I've had another rejection, this time for a short story I'd written called 'Chicken Little.' The story began life when I heard about a Frances Lincoln anthology of eight stories for children about climate change.
I'll have a go at that I thought so I emailed Tony Bradman. Now, to my shame, I didn't know about Tony Bradman, that he is pretty much the short story and anthology guru. Anita Loughrey on her blog amloughrey.blogspot.com says: "When Tony sends out a brief, he gets a huge response from all over the world." So it was really nice of him to give me feedback on my synopsis. My story wasn't suitable as it isn't really directly about the theme but he did say he could see the characters and that I had a lively plot.
Now I like to give my story's a second chance so I gave it another edit and sent it to Writer's Forum magazine. It came back very quickly this time, with some good marks and some not so good. But most interesting of all was the comment 'angst of a stroppy teenager, even paced and good dialogue but a little long.'
Ouch I thought, I hadn't thought of it as teenage angst, I actually liked my girl character. I was quite surprised to think of my story in this way. As for the 'bit long' well the story was just under 3,000 words (the anthology requirement.) Hmm, I'd better look at this again.
I read the first few paragraphs, and guess what, yes I didn't like her, reading just what was on the page without the idea of my character in my head she was a bit too sarcastic and self-centred.
So I've given her a makeover and have also chopped 1,000 words, yes that's right 1,000 there are advantages to being a sub editor. So I've now sent it to a women's magazine to see if the improvements have worked.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »