Part 27
But when you apply yourself to the practical task of selecting manuscripts for your own publication you do consciously or unconsciously evolve a set of rules by which the final verdict of yes or no is governed. We buy eight or ten short stories a month for the _Metropolitan_ in addition to an occasional serial. Naturally these stories are not to be all of one kind. I should say, however, that there is a sort of category into which we prefer our stories to fall. It is perhaps somewhat the same with magazine editors as with other persons such as painters and musicians who manifest their tastes more directly--we go in for very different degrees of intensity in the portrayal of a life, and so on. I can think of Editors who pin their faith, because they like it, to clever, thin, mauvish specimens of the art of fiction; of others who love the middle register of common life; and still others who go in for the heights and depths of emotion, the passionate crises which after all do enter into the lives of practically all people. There are many ways of interesting the public; our way in the _Metropolitan_ lies a good deal in the field last mentioned. We believe in dynamic fiction, we like it so much that we would rather have a crudely done but expressive story from a new hand than a manufactured, tepid yarn from the best of practiced writers. Manufactured stuff in general we abhor, although we do not fail to see that many of our contemporaries do quite well with it. But stop, there is a kind of manufactured story which we welcome; detective stories, night life adventures, the thriller which produces a murder of the unpopular character and skilful escape of the hero,--we like these in spite of the fact that the whole thing is a frame. Of this class of stories it is to be said that they resemble a play in which you take for granted a good deal of unreality without which the thing could not take place at all, and lend yourself to the breathless character of the performance.
We care nothing about happy or unhappy endings. Of course when the only thing a writer really has to offer you as a reward for reading a lot of pages is a peculiarly lugubrious finish we decline to be enthusiastic. But there are many stories which are far better for having sad endings. And if we think so we are confident that the public, which is also human, thinks so too. But there is one thing we have strong convictions about; namely, length. Ten years ago five thousand words was a good length for a short story. Since that time, unhappily, writers have become so proficient on the typewriter, that they pour out eight, ten and twelve thousand words without being able to stop. In most cases this is utterly unnecessary and spoils the performance for any purpose except filling space, or encouraging a siesta on the part of the reader. Conditions of magazine publication have encouraged authors to write at length instead of compressing and intensifying their work. We do not hold with this school. For the _Metropolitan_ we want short stories--the shorter the better, provided everything is put in that should be. No master of the short story has made a practice of writing the long, ungainly things which are commonly produced nowadays. Poe didn’t. Maupassant didn’t. O. Henry and Kipling didn’t. It is not to the point to argue that all of these men wrote at times lengthy tales; when they did there was some excuse for it; but their finest work was always short. When we begin to receive in our office a flood of manuscripts ranging from two to five thousand words, then we shall think a new inspiration has come to the great benefit of the whole writing profession.
In this connection note the work of Booth Tarkington. The best short stories we have ever published came from his pen and they filled no more than from fifteen to twenty pages of typewritten paper. There is a man who builds up a short story piece by piece, every word, every sentence counts. And this reminds us to say that the William Sylvanus Baxter stories may not be supposed to fall quite in the circle which we drew a little way above to mark our special _Metropolitan_ field. But they do. Intense reality may quite as readily, though by no means so easily, appear in the form of humor as along lines of emotional stress. Moreover, the great humanity and genius of Booth Tarkington place him beyond the need of classification of any sort. He is a great writer in any style he chooses, and for example of another style of his writing we refer to “The Magnificent Ambersons,” that pointed and tragic novel of real life which appeared as a serial in the _Metropolitan_.
If we looked for eight or ten Booth Tarkington’s a month we would very quickly enter a padded cell, although we may confide that the Circulation Manager will have no objections if we describe each one of our writers in terms just as superlative. Let us hasten to say, then, without raking up a list of famous names, as we might do, that we are extremely enthusiastic about many, many authors who do not perhaps sell us more than one story apiece a year. There are exceptions like Elinor Mordaunt, whose remarkable tale-telling talent, whose romantic flair for the picturesque and dramatic, whose love of the salt sea and strange adventures and adventurers, have been deeply appreciated in the _Metropolitan_ many times in the last few years. But as a rule we do not harry and pursue one author. We want the fresh and new, the deeply felt, the sincere, the genuine effort, wherever we can find it. We look for it continually.
SONYA LEVIEN.
_Metropolitan._ 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
THE MODERN PRISCILLA
_The Modern Priscilla_ finds its readers among the highly intelligent home-abiding women of the country, and in the choice of suitable fiction for them, stories of dramatic interest having to do with the affairs of real people are what is most desired.
We do not want sapless stories, but those that are vital, colorful, interesting, and concerned with the actual problems of to-day.
We plan always to publish two stories a month, not over four thousand words in length.
THE EDITORS.
_Modern Priscilla._ 85 Broad Street, Boston, Mass.
MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE
At the time of the compilation of this book there had been a recent 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.