Immediate Fiction (37 page)

(BLACKOUT) (END OF SCENE)

At the end of the play it's:

THE END

Those are the basics. Check out a few scripts and see how playwrights do it. There's nothing tricky about it. The main thing is that what's going on needs to be clear.

You copyright a play the same way as you do a screenplay (see above).

The procedure for marketing plays is different from that for other story forms—especially short stories and novels. With plays, it's about production, not publication. You want to get your play performed. You submit your play to 1. Theater and production companies, 2. Special programs, 3. Contests, and 4. Agents. The best way to find out how to do that is to check
The Playwright's Companion
, published by Feedback Theatrebooks. They do an excellent job of laying it all out. There's much more than we can do justice to here. A second book to look at is
The Playwright's Handbook
by Frank Pike and Thomas G.

Dunn.
Writer's Digest
and
The Writer
magazines also regularly list upcoming play contests.

One thing to remember when marketing your material is to send it out, then
get busy writing something else.
Don't wait around for a reply.

Speaking of getting busy, let's do it. Here are some exercises. You also have lots of others from before. Pick something, anything, and write.

EXERCISES

Trying to get fired.

Do Cinderella from the point of view of the stepmother and make her sympathetic.

Do Little Red Riding Hood from the point of view of the wolf and make him sympathetic.

[17]
To Market to Market

WHEN TO SUBMIT, HOW, AND WHY

OK, so you've worked your heart out and finished a short story or a novel. What's next? I've said that writing is art, not science. Well, marketing your work is business, not art. Although there is some art to the business of marketing.

When:
OK, so how do you know when you're ready to submit your work? You probably won't, but it doesn't matter. There's no set time. And you have nothing to lose beyond some self-esteem if you get rejected. You can't hurt yourself by submitting early. My advice is that you submit early and submit often. Get used to rejection. It goes with the territory.
Gone With the Wind
was rejected twenty-six times. "There's no interest in the Civil War," the editors said. The thing to keep in mind in all of this is that the editor or reader at the other end, who reads your story, is just a person with prejudices, personal tastes, and skewed judgment like everyone else, and not some literary god, applying infallible rules of editing and marketing.

Also, if you get rejected by a magazine or a publisher, you haven't blown your chances for that story at that magazine. In fact, if you sent

it back by return mail, chances are you'd get a different reader. That reader might have a different reaction, or he might not. I don't advise resubmitting that fast. It's better to wait a month and retitle your story.

You
don't need a perfect story
in order to submit. If you have a story that has some real strengths beyond its weaknesses, send it out. If you work it too much, trying to make it perfect, you run the risk of weakening the strong points. Also, it doesn't have to be perfect to get published. As long as it gives the reader enough, it has a chance. Even if they don't accept it, the editors may like the strong parts so much that they'll ask you to rewrite the story according to their suggestions and resubmit it.

Why:
So, you're always hoping to get published, but you also submit just to
get
their attention,
to create some interest in you and your writing. Also, editors do a lot of rewriting and correcting themselves. I would advise letting them do anything they want to your writing if it means getting into print. That's your choice. But realize that if they do rewrite your work, you may not like or may even hate the changes they make.

The short story market is not good. The
New Yorker
; the flagship of short stories, used to publish two short stories a week. They cut it down to one or none. That was a blow. To make matters worse, when this reshuffling took place, short stories got some bad press. At least one negative article appeared in a major national publication, claiming research had shown that even though readers said they really liked the fiction, they couldn't name the last story they read or the author. Not remembering the title or author is a common problem in my experience, but the researchers used that to prove stories didn't justify the costly space they took to publish. That idea seemed to catch on. So, it was a double hit.

All this means that you could be writing publishable stories and not getting published because there's so much competition for so few spots. Magazines tend to publish the big names first, even if it's poor quality material, since they increase sales. Several years ago, when the market was decent, one study claimed that the average story that got published had been rejected twenty-eight times before it was accepted. Now, I don't know what went into that average and what magazines were studied, but I think it's a rough gauge of the market, even now.

How:
OK, so you're going to submit a short story. (We'll get to novels next.) What should you do? First, let me tell you what you should
not
do. Do not go to the store and buy two manila envelopes, one for the submission and one for self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for the return, and then take them to the post office and then go home and sit down and wait for a reply. It'll take one to six months to get a response, so you need to get writing again right away. That's the first thing. Get going on something else.

Now, if you've gone through the procedure I've described above, when your story comes back with a rejection slip, which is a downer, you have to start all over and go out and buy two more envelopes and go to the post office to get them weighed and mailed to the next magazine. Not only is that a drag, but there's a good chance that you will put it off and not do it for a while or ever.

So, what do you do? Well, I'm assuming that you're going to keep writing stories and submitting them. In that case, go to an office supply store and buy a whole box of manila envelopes. They come in boxes of one hundred, and they're a lot cheaper that way. While you're there, buy yourself a postal scale. They go for about eight to fifty dollars. A basic one will do. Then go to the post office and buy lots of stamps. One hundred dollars' worth or more. So, now you're fully equipped and don't have to go running around to send out a story.

