change in editorial management. The editors in charge said that they
were constantly on the look out for good short stories, the kind that
were being published in The Red Book, The Saturday Evening Post and
The Cosmopolitan. As a matter of fact the stories that are usually
published in Munsey’s Magazine are generally shorter; another point
of differentiation that might be brought out is that they are lighter
in manner of treatment if not in actual theme. This though is only a
generalization and many exceptions can immediately be pointed out for
they have in the past published stories by men like Cobb and Abdullah
that the other editors had feared as too extreme.
_Munsey’s Magazine._
THE FRANK A. MUNSEY CO.,
280 Broadway,
New York City.
MYSTERY MAGAZINE
The first requirement for stories in _Mystery Magazine_, is interest.
Literary style is of no consequence if the stories arouse and hold
our readers’ interest from beginning to end. The types required, are
detective stories and mystery stories. In the former we must have
plots containing absorbing mysteries, with few principal characters,
a pretty love theme, plenty relevant dialogue, lively action, and
local color pertaining to the police department. A slight touch of
comedy is permissible, but dramatic climaxes are the rule. Long drawn
descriptions tire. Large numbers of characters confuse, and too much
dialogue is irksome. These romances must be distinctly, as their name
implies, detective stories, and they must cater to girls as well as to
men.
The mystery stories must be based upon popular occult theories,
with lucid and logical explanations of the phenomena, or they can
be mere mysteries of a material nature. In short we only purchase
good wholesome stories, with gripping interest, tense situations and
powerful, mystifying plots, having a simple explanation. Sex problems
and stories of loose morals are not wanted.
LU SENARENS.
_Mystery Magazine._
FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher,
168 West 23rd Street,
New York City.
THE OUTLOOK
_The Outlook_ has only a limited space available for the publication
of fiction, and therefore there are certain arbitrary bounds which we
must set, bounds which have little or no relation to literary merit.
We do not use continued stories and we practically never accept single
stories of more than five thousand words in length, and seldom stories
of more than three or four thousand words.
Within this rather narrow limit we are anxious to secure stories which
show that the author has a background or experience and a knowledge of
human nature. Fiction which indicates the fact that its author has
a sense of form, as well as an idea to express, is doubly welcome.
Stories which are sentimental do not appeal to us, but we are also
convinced that stories with real strength can be written which are
not raw, crude, or offensive to good taste. We do not think that the
adjective “strong” and the adjective “unpleasant” are necessarily
synonymous.
After all, the editorial selection of fiction depends so much upon the
personal equation and upon the immediate needs of a journal that it is
difficult to give any more definite guide than that we have presented
here to those who desire to submit fiction to _The Outlook_.
THE EDITORS OF _The Outlook_.
_The Outlook Company._
381 Fourth Avenue,
New York City.
THE PARISIENNE
The following is in response to your question about what kind of
fiction we want for _The Parisienne_ and _Saucy Stories_:
_The Parisienne_ and _Saucy Stories_ differ only very slightly in type
of fiction. Both want stories with very rapid action and strong, novel
plots. _The Parisienne_ wants romance, gaiety, adventure, mystery,
in the foreign and society setting. _Saucy Stories_ wants melodrama,
adventure, mystery, romance, preferably in an American setting. Both
prefer the sex element, though this is not absolutely essential. We
want, however, to emphasize especially that neither magazine wants
stories that are unpleasantly risqué. Occult stories are acceptable but
nothing horrible.
But, as a matter of fact, it is easier to say what we do not want than
what we do want--here are some of the constant rejections:
First and last, nothing that is risqué.
Fillers in which the mysterious he, she or it turns out to be a cat,
dog or baby.
Stories in which the husband, wife or fiancé fails to recognize wife,
husband or fiancée masquerading in any guise.
Stories in which the mysterious man whom husband suspects turns out to
be the brother, or the unknown lady whom wife suspects turns out to be
the sister.
Stories in which the denouement explains that the entire plot is merely
a rehearsal for the movies or a play.
