Lessons I'm learning working on Triangulation: Taking Flight

This is the second Saturday I've spent with Pete Butler and the other two assistant editors, grinding through the slush pile to find stories for Triangulation: Taking Flight. I've already learned a lot about what it's like to be on the other side of the editor/writer wall. Here are some thoughts to help writers come up with stuff that we'll like. I expect that a lot of these points apply to getting your work accepted by most markets:

• Get on With It: If you haven't captured our attention by page 2, we're probably not even going to read the whole story. Each week we get further and further behind with the slushpile, and we don't have time to read your whole story to get to the "great ending." Write your story with these rules in mind:
  1. The first sentence has to convince us to read the first page.
  2. The first page has to convince us to read the second page.
  3. By the second page we'd better already be interested in reading the whole thing!

  The guidelines already say, "Get on with it!" I'm guessing not everyone understands what that means. We're looking for speculative fiction (i.e. robots or monsters or aliens ...) If the speculative nature doesn't appear until page three, then delete page one and two of your story before sending it. Character descriptions are only interesting after we know that the character is involved in an intergalactic war, or something else dramatic and interesting.

• Consider Parody: We received a number of well-written stories that were (unfortunately) just too unbelievable to accept. Fact is, even with speculative fiction, you've got to convince the reader to suspend disbelief. The really sad part is that we realized (on more than one occasion) that such stories would have worked great if written as parody. We like to laugh. We're assuming our readers would like a few funny stories in their anthology. Consider the possibility that your material may work better as a parody when you write it.
• Invented Creatures are not Interesting: Ok, they are interesting, but they're not interesting enough by themselves to be a story. I'm sorry, but the lifecycle of the Alderian thung is just not that interesting. At least none that we've seen so far are. Now, if you take an interesting plot and use your made up creatures and their strange biologies and customs, then you might have a real winner. Just remember to focus on the plot and not the creature's customs. As a side note, of the four of us, I find these more interesting than the other three, so it's probably a tougher sell overall than I think.
• Don't Overdo it: Some objects are just objects. It doesn't have to be a "dramatic pen" or a "efficient sword". Not all nouns require adjectives. We've rejected a lot of stories with the term "overwrought" as part of the rejection. You'll have more luck impressing this group with your creative restraint than with you ability to come up with an adjective for every noun in your story.
• Read the Guidelines: We understand that some stories stretch the meaning of the theme "Taking Flight" and we encourage that. It's not those stories that I'm complaining about. It's the ones that have absolutely no discernible relation to the theme whatsoever. Or, at worst, the ones that have no flight and aren't even spec-fic. Yes, we get them. This is probably not worth me stating here, because if you're reading this, you probably took the time to read the guidelines as well. This is directed at the guy with the romance story with no flight in it whatsoever who will submit it for some reason that defies logic. You'll get a nasty rejection letter, because that kind of impoliteness ticks off people who are already behind in their work. No! You're story is not that good. We've already rejected a few really good stories because they didn't match the theme. I guarantee you that your story isn't any better than those.
• Easy with that Cover Letter: I don't read cover letters, but Pete does, and so does Joseph. You can look like an arrogant jerk if you list every single publishing credit to your name. If you've got a number of them, that's great but I recommend you only list the most prestigious 5, at most. And don't lie. The first thing Pete and Joseph do if they don't recognize a publication is research to see if it's made up. Quite frankly, a terse cover letter is more likely to work in your favor than a long one. If we don't recognize your name without the credits list, we're probably going to make the decision based on the story and not your credits, and if you're Tim Pratt, there's no need to list your credits. A reasonable middle ground would be to list about 3 credits to let us know you're already published. Listing your entire publication history comes across as arrogant.

Keep the stories coming, there have been a few real gems so far!