Clare Cooper's last guest post was so popular that I simply had to plead with her to come back. I'm delighted that she's not only agreed to an interview, but has offered to answer some of your questions too!
There's
a new fiction editor at WW now and preferences and requirements vary
from magazine to magazine, but I feel there are more similarities
than differences between womag short stories. Do you agree?
Definitely.
I think everyone wants to read stories that engage them and draw them
in, stories with warmth and integrity, believable characters in
believable situations that resonate with the reader. I know I do!
What
do you think are the key ingredients to a good womag story?
Everything
I have said in my comment above. Something to make you think, laugh
and cry, to coin a cliché. The ones I remember most of the many
thousands I read were those that made me cry and that struck a chord
in some way.
How
many stories did you receive at Woman's Weekly in an average
week/month?
Impossible
to say for sure. Several hundred maybe. It varied hugely; for
instance, summer holidays and Christmas would see a slight dip in
submissions.
And
you were there for 29 years! I've done the maths and factoring in
your holidays, that works out at... umm, LOTS. I'm guessing that, due
to space constraints, you sometimes had to reject stories which
didn't really have much wrong with them?
Holidays
or not, the stories still had to be read! We would never return a
story we liked enough to publish unless, for example, it was a
Christmas or other seasonal story that had just missed the deadline,
in which case we would ask them to resubmit it in good time the
following year, if they still wanted to.
Another
scenario would be if we had just bought/were about to publish a story
on a similar theme. We would have to hang on to the new story for a
very long time before we could use it, which would be unfair to the
writer as they could try to sell it elsewhere first. Especially
since, under the new Desknet payments system, stories can’t be paid
for until they are assigned to a specific issue.
One
of the reasons you gave for rejection was 'well-worn theme'. Which
themes cropped up far too often?
Brace
yourselves! Relationship break-ups, retirement, weddings, age-gap
stories of both sexes, difficult stepchildren, school reunions where
the narrator hopes/dreads bumping into someone they used to lust
after, or the school bully (or both), or they turn out to have been
the school bully themselves, lonely elderly people being befriended
by their new neighbours’ cheeky young children, bringing them out
of themselves and becoming their surrogate grandparent, blind date
stories, or ones where the narrator’s partner was “stolen” by
their best friend and they have a chance to make it up years later -
or not! Evil mothers-in-law. Awkward daughters-in-law. “Surprise”
anniversary parties. Affairs from both sides. Adopting rescue
animals and ending up with the man/woman from the rescue centre, or
the vet, or someone they meet while out dog-walking. Someone sorting
through the contents of their loft, reflecting on the past, etc.
People you thought were real but who turn out to be ghosts. Confirmed
bachelors set in their ways being forced to look after someone’s
pet or child and having a change of heart. Wives getting their own
back on their miserable, mean husbands, to the point of murder
sometimes (I would write in the margins: JUST LEAVE HIM)!!
These
are the ones that spring immediately to mind but there are many more!
Of course, there are no new themes under the sun, it’s how the
writer tells the story that matters and we have used all of the above
themes ourselves over the years.
What
were the most common reasons for rejection?
The
dreaded well-worn theme. In other words, no real surprises, which was
another way of saying too predictable/guessable. Stories that seemed
to be about more than one subject, disjointed and hard to follow.
Stories that were, to put it bluntly, too soppy, twee or sentimental
for our market or where the plot is too slight. Endings that tailed off in a limp, unsatisfactory
manner. They are hard to do for a lot of people and we often tweaked
them ourselves. Sometimes it was only a matter of adding a line or
swapping the final two or three paras around to strengthen the whole
thing.
Ex
WW Editor, Diane, hated endings which were, as she put it, “Wrapped
up in a bow”. In other words, “And they all lived happily ever
after.” Too neat, too cosy, too safe. So long as there was some
hint of resolution, or hope on the horizon, that was usually enough.
Never anything too hopeless, downbeat or miserable, though.
Another reason for rejection is “too far-fetched and unlikely”. Often, we would say this and then the writer would come back and say that it really did happen to them, or a friend of theirs. My reply to that would be a true event doesn’t necessarily always make for a good, “proper” well-rounded story. Sometimes we just have to accept that truth really is stranger than fiction and leave it at that!
Another reason for rejection is “too far-fetched and unlikely”. Often, we would say this and then the writer would come back and say that it really did happen to them, or a friend of theirs. My reply to that would be a true event doesn’t necessarily always make for a good, “proper” well-rounded story. Sometimes we just have to accept that truth really is stranger than fiction and leave it at that!
Can
you offer any tips to make sure a story grabs the editor's attention
for the right reasons?
As
with novels, you can usually tell from the opening sentence if a
story is going to grab you or not. Certainly, by the end of the first
para/page you will have some idea. We would always advise writers to
study the magazine over several issues to get a feel for our tone and
style. At the end of the day, though, you have to write in your own
voice, as Fiction Editor Gaynor used to say.
Read
other people’s stories but use your own voice to tell yours.
Did
you see any avoidable errors which resulted in stories not being
accepted?
Yes,
a lot of people don’t realise that magazines have to work weeks and
weeks ahead of the printed issue, so for Christmas stories it’s
never too early, as I always used to say. By now, the Christmas and
New Year stories will have been chosen and worked on for both Woman’s
Weekly and the Fiction Special. Easter, Mothers Day, Valentines Day,
etc - get them all in well before Christmas!!
No
contact details and even, in some cases, no name or title on the
story, let alone pages not numbered and words not counted used to
drive us potty. Imagine the scenario: You have just printed out 30
or 40 stories which have been emailed to you and now you have to
marry up story and writer, write their details on the copy, go back
into the story to check the word count and write that and the page
numbers down as well. A laborious and time-consuming job which
happened far more often than it should have done!
However,
for the unsoliciteds, our assistant Maureen kept a large file marked
“No details” and it was sadly full of stories such as these. So
those people who grumble that they have never heard back from a
magazine should realise this could be the reason why!
Despite
the frustrations involved, we would never outright reject a story
just because it wasn’t presented correctly. That would be
pointless. Or if the number of words wasn’t right for our needs.
In that case, we would ask the writer to go back and either trim the
story down to a one-page, or increase the wordage to a two-page, if
the plot could take it. A comment I often heard was, “Do you read
them all?” My response to that was always, “What on earth would
be the point if we didn’t?” We needed the stories, simple as
that. The only stories we rejected outright were the hand-written
ones, as they were almost always impossible to read and, in any case,
if accepted would have had to be either scanned and corrected or
typed up by us.
Was
there any 'magic' ingredient which would improve a story's chance of
success?
There’s
no magic ingredient, sadly. Just a well-written story that grabs the
reader from the start. Presentation is important, of course, but the
best presented story in the world won’t make it if it’s not well
written or doesn’t hit the mark.
Sometimes
contributor letters asked for particular styles or lengths of story.
Was there anything which was generally in short supply?
While
it could fluctuate at times, we always found the one-page stories to
be the hardest to get right. To fit everything into just under a
thousand words yet still have a fully-rounded story in there, with
not-too-obvious a twist (or slight bend) is incredibly difficult to
do.
Writing
is hard. We know that. And on that cheerful note, I wish you all the
very best of luck!
If you have writing related questions for Clare, please put them in the comments and she'll select some to answer. (Please use a name or nickname to help her with replies.)
