Bewildering Stories Editorial

by Jerry Wright

Acceptances

We've gotten considerable responses to the editorial "Rejections" and the follow-up article "The Bewildering Stories Writing School". Many of the commenters take exception to the story skeleton recommended by Bob Silverberg; "A character is faced with a problem that he needs to solve, and he either solves it, or fails to solve it, and is in some way changed."

What about stories, the respondents say, wherein the character does NOT change and perhaps doesn't even have a problem, but we enjoy the story anyway...

To which my response has always been, "I've seen stories like that, but they are few and far between, and the writing had better be pretty exceptional!" But yes, thinking back on a multitude of stories, there have been stories where the protagonist did not change internally or externally. And they were enjoyable. So what is happening? A post by Donald Schneider in the Bewildering Stories Forum made several interesting comments, his final one being: "I think that one should view literary works on different footings depending upon what the purpose and point of the piece is and perhaps abandon doctrinaire expectations and mental subservience to perceived experts! (Indeed, here--of all places!--where the editors delight in posting ironic rejection notices of works that went on to become bestsellers and classics!)"

Don't worry, Don. We are hardly doctrinaire. But what we are trying to accomplish is forcing our writers to realize that there IS such a thing as a plot skeleton, that the story should DO something. Many don't. But do we slavishly require that a story submitted to us have the Silverberg Plot Device? No, not at all, or even close. But we DO require, for stories we accept, is that change needs to happen. And not necessarily in any characters. What if the story creates a change in the READER? Hey! That works too. Something needs to be evoked in the reader. Joy? Pleasure? Sadness? If a story is emotionally moving, or in the cases of some of our "prose poems", that the beauty or intensity of the language carries us along, we are more than happy to say, "Accepted!"

There are some submissions we get where the emotion evoked is confusion, or disgust. If we see any potential at all in such a story, we ask for revisions. If it is obvious that the story is either massively flawed, or that no matter how clean and luminous the language that the story in and of itself is disgusting (by my lights, as the editor/publisher) then we reject the story. And yes, there is no question that another publisher at another magazine might think that particular story to be terrific. But this is my magazine as well as Don Webb's, and generally (sometimes to point of incredulity) we agree. And Don lets me have the final say, although I'm willing to allow material I might not otherwise accept if Don really thinks the story needs to see the light of day.

The final thing I'm going to deal with tonight is a comment about "the point of the story". I really like a story to have a point. Again, some of the "prose poems" really have no point except to be emotionally exhilarating, but that is enough. If the point of the story is that "sometimes bad people prosper", that isn't enough. If it is a revenge story where "he gets his just desserts", and so on, that isn't enough either. We seem to be getting a spate of "revenge fantasies". Don tells me he will write a counterpoint to this article. "Good on yer, mate!"

So, what do you as a reader feel after you read a story? We want you to FEEL something. How about, "That was neat!" or "I'm really depressed now." If it is good, and moving, hey, we'll accept really depressed. But we want interesting, moving stories. Or for that matter, interesting and moving articles or editorials.