Clarkesworld Magazine's list of "No-No"

Stephen4444

Stephen4444

Nikolai March 4, 1852
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Generally Magazines give a list of criteria that your writing submissions must meet. Clarksworld, is kind enough to give you a list of things not to submit. Reading the list made me laugh but I'm sure someone sent prose with one or more of the following.

" Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells:

stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory

stories in which the words "thou" or "thine" appear

talking cats

talking swords

stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines

stories where FTL travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies
time travel too

stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a' comin', Communion wine turns to Christ's literal blood and it's HIV positive, Satan's gonna getcha, etc.)

stories about rapist-murderer-cannibals

stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).

stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago

stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it

your AD&D game

"funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns

sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates

zombies or zombie-wannabes

stories originally intended for someone's upcoming theme anthology or issue

stories where the protagonist is either widely despised or widely admired simply because he or she is just so smart and/or strange

stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one

your trunk stories"
 
Wouldn't it be great (in the "B-movie so bad it's great" sense) to see a story made up of all those no-nos? I have a perverse streak, being told not to do something automatically makes me think of doing it :)
 
Fitting all that into 300 words would indeed be a challenge :)
 
Dave said:
Ursa major, take note!
Click to expand...
Sadly, I don't write short stories, so I won't have the pleasure of terrifying the po-faced denizens of Clarkesworld with the odd pun or two. (And they complain of things milquetoast....)

More seriously (;)), I do wonder what they will publish. For instance, omitting "stories where FTL travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies" means what, exactly? Does a story set aboard an FTL passenger ship have to have someone tell the passengers how the FTL works and why it's oh-so difficult? What if one's characters simply don't care? (How many passengers on a flight on an airliner discuss how jet engines work, why turbofans are better, and how the wings keep the plane from hitting the ground?)

And if I had a highly detailed story about FTL travel, with a truly innovative means of achieving superluminal speeds, why would I waste it on a short story? Surely there wouldn't be much room for a real story in the few words not dedicated to the bulk of the content, the technical manual.
 
I submitted a short story to them once and, as research, read the published story they were promoting at the time. It had ftl travel, as easy as it is on television. It even had "ftl travel" in the title, something like "In which ftl travel solves all our problems." The story didn't address the ftl travel at all, which was confusing.

(I'd give the story 6.5/10, btw)
 
Well at least they said "likely hard sells" instead of "will absolutely reject." Like TheTomG said, I would see this as a challenge.

Also, I seem to remember seeing a long list of no-no's for another magazine -- I think it was Strange Horizons.
 
"stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines"

Yey for Clarkesworld.
 
A pun like that requires guts but what about stories where the climax is dependent on the spelling of intistines?
 
After the climax, but before the appendix (assuming Clarkesworld isn't also against these), does the main character have a liver let die moment?
 
Dave said:
I'm lost on that one. I'm curious as to what is a trunk story? I'm thinking that elephants aren't involved?
Click to expand...

If I remember rightly, it's really, really old stories that you've put away and haven't been able to find a home for. Basically the crap nobody else wants.
 
Some of the people on AbsoluteWrite weren't that keen on the Harper-Voyager open fortnight - possibly because the "winners" would be published as ebooks - but thought it would be worth submitting one or more of their trunk books. (One of the books already rejected by HV happened to be such a book; its writer is (or was at the time) submitting "something better" to agents.)
 
TheTomG said:
Fitting all that into 300 words would indeed be a challenge :)
Click to expand...

Let's do it! The 300 word challenge is based on a picture, so we just need a screen snapshot of Stephen4444's original post.

Hm, on second thoughts, maybe all the stories would be a bit same-y.
 
That was below the belt Ursa. I am prostrate at your skill.

As for trunk stories you really need to have a big succcess Dave, eg a first novel climbs the NYT charts, and then, when your publisher asks you for another, you produce a whole raft of unpublished mss you've been keeping on file just for that moment.

Before computers you might have kept them in a trunk or suitcase as we Brits might say.
 
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