Zarina Docken

Question:

What instantly turns you off when reading an unsolicited short story?

Answer:

What instantly turns me off when reading an unsolicited short story are all the things that are the opposite of what turns me on. Discovering a grammar or punctuation mistake is probably number one. All writers make them, but the author who hasn't taken the time to clean them out of their story, or worse - hasn't yet learned to identify them - isn't going to get very far at our magazine. The competition's just too stiff. When I see a grammar or punctuation mistake in the very first sentence, as occasionally happens, my heart just sinks.

The number two turn-off for me is a boring first sentence. "It was a dark and stormy night." Okay, I'll accept that much, but if an author's going to start their story in such a routine fashion, that second sentence had better be a killer. If I reach the end of the first paragraph and I'm still not hooked, I'll keep reading because my job requires it, but frankly, my heart won't be in it.

There are lesser turn-offs: too many names (feels like I've just stepped into a noisy party), failing to establish a sense of time and place (I don't like feeling confused), beginning the story with a flashback (in my opinion, short stories are just too - well, short - to do that well), but I'd rather finish my answer to this question by saying what excites me.

What I'm looking for when I read unsolicited short stories is a story that grabs me from the very first sentence and doesn't let go; one that's written so smoothly it draws me into its world without me even realizing it. Fiction is an emotional journey, a pact between the reader and the author. The short story author says, "Give me half an hour of your time, and I'll make it worth your while," while the reader says, "Okay, you've got half an hour. Entertain me."

In my job as a literary magazine editor, I'm not a writer, I'm a reader. I want to be entertained.

Karen Dionne has had humorous short stories published in Bathtub Gin, The Adirondack Review, and Thought Magazine, where her entry took first place in their Spring 2003 Writing Competition. Her fiction is forthcoming in LitWit Review and The Writers Publishing, while her first novel is presently making the rounds of New York publishers in search of an editor who delights in all things quirky. Karen is also an assosciate submissions editor at NFG Magazine, a print literary jounal out of Toronto, Canada.