Stories in which the supposed farmer’s daughter turns out to be a
famous movie star.
Stories in which the starving heroine is persuaded to play the part of
an imaginary wife in order that the rich relative will leave his money
to the nephew whom he wanted to see marry before passing on.
Stories in which a will demands that two people who hate each other
marry and they do fall in love with one another.
Stories in which all complications are explained by the unknown
existence of a twin.
War stories.
Suicide stories.
We realize that this list is quite incomplete, but we hope that it
will act as a suggestion to would-be _Parisienne_ and _Saucy Stories_
contributors that they consider very carefully before submitting a
story, whether the plot answer our first requisite--novelty.
And we want to make an earnest plea that authors will not only read
this short article carefully, but will look over both magazines and get
some idea of the type of fiction required before sending in stories
that are totally unsuited to either publication.
THE EDITORS.
_The Parisienne._
_Saucy Stories._
25 West Forty-fifth Street,
New York City.
THE PEOPLE’S HOME JOURNAL
The conscientious writer of fiction, the man who takes his work
seriously, is sure to get his innings. And at no time in the history
of magazines has this been so true as now. War conditions were
responsible for a four-years’ opportunity seized by too many mediocre
writers to get their wares before the reading public. The result has
been a healthy, vigorous reaction against the sort of stuff Editors
were perhaps obliged to accept when so many able-bodied, sober-minded
drivers of the quill were across the sea fighting for battle honors
instead of bay wreaths.
Because for thirty-six years _The People’s Home Journal_ has been
called “the magazine for every member of the family,” it has offered a
more inclusive market for fiction than magazines making their principal
appeal to women. Big stories of the out of doors have helped to swell
the _Journal’s_ circulation. On the other hand, the kind of story that
surprises the laugh before the tear is over is popular with our readers.
Certainly these readers will not stand either for the dry-as-dust,
categorical type of story, nor for the rapid-fire type, the kind
manufactured, not created. The _Journal’s_ rising newsstand sales
respond barometer-wise to a _Journal_ serial built around love, mystery
or high adventure, but crowded with real things happening and truthful
in its transcript of healthy emotions. Studies in morbid pathology
come to every Editor’s desk, usually from the amateur, but the sane
reactions which follow situations dealing with real people are what
most readers understand and like. The villain who might be your
next-door neighbor, the hero who could have jostled elbows with you in
the subway, the heroine who is the not impossible she of every man’s
dreams are sure to score.
There will always be a demand for the psychological story. And the
story dealing with mental processes can be made as tense and gripping
as the so-called action story if it has actual story interest. But
too many psychological stories start out to prove something of no
importance.
In the last analysis, “the story’s the thing,” whether it deals with
battle, murder or sudden death, or with the complexities of mind
induced by a given situation.
If I were asked to explain briefly what I considered the chief
characteristic of _The People’s Home Journal_ story, I would say
that it is dramatic because it interprets life in a way to stir the
emotions, and I would add that it usually contains a message, always
clear to the reader, a message which lingers in his memory when perhaps
the plot, the characters and the story’s charm have faded.
MARY BOTSFORD CHARLTON.
_The People’s Home Journal._
76-88 Lafayette Street,
New York City.
PEOPLE’S MAGAZINE
It is one of the easiest things in the world to make a statement of the
negative side of a proposition and it is correspondingly difficult to
give an adequate and intelligent idea of all that is involved in the
positive.
So, it is invariably my impulse to tell what I don’t want when I am
asked to explain the needs of the magazine of which I happen to be the
editor. At the present time I am in editorial charge of the _People’s
Magazine_, and its special aversions can be briefly and, I hope,
comprehensively stated.
We will return, as promptly as courtesy permits, all manuscripts
purporting to be stories--the magazine uses only fiction--but which
are, in fact, nothing more than catalogues or monologues. “Catalogues”
include fiction in which descriptive writing prevails, with a minimum
amount of action and characterization. This applies also to so-called
“machine-made” stories, narratives merely of events, bare recitals
of what happened to so-and-so under such-and-such conditions. The
objection to such stories is that, as a rule they are anemic in
substance, superficial in conception and perfunctory in execution.
