Editor Interview: The Raven Short Story Contest

Genre-busting fiction

Fantasy & Science Fiction remains one of my all-time favourite magazines, and a large part of the inspiration for Pulp Literature. I love the fact that classic stories like 'Harrison Bergeron' and 'Flowers for Algernon' first found their homes there and are now part of high school curricula. The stories they publish today are every bit as potent and well-written.

It's so hard just to choose a few. Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Mary Gentle and CJ Cherryh are the ones that float to the top of my mind first. I grew up on a diet of Tolkien, Lewis, Asimov, Norton, McCaffrey, Heinlein and Silverberg, all of whom definitely have shaped my tastes and my own writing.

Our mix of genres. Most magazines publish a single genre or handful of related genres. In every issue we strive to have a cross-section of as many genres as possible. That means literary fiction rubs shoulders with steampunk, history meets mystery, and science fiction shares a room with romantic comedy. This allows our authors to reach new audiences, and exposes readers to genres they didn't know they liked.

Good storytelling is the key. Whether you're writing exquisite literary prose or a rip-roaring action adventure, your characters and their problems must grip us from the start and carry us along to a satisfying ending. It's a good idea to read an issue or two to get an idea of our tastes and the range of story length and tone. And please do an extra polishing pass or two on the manuscript before you submit. A gem of a story may get passed over if the first thing an editor sees is a bouquet of typos wrapped up in sloppy grammar.

That's hard to answer, because for me the ideal submission is one that is radically different from the one I read previously, whether in tone, subject, genre or voice. Which is good news for authors, because it means all styles are welcome as long as the storytelling is solid. For a more pragmatic answer I'd say I personally prefer stories on the shorter side -- up to about 3000 words -- carefully crafted, with an engaging voice and a satisfying arc.

The three most common errors are:
1. Starting the story too early. Quite often the beginning of the piece is backstory and the true beginning is a page or so in.
2. Lack of polish, which includes weird formatting, typos, bad grammar, or an uneven voice.
3. Too much information in the cover letter. Don't tell us what the story is about or give us a huge biography. We want to dive straight into the story and let it speak for itself. For contests in particular the stories are judged blind, so judges never see the accompanying information anyway.

For the contest don't bother with biographies. We will ask for that information if your story wins. For regular submissions you can include a short biography, but honestly, the story matters more to us than your prior publication credits.

We can usually tell within a page or so whether the story is promising. For the contests our process is:
1. All entries are placed in a shared folder. Editors read entries at random. If the story has promise within a page or so it will be moved to the longlist. Each story has at least three chance to be liked and make the longlist.
2. Each story in the longlist is read all the way through by three editors who vote yes, no, or maybe.
3. The stories with the most votes make the shortlist and are sent on to the final judge.

For the contests, the final decision is in the hands of the judge. However, after a story has won, we still edit it the way we would any other accepted submission. This may mean several editing passes between our story editors, copy editors, and the author.

Once a contest like the Raven has closed, all three senior editors do several binge-reading sessions to start pulling stories into the long list, which can take up to a week. During the next week we read the long-list carefully and start voting. I like to read at night when the world is quieter, so sometimes I will stay up till 3 or 4am -- provided I can sleep in the next day!
For general submissions I don't see most of the stories until they've been past the eyes of one or both of the other senior editors, and I can take those at a more leisurely pace. After that, most of my day is taken up with contracts, proofing, layout and production details, as well as marketing.