Six Questions For…, a long-running blog that interviews magazine editors about what they look for when buying stories, has a new interview with Wyngraf EiC Nathaniel Webb! Nathaniel discusses founding Wyngraf, the top three things we want from stories, the quickest ways to earn a rejection, and much more. Check it out!
Last week we read submissions for Rakehell, our sibling mag of swashbuckling adventure fiction. We’ll have more to say about the submission round soon, but right now we want to talk about story openings. Specifically, let’s talk about how to deliver backstory in the beginning of your piece. This is something we saw a lot … More What We Learned: Anatomy of an Opening
Way back in March we discussed reasons stories were rejected by Wyngraf. The number one cause of rejections was what we call “nuts & bolts”—the essential mechanics of prose writing and storytelling. Nuts & bolts rejections walk a fine line. We took some pieces that required essentially zero editing, but we also took some that … More Nuts & Bolts, Part 1: Prose Mechanics
During our submissions window, we received stories in a number of different formats. As noted before, we didn’t reject anything for being in the wrong format, but we did discover some solid preferences. Don’t Shun Shunn The single most commonly linked web page from submission guidelines has got to be William Shunn’s Proper Manuscript Format. … More What We Learned, Part 3: Manuscript Format
Yesterday, we broke down the numbers for our first submission window: how many stories did we receive, how many did we buy, and so on. Today we’d like to talk about that most thorniest of issues: rejections. Specifically, we’re going to delve into why stories received a rejection. Our hope here is, again, to shed … More What We Learned, Part 2: Rejections
Whew! When we started Wyngraf, we weren’t sure we’d get any submissions. Were there enough people out there writing cozy fantasy? Would they learn about us? We had no idea. Well, we needn’t have worried. Wyngraf‘s first submissions window netted us no less than seventy-three stories. During the process of reading, rereading, and responding to … More What We Learned, Part 1: By the Numbers
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