They are lacking in real vital, dramatic interest. Monologues, in the
derivative sense in which I have used the term, obviously means a
“story within a story,” or one told by one of the characters.
Specifically, the _People’s Magazine_ will not publish a sex story,
or even what is, generically and innocuously, a love story, though as
to the latter, one which is otherwise acceptable will not be rejected
because it embodies a love interest which is a necessary episode in
the plot; it does not care for pseudo-scientific stories, or business
stories constructed according to the formulas in common use; it
objects to prize-fight or other sport stories, but only those of the
conventional type which, after glancing at the opening, the average
reader can finish for himself with little deviation from the text; it
objects to society stories, high, middle-class or low, and it turns its
back on horrors, sordidness and abnormality. And finally it cannot use
mere character or psychological studies, which are not stories at all.
This is a very brief statement, limited by space requirements, of what
the _People’s Magazine_ does _not_ want.
What it _does_ want will take a little longer to tell. The prevailing
note of the magazine is open air adventure, with a distinctly American
flavor; with this qualification we impose no limitations as to place.
Adventure stories with a setting in the United States or Canada may
be put in a period within the limits of the nineteenth or twentieth
centuries. There is a mine of authentic material of highly dramatic
character, much of which, to be sure, has been used in fiction, but
by no means all. We do not object to the use in fictional forms of
historical events and characters by name; in fact we rather welcome it.
Every one, of course, is familiar with the “western story.” Thanks to
“The Virginian” it has been popularized by the magazines and vulgarized
by the movies; we object, not to the “western story,” but to its
formula. If anybody has anything fresh and original to contribute to
it we will thank God and reward him according to his deserts and our
ability. Open air adventure, American, but in any part of the world is,
as I have said, the prevailing note, and we want to strike that note
with a complete novel of from 30,000 to 50,000 words in every number.
In general, and excluding the type of stories I have already referred
to as those that we don’t want, we will accept any short or continued
story that is a really good one; this covers the mystery story.
Now a story, in order to deserve the name, must involve a conflict
or duel, either of human beings, or--proceeding of course from human
beings--ideas or emotions. Without the conflict there is no drama,
and without the drama there is no story. And out of the conflict and
complication should come a denouement which satisfies the reader’s
sense of justice or his sense of the appropriateness of things in
general. Such a denouement may incur the reproach of being a “happy
ending,” but the author should rid himself of that bugaboo and not
be afraid of utilizing it, if _necessary_. It’s only a cant phrase
and does not mean a thing to the masses who read him and make his
reputation for him. Personally, I believe that most unhappy endings
are deliberately planned and thrown in as a sop to the Cerberus of
“realism.”
A real story ought to have an initial impulse that carries it along,
without faltering, from beginning to end, that is to say, _movement_. A
great many stories sag at some point, or collapse in the middle or go
to pieces at the end. Such catastrophes can be averted.
It sometimes seems to me that very, very few authors realize how much
honest, sincere characterization helps a story--how much, indeed, it
may help to make a genuine story out of a very slender plot. The human
element is what gives a story such vitality as it has and time and
effort devoted to it is well spent, and usually profitably spent.
This leads me to say that the human touch is the thing we look for
in every manuscript that comes in to _People’s_ editorial office;
somewhere in each story we hope to find an unexpected display, by one
or more of the characters, of courage, or generosity, or renunciation,
or self-sacrifice, or some other human trait that brings to the reader
a conviction that, after all, human nature is better than experience
has taught him to believe. This is the sort of thing that people
never weary of. Common-place characters, common-place experiences,
common-place emotions take on dramatic color by these unlooked-for
demonstrations.
Finally, we want our stories told in plain, direct, straightforward
style. We object to any peculiarity of phraseology which tends to
divert the attention of the reader from the substance of the story to
the manner of the writer. But individuality of style, which is quite
another thing, and honest slang, judiciously used, are welcome.
