Well, another NT submission window has come and gone and I'm working on sending out the last round of notices. Hope to finish that up sometime tonight. A few thoughts as I close out this session:
1) It seems like we received a larger number of long stories this time around. By long, I mean stories with than 4,000 words. In all but a few cases, these stories suffered from an overabundance of plot. By that I mean most of these longer stories should have/could have been expanded into longer formats that would allow each element of their narrative a bit more room to breathe--or--cut to eliminate extraneous plot threads. When you think "short story," forget about plot. Think of the word "situation" (and try not to think of that dumbass from Jersey Shore) and you're doing a lot better. Edit mercilessly. Murder your babies. Metaphorically, of course.
2) Pre-British Invasion rock is my new favorite editing music. The next time you receive a response from NT, know that it might have been written with "Runaround Sue" playing in the background. For whatever that's worth...
3) Beware the anti-climax. This next idea is an oldie, but a goodie: If you show a gun in the first scene, or a character mentions a gun near the beginning of the story, that baby better go off by the time it all wraps up. Following that logic, if your story begins with a gun going off, it is likely that the climax is going to take more than a gunshot to get the job done.
That's all for now. Thank you to everyone who subbed this time around!
Until next time...
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