Editor Interview: On the Premises

Premise-based stories

Tin House, for its excellent fiction. Ploughshares, for its rotating editor policy. Glimmer Train, for its focus on short stories. One Story because it's a great idea. The now-defunct Town Drunk because I admired its editor. Chizine for its tight focus and high standards.

My favorite short story writers are those who cross literary writing with speculative fiction ideas. Ursula Le Guin, Kevin Brockmeyer, Dan Chaon, George Saunders, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and yes, Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. I also admire, for their stunning writing skills and/or creative story ideas, T. C. Boyle, David Gates, Alice Munro, Mary Gordon, and Robert Olen Butler.

First, we review all stories without knowing who wrote them. Your reputation will not get you into our magazine! Second, we publish a broad range of genres from literary/mainstream to fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and comedy. Third, we seem to be more willing to work with writers of intermediate skill than many magazines. Finally, although this does not make us unique, we require that stories use the premise of the contest the author is entering.
But it's really the "blind" reviewing and our broad range of tastes that set us apart.

First, use the contest premise. We're not kidding.
Second, tell us a story about interesting people in an interesting situation.
You do those two things and you've got a real chance.

Uses the premise, fits our word length limitations (1,000 to 5,000 words), gives us intriguing characters involved in a situation we've never read about before. The characters are so good we'd enjoy a story about them eating dinner together, and the situation is so fascinating the story might work even if populated with one-dimensional dullards. But THIS story gives us great characters AND a great situation.

The biggest mistake is forgetting to remove all traces of their identity from the attachment containing the story. We want your contact information in the body of the e-mail, and no trace of your identity in the attachment.

Since we read stories blindly, cover letters don't help much at first. However, when it comes time to learn who you are, we read the cover letter. So yes, we like cover letters (e-mails) but we don't read them until we've decided we like your story enough that we need to tell you something.

We have two main reading judges. For each contest, one reading judge reads all the stories, and the other reading judge reads the 25% or so of entries that the first reading judge likes enough to pass on. Generally, both reading judges have to like a story for it to be sent to the prize judges (a set of readers who see only the very best stories from each contest). So yes, someone at OTP reads your story, but unless it makes the final round of judging, only one or two people will read it. If it makes the final round, as many as seven people might read it.

I think I covered that in question #9. There are three rounds of judging--first readings, cutting the stories down to the top ten, and then handing them to the prize judges who decide which of those top ten get published.

Early in a contest, we receive a bunch of stories right away, then things calm down and we might only get a few stories a week. Our contests last three months. We typically receive 50% of our entries in the first two months, another 25% in the next three weeks, and the last 25% in the last week. So that last week is filled with reading and discussing the merits of stories.
The co-publishers have full-time jobs that keep them busy, so the last week of a contest is very hectic for us.
The most fun part, I think, is working with the authors whose entries get selected. We like the editing process and so do most of our authors, once they start working with us. It's all handled over e-mail and a story's editing process can last anywhere from three days to three weeks, depending on how responsive the author is and how much debate there is over suggested changes. Most authors accept most of our suggestions, and we generally don't fight the suggestions they turn down. Once in a while, though, a real discussion breaks out.