The next thing to do is make a list of 20 or more magazines you want to submit to. I'll tell you how to choose the magazines later. After you make your list, address all twenty envelopes and the twenty return (SASE) envelopes. After you've done that, it's time to send them out. The problem is that if you submit to 1 magazine at a time, it'll take two years or more to make the rounds to 20 magazines. I recommend submitting to 5 magazines at one time. Submitting to more than 1 magazine at a time is called
simultaneous submission.

Writer's Market
, a publication that's updated regularly and is in any good library, is the standard reference for how and where to submit short fiction to magazines. It has a complete list of all the magazines you would want to submit to and what their editorial policy is.
Writer's Market
will tell you the basics that you need to know. But there are some other issues that you need to consider when submitting.

Some magazines don't want simultaneous submissions. Others say that it's OK, but want you to tell them if you're submitting elsewhere. This brings us to an important and perhaps sticky point of strategy in this whole game.

Do you do simultaneous submissions to magazines that don't want them? Their policy may say no, but they have no way of knowing what you've done. And if you submit to magazines that take simultaneous submissions, do you tell them as they ask you to? I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'll tell you what I've found works best. I submit to at least 5 magazines at a time regardless of their submission policy. Of course, if they don't want simultaneous submissions, I'm not telling them I'm doing it. But even if they accept simultaneous submissions, I don't tell them. I see no advantage in telling them and some possible disadvantages.

Think about it. A first-level reader at the magazine opens an envelope with a story from an unknown, unpublished author and a note that says, "I've submitted this to these 3 other magazines," etc. What's he going to say—"I'd better hurry up and read this unknown, unpublished author's story before someone else gets it"? How is telling the magazine going to help you? It isn't. Plus, the chances of 2 magazines wanting your story are extremely remote. And, if you do get an acceptance from 1 magazine, all you do is shoot letters off to the others and ask them to withdraw your story. Apologies. "I hope this won't hurt our future relationship," etc., etc., etc.

This has been my practice, and I've never had any trouble. The main reason to do it is to avoid wasting two years waiting for a single story to make the rounds.

There are magazines that publish fiction but do not take unsolicited manuscripts. That means you must write, query, them first and tell them what you'd like to send them. Or it may mean that they mil only respond to agents. Sending them an unsolicited manuscript is a very long shot. Chances are that you'll get it back fast with a note saying that they do not take unsolicited manuscripts. But there's always the very slim chance that someone will open it and see that it's unsolicited but be curious enough to read it anyway. You have nothing to lose but postage.

Also, it may be worth a try if you think that you have just the kind of story the editors are looking for. You can send it cold and let it fend for itself, or you can get tricky and address it to one of the fiction editors and say, "Here's the story I told you about. Thank you so much for reading it." Or you might say, "I know you don't take unsolicited manuscripts, but I'm taking a chance because I think this is your kind of story. It belongs in your magazine." Or you may think of another strategy.

I once sent a short story to
Harper's
magazine, not realizing that they weren't even publishing fiction at that time. I got it back with a long personal letter from the senior editor, saying that he regretted that
Harper's
was not publishing fiction, especially since he'd had such a great time reading my story. It was a fine story, and he was sure it would be published elsewhere. Did I regret sending that story? Of course not. That kind of confirmation from someone at the very top meant a lot to me as a young writer. And it taught me something else. If
Harper's
didn't print fiction, how did my fiction make it all the way up to the desk of the senior editor? Surely it wasn't his policy to have every piece of fiction mistakenly submitted routed to him. It had to be a fluke. And if
Harper's
had been publishing fiction but
not
taking unsolicited manuscripts, that fluke could have meant publication.

Where do you submit? You're a beginning writer, so you should start at the bottom, submitting to the small literary magazines, and work your way up, right? Wrong. Where do you start? At the very top—the
New Yorker,
the
Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Esquire, Redbook,
etc. Why? Because your chances are just as good with those magazines as with literary magazines, especially with the prestigious literary magazines, whose standards are just as high as those of the
New Yorker,
the
Atlantic Monthly,
et al. The
Atlantic Monthly
is especially receptive to unknown writers. They claim to have over six hundred unpublished writers they're encouraging to keep submitting. Also, the bigger magazines are much more efficient at reading and returning your story no matter what the response. They usually report in 4 to 8 weeks, sometimes in 2 or 3 weeks. Some of the literary magazines take 3 to 6 months. So, the big magazines report sooner, treat you better, are just as prestigious, and pay a lot
more money.
Some of the top literary magazines only pay $100 or $200 plus 5 or 10 free copies of the magazine your story runs in. The big magazines often pay $2,000 and up for a story. So, in 1 month or 2 you can hit all the big magazines and get a yes or a no. Then what? If you've been rejected,
then
you go to the small magazines.

Which small magazines do you submit to, and how do you decide? You choose on the basis of two elements—prestige and prize/anthology opportunity. If you're going to let a story go for $200, you want to have a chance of getting picked for one of the anthologies of top stories for the year. Go to the bookstore, and see what short-story anthologies are on the
shelf—
The Best Short Stories of 1999, The Best of the Pushcart Press,
etc. There are several. They come and go. Ask the bookstore people or a librarian which are considered the best.