Choosing & Editing Manuscripts
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| Title: | Choosing & Editing Manuscripts |
| Creator: | Joanna Cantor |
| Date(s): | 1980 |
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Choosing & Editing Manuscripts is a 1980 essay by Joanna Cantor.
It was printed in Stylus #1.
While the fandom discussed is Star Trek: TOS, this is mainly because that was the focus of the vast majority of media zines at the time, and therefore, this zine's audience.
Some Topics Discussed
- turning down submissions to your zine
- suggesting to writers that ""This is too good not to be better."
- "When I finally do get back to an author, I try to do it in a way that is useful, helpful, or at the very least,supportive. I mean, this is a fellow fan."
- touches upon the "amateur" element of fanfiction
From the Essay
I've learned a few phrases that are helpful in what is, to me, one of the most crucial criteria for good zine operation. Gently requesting a revision, or turning a story down.
I do think it should be gentle. I mean, I prefer to be let down gently. And having been the recipient of a couple old-school hard-line tell-it- 1ike-it-is rejections, I can say without hesitation that I prefer the kinder variety. Also, I feel very strongly that we are all, in Treklit, amateurs. Maybe that's just because my own scribbling is a hobby, no more. There are those who feel that Trekwriting should be a learning experience - an exercise, or showcase, for people learning how to be professional writers. And obviously (and marvelously) it has filled that function for some. But I think there's also room for us dabblers.
I don't hesitate to reject a story on the simple grounds that I don't like it. That seems justifiable to me - it's my zine, after all. And there are, thank goodness, something like 300 other zines. It's important to be clear with an author - to tell her this is a type of story I don't like, a concept I can't handle, a characterization personally distasteful to me, or whatever. Then she can take the story and try it with an editor who's more in tune with her way of thinking. Odds are pretty good that she'll find one, not only because of the variety of zines, but also because there's always some zine-ed desperate for material.
For both of which, again, thank goodness.
If you're critiquing or asking for revision, you ought to know something about it, exactly the way you should know grammar if you're going to correct someone else's. Someday I'm going to find the time to read some of the books on writing and editing. Probably they have methods far more sophisticated than anything I've ever dreamed of. But I find it useful to mentally analyze three areas: plot, characterization, and dialog. Now I can begin to specify. Plot is easiest - it's usually a matter of logic. And in each case, in my experience, the author's response to a plot criticism has been either a rewrite that clarified, or an "ohmigosh, how did I miss that?" In other words, either writers have a loophole mentally plugged, but just hadn't presented their plot clearly enough to convey
the logical chain to me, or else they can see the hole when it's pointed out to them. (I try to double-check that I'm not calling the author stupid - if I'm in any doubt about the tone of the criticism, I throw in an example of my own mistakes in plotting, of which I have an ample collection.)
Finally, how do you gently turn a story down? One that meets your criteria for theme, etc., but which you just don't want to give space to?
I wish I knew! Fortunately, I haven't had to reject many submissions, though I don't mind admitting that both the larger size of R&R and the "new story" format of Archives are in part a defense against having to be too selective. (It's also very much true that a story that one reader loathes will be another reader's "best of the issue" selection, invariably.)
I try very hard to find something good to say (and I have yet to be reduced to "your spelling is excellent").