I want to conclude with a word on some of the delusions, as they
seem to me, about what is called “the art of the short story,” or of
“short story writing.” I am almost tempted to say that there is no
such art, but I have no desire to dogmatize because, in dealing in
generalities, it is always necessary to add qualifications. I should
say that story-telling is instinctive; that every human being has the
story-telling sense. There’s nothing particularly original in that
idea, but it seems to me that its significance has been curiously
neglected with the result that so-called instruction in the forms of
an alleged art has taken the place of the cultivation of an inherent
impulse. The faculty of observation is the one which, first of all,
makes any story possible. In O. Henry it was so highly developed that,
at a glance, he saw a significance in things that simply did not exist
for most people, even for trained writers. To this he added facility
of expression and a sense of humor, which is fundamentally, a sense
of proportion; and he paid little attention to forms. I speak of him
because he illustrates so distinctly the points I have in mind and also
because I was intimately acquainted with him and with his methods.
Of course “we can’t all be O. Henrys”--he was born with the
story-telling sense fully developed--but we can attain a certain
degree of approximation to his achievements by diligent cultivation
of the three essentials that he had without cultivation, namely:
observation, expression, proportion. And this is a lesson that must be
self-taught--nobody can teach it, for the simple reason that one person
cannot do another’s hard work.
A. L. SESSIONS.
_People’s Popular Monthly._
79 Seventh Avenue,
New York City.
THE PEOPLE’S POPULAR MONTHLY
When we buy a short story there are three very different things which
we desire that story to do:
First: It must tell a story compellingly--so compellingly that when one
is through reading, there is a very definite emotional response which
stays with the reader. If one is conscious of the means technically
employed to place the story before the reader, that story has failed as
such.
If, however, the narrative takes you out of yourself and gives you a
definite feeling of sympathy with that of the people in the story--it
is in this point successful.
Second: Having gripped the attention and taken a hold upon the feeling
of the reader, it must, in order to qualify for a place in our pages,
fill a very real need in the lives of our particular type of readers.
There are many splendid stories which we are forced to return, due to
the fact that they do not fill this particular need.
We have among our readers a preponderance of people who have been
limited in their mental experiences and are consequently limited in
their intellectual grasp. They are, however, from the rural and small
town districts in that opulent region extending from the Alleghenies
to the Rockies, and are, by virtue of this fact, a peculiarly keen
and progressive people. Their judgment is sincere and their viewpoint
is human. Their lives are in many cases a bit monotonous and often
isolated; in consequence of which a story should have a real narrative
interest, and, in all cases, strong entertainment value, with a
wholesome dose of brightness and good cheer. We return all morbidly
tragic stories.
Third: When we have found a story which stirs the feeling and fills the
need of our particular readers, it is then time, and not until then,
to look to the technic of the story. That is something which can be
regulated to a large extent by editing in those cases where errors are
not too flagrant.
There is, of course, a certain readability of expression, absolutely
imperative, but that is something incorporate with the first point.
They are practically inseparable.
Therefore, granted that the style was such as to make the emotional
feeling paramount to the word consciousness of the reader--then any
errors which may have crept in are not too flagrant to be corrected.
Of course, we do not find, in as many cases as we wish, stories which
meet all three requirements, and oftentimes our pages have in them
things which fall short of these three points.
ELIZABETH B. CANADAY.
_The People’s Popular Monthly._
Des Moines, Iowa.
PHOTOPLAY
I do not believe that any editor, whether of a fiction magazine or any
periodical, can judge material successfully on any other than a very
personal basis of likes and dislikes. In other words, I buy a story if
I like it, and believe this to be the only method. Someone has to pass
on it finally, and a publication must stand or fall on his judgment.
JAMES R. QUIRK.
_Photoplay._
25 West Forty-fifth Street,
New York City.
