How much vetting do you put a short story through before submitting

[Cory Swanson]

I found that there is an anthology that fits one of my short stories perfectly. I'm excited and want to submit it immediately, but my wife is the only one that has read it. I have gone throug it three times for grammar, etc. and have taken my wife's comments and reworked it.

The deadline is not for a while. What is your standard? How many people do you get to read a short before you submit? How many passes of editing do you put it through? On average, of course. I'm sure each story demands a different approach. Am I being too hasty?

 

[Droflet]

If you want an answer to all of your questions, submit a portion of one of your stories to the critiques thread. You'll get nothing but support from your fellow Chrononauts. BUT, be warned. None of us will do your work justice by lying to you. If it's good, then no fowl, but if it's not ... Your call. Either way your curiosity will be eased.

 

[Dan Jones]

What Drof said, Cory. The standard changes from story to story for me, but I'll usually put something up on crits, either if I'm unsure of something or just want to make sure everything is ok, and once the second draft is finished, I'll always ask for two external opinions, or beta reads, before cracking on with the third draft. I may then ask for an "internal" opinion (wife, brother, friend etc) to make sure it works from a reader's (non-writer's) perspective, before subbing.

That works for me, but you may have a different method, which is cool. But I'd definitely put at least a bit up on crits to make sure.

 

[ralphkern]

Having been a submission reader for an anthology, and also been in the submission process myself recently, let me just say, the standards are increadibly high.

To put it into perspective, for Explorations, I don't think there was a single one we knocked back on quality of prose. They were all really tightly written and, I'll be honest, I found it heartbreaking to give my "no" vote to some of them.

Hypothetically, if there had been a work which was lacking in tightness, then we probably would have used that as an opportunity to cut down the amount of submissions.

For the Future Chronicles series, the anthologist, Sam Peralta, has the same view.

He gives an excellent interview here where he talks a little bit about the submission process:

The bottom line is please do yourself a favour and take every opportunity to ensure your work is the very best it can be. Use this site, use beta readers, and ask questions of the anthologists so you can ensure your work is not just qualitatively there, but fits in with the collection overall.

 

[DZara]

I love the idea of running short stories by fellow Chronners first. I have a few well-meaning readers, but they only read my stuff because they already like/love me, and I suspect their comments have an aim of preserving our relationship instead of really improving the story.

I don't usually do a lot of edits with my stories. Usually a first draft, then a read-through after a week (the first draft gets bigger), then another read-through (gets bigger again), and by the next read-through I can finally start cutting. I try to cut about 10-20% of the first draft and firm up the structure of the thing. Not terribly good at strong structure yet, but I think I'm improving.