Fit in to get on

Patrick Forsyth recommends a pragmatic approach to getting commissions

Readers and editors are different. Obvious, yes, but stay with me a moment. Readers may like all sorts of things and may be surprised and delighted to read something wholly unlike what they expected. Editors most often have fixed ideas about what they want and they reject things that do not fit what they believe suits.

Thus rejection does not necessarily mean something is bad, only that it does not fit what a particular editor has in mind. Most often you can’t fight against this (though being persistent may get something different accepted). You have to fit in. Thus the old advice about reading a magazine before submitting to it is sound.

This kind of checking does not just apply to overall factors, it involves details. For example, how many midtext headings does a non-fiction article usually have? If featured stories usually have a twist ending, then it’s probable that you will more likely get published if yours does too; and it most likely needs to be a very distinct twist.

Of course writing is a creative process and it is the writer’s right to do what they like. But following an accepted pattern is more often likely to result in acceptance and publication, even if sometimes doing so is distasteful. I was once commissioned to write a non-fiction book arranged in many ‘chapters’ labelled A – Z. I hated it and found it utterly contrived, but doing it paid a few bills.

Careful checking then fitting with editorial specifications, and accepting editorial requests for amendments too, usually does increase the chances of acceptance. Creativity is important too, of course – something that is also regularly mentioned here.