PICTORIAL REVIEW
You ask me a pretty difficult question--I have no absolute rule for
saying yes or no to a short story and, as far as that goes, I don’t
think any other editor has. There are such things in magazine offices
as editorial policies, but if they are good editorial policies they
must be more or less elastic, subject to change without notice and not
very well defined anyway. Folks come in and ask me what kind of stories
_Pictorial Review_ likes. The only answer I can give is “good stories.”
If they ask why I buy this story and not that, I would say because I
think it more interesting than the other, but to go further and to ask
me to explain precisely why it is the more interesting is too much for
me. There may be editors who can sit down and in a magic manner tell
just exactly why they bought this story and refused that, but they must
be smarter editors than I am. I really cannot do it with sincerity or
conviction and do not try.
Do I buy stories because I like them myself or because I think our
readers will like them? That’s another sticker. I generally buy stories
because I like them myself, because if I disregarded my own taste and
tried to pick out a story that our readers would like and which I
didn’t like, I would be hopelessly at sea all the time.
I would really feel ashamed of myself were I to publish a story which I
personally thought to be piffle just because I thought it would “sell
the magazine.”
Moreover, I don’t think any editor knows just what his readers like
or _might_ like except in a general way. We have no exact way of
telling and my experience has been to follow my own judgment and, when
the Circulation Manager comes along and tells me the circulation of
the magazine is increasing by leaps and bounds, I am then licensed to
feel that my judgment must have been good. Because I am just a plain,
ordinary type of person and there must be hundreds of thousands and
millions of people in the country like me; and what interests me will
quite generally interest them, at least I have found it so. Don’t
take from this that the Circulation Manager comes along every month
and tells me the circulation of the magazine is increasing by leaps
and bounds, but sometimes he does, and then I know a certain story or
serial in the magazine got across in a big way; but what does that
mean? It doesn’t mean that I can go out off-hand and get another
story just like it and ring the bell again. We don’t buy stories that
way--writers do not write them that way--I wish they did because the
editor’s job would be easy.
Now here’s another peculiar thing, _Pictorial Review_ is a woman’s
magazine, and yet I am a man and there is nothing particularly feminine
about me in my tastes or activities. We do not pick out stories because
we think they are good woman’s magazine stories; in fact, we have
no earthly use for the typical woman’s magazine story, that sweet
and pretty, mush and milk affair that used to grace the pages of our
contemporaries. We found out years ago that women were interested in
good, short stories that picture the vital, human things in life and
that there was no real reason for their being obliged to go to the
men’s magazines to read them. So we began to publish real stories in
_Pictorial Review_.
I realize that all this is more or less indefinite and possibly of
little help to the aspiring author, but if said aspiring author will
bear in mind that the only way to sell short stories is to make them
interesting and, if they are made sufficiently interesting, they will
sell themselves--that’s all there is to it.
ARTHUR T. VANCE.
_Pictorial Review._
THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY,
214-226 West 39th Street,
New York City.
POPULAR MAGAZINE
In selecting stories I bear in mind the fact that the buying of fiction
is a business and not a literary occupation. This means that I have
always in mind the ultimate consumer--the fellow who knows nothing of
literature as such but who likes good stories.
What are these?
First and foremost, a story about a new phase of life and industry.
The American reader is by no means a prude or intolerant, but he likes
sane, almost practical stuff. He likes romance, but it must be normal
and wholesome. He does not like the erotic or morbid. Without being in
the least “literary,” his taste is surprisingly good. As a rule, he
does not want tragedies, but will accept them if exceedingly well done.
A good mystery story is sure-fire.
Current American fiction is one of the livest things in the world
to-day. Keen intelligence goes into the making of it. It plays a bigger
part in the formation of public opinion than most people know. It is
a genuinely civilizing influence. As a rule, a man’s taste in fiction
improves and his standards in stories become higher the more he reads.
The very cheapest of the magazines are turning the foreign populations
of the second generation in our cities into Americans at a surprising
rate. The author of the day is writing for a big public, not a small,
select one.