages: your last page should be a reversal of your first. While the first page (we’re talking the first 500 words or so), should set up the story conflict, character arc, wants, and stakes, the last page should also provide a satisfying resolution to the story problem, character arc, and story conflict. Similarly, your first and last lines should be doing this as well.
• Make sure you get a good beta reader or two. I’ve always found that it helps to have one beta who isn’t a writer and at least one who is a writer and who has been accepted into the publication (or similar publications) that you’re submitting to. 
• Make sure your story is well-edited. I can’t tell you how many stories I straight-up rejected because of typos. A good trick is to read your story out loud to yourself. This keeps the brain from glossing over words. Another good trick (though much more tedious) is to read the story backwards. Since the words won’t make sense in the reverse order it also helps the brain from glossing over the information.
• Congrats to all who got in, have a beer
• Better luck next time to the rejects, have a beer.
• Finally, remember why you started writing in the first place.

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