Think Outside The Box ~ When You Write
We’ve all heard the saying, Think Outside the Box, but as a writer have you ever received this phrase in an email from an editor as part of a rejection to a story you’ve submitted? I doubt it.
Most editors are too busy trying to maintain control over the mountainous pile of submissions on their desks and over-flowing their in and out bins to contemplate offering more than just a generic “the story didn’t appeal to us” form rejection letter to writers. They often have to reject hundreds of stories, each submission having been a contender vying for one of the limited fiction slots the editor had to offer in the magazine they publish. So brevity in their reply is key. After all they do have a magazine to prep and rush to the print or to post online.
We as writers would welcome a more concise reason as to why our submission didn’t make the cut, and win the coveted slot in an upcoming issue. We urge the editor to offer any comments they wish to make. But again and again those form rejections do arrive and we’re left to wonder on our own if our story does need tweaking or if it is indeed good enough to email it out, as is, to another market.
But let’s say one editor did bother to offer you one sentence more than the generic form letter you’ve come to expect. Suppose that sentence was, ‘Think outside the box.’
Would that sentence offend you? Or would it challenge you?
Without being bold enough to appeal to the harried editor, asking him to clarify his remark, how would you interpret such a reply? Would it really make a difference to you, make you change how you approach a story idea?
As an editor, one who does take the time to offer a sentence or two of comment on each rejection our magazine sends out on a daily basis, offering anything more than a generic “the story didn’t appeal to us” is a difficult task. It’s a two-edge sword that must be wielded with a responsible hand.
The wrong words can stab into the heart of a novice writer, slice apart their confidence, causing a wound that may or may not heal. It can thwart fledgling talent by severing someone’s passion for writing.
The right words, might shine a light on an area of a writer’s work that needs mere polishing, such as, dialogue, characterization, or plot development. To the dedicated writer, such an insightful comment, takes the sting out of receiving a rejection. It can be the ticket needed to snag that next fiction sale.
Judging by the volume of rejections I unfortunately have to send out, and considering the reasons I generally have to give for the majority of the rejections I write, I believe a writer needs to know when they should ‘Think Outside the Box.’
The majority of stories that fail to make the initial cut, out of the 250+ submissions we receive and read per month, are stories that lack depth in either character or plot. They’re rehashes of stories that have been told again and again, with the very submission we hold our hands offering nothing new to the tired old plot they’ve used about rampaging zombies, an alien threat stalking miners on an ore-rich asteroid, or the time traveler wishing to save a love one or to meet a famous rockstar.
To those writers, submitting such tales, I would love to write Think Outside The Box in big bold letters in comment on the rejection email I’d send them. But instead, I tell them ‘we’ve published such tales before’, thinking any other comment would be too harsh.
Am I doing them a disservice? Do they need to be challenged?
What about you?
Do you Think Outside The Box with your own writing? Do you truly strive to stretch those boundaries of the genre your write? Are you comfortable, writing stories that gain you more than the occasional acceptance letter, often surprised when you ‘make that sale’? Do you ever compare the stories you’ve sold with the stories that failed to secure a slot in an issue or anthology you were striving for?
I’ve done such a comparison with my own writing, and I have to admit, the stories that sold were indeed the ones where I thought outside the box, when I let my imagination take me in a direction I hadn’t expected with a particular plotline or with my main character.
You think such a revelation would make writing the next story easier, would give me the edge to make an easy sale. But it doesn’t. There’s always those wild card rejections letters from editors read, “Nicely done, but we just couldn’t fit it in this time”, or ”...just didn’t gain enough votes to make an upcoming issue”.
We can live with those type of rejections. We always try again. We can wait for another anthology to open that possesses a theme our story fits.
But the challenge of the Box remains.
Tape it to your monitor. Adopt it as your mantra.
Think Outside The Box
Redefine the genre you write. Tailor your story to flow beyond the cardboard confines of the box your plotline may resemble. Ensure your characters push through the flaps of the box that might hamper them from becoming the larger than life characters they need to be. Don’t let your story be labeled before you ship it off to an editor via email or mail. Give it the Box test.
Do that, and your submission will find its way to the top of the slush pile. It’ll catch an editor’s eye without need of fancy packaging. It’s content will be enough to wow, even if you writing style might need a bit of fine tuning. You won’t gain just another rejection letter.
You just might gain that acceptance letter you were hoping for.
So don’t box yourself in with one dimentional thinking. Your fiction writing will suffer for it.
As editor I challenge you: THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!
