Hm... this reminded me of an article I wrote and had published in Focus (BSFA's magazine for writers) some time ago. I reproduce here in full, with the caveat that this is my opinion of the writers' obstacle course. Others may have a different view.
Glass Ceilings of Science Fiction
A glass ceiling is an unseen and seemingly unbreakable barrier for people to progress in achieving their aims, whether it is in their careers or in their artistic attainments. We’ve all come across them in our lives, where despite trying every which way we can, we end feeling so frustrated and angry. Our goals seem as impossible as ever.
Such glass ceilings exist for science fiction writers. They should be viewed more as significant milestones on the way to becoming a successfully published science fiction author. Each achieved milestone denotes the writing has taken a major change in quality or direction. So what are these glass ceilings?
Let’s break it down by the results to publishing:
1) For a small circle of family and friends who are more interested in what you are doing rather than the quality of the writing
2) In small circulation magazine as a new writer, which gives you your first unknown audience
3) In a small circulation science fiction magazine as a genre writer, which still gives you a small unknown audience
4) In a medium circulation science fiction magazine, which actually gives you a reasonable (rather than token) fee for the story
5) In a high circulation science fiction magazine, which gives you a professional fee (as per SFWA criteria for joining them say)
6) A novel by a minor publishing house
7) A novel by a big publisher
In theory you can skip some of these steps, but these days, unless you are very lucky or very talented, it is unlikely. The reason? You are learning to improve what and how you write at each step.
So what does it take to jump between the steps?
Everyone who is competent at writing can do step 1. But what makes a story good enough to reach step 2?
First off, you have sufficient skill to write a story with a beginning, middle and end to the magazine’s requirements of theme and word count. And you have the ability to spot the opportunity to submit your stories. But remember you may have been given some leeway in skills because from the publication’s view you are new, and therefore of possible interest to readers.
So how do you go to step 3, being published in a minor in-genre magazine? Well if you have completed step 2, you’ve lost the opportunity of newness. But you are sufficiently skilled to bring an interesting new writing style or innovative minor issue or a slightly different story line to it. Notice the emphasis here is something NEW! It doesn’t have to be anything mind-blowing major, just an adjustment here or there. Re-hashes of old themes they are not!
Going from a minor to a medium circulation genre magazine, is doing step 3, but noticeably better in ALL the skill areas. It’s not good enough to just improve the writing style. The ideas have to be more mind-bending and the story line more unusual. Often the unusual story line follows naturally from the bigger idea, but not always. This is where you find the stories start to write themselves. In part this is due to your deviating away so much from published science fiction that you’re on a green field site. You have more freedom to pick and choose what your story does and it still having that ‘fresh’ feel. Yes, you can go for a new literary style to bring a new voice to science fiction, but finding one that’s not been used before will be very difficult.
Moving on to step 5, the big circulation magazines, is more about acceptance and reputation. You are entering the commercial world here, big time. You will have to act in a professional manner in your dealing with the publisher. Your science fiction stories will of course be even better than they were at step 4. And by this stage you will have a following of some sort, which can either be by popular demand of the readers or, more likely, support from people within the publishing industry.
Moving onto step 6, you are writing novels. These long pieces of work take time and plenty of revision to pull together to make an acceptable product. The plot will be more complex or the drawing of the characters more nuanced or novel theme more difficult to explain or the presentation is difficult to control e.g. several threads of a story from different parts of the future being progressed in alternating chapters. It takes skill to juggle a novel into shape with all its different threads and by-lines. And it has to be sellable. Which means you have to pick a subject that the readers want to know more about. Because of the long haul time-wise between starting a novel and getting it to market, you have to be able to anticipate what you think will sell. Not easy I know. Usually, people opt for variations on current popular themes for their first novel, which usually doesn’t make it. So the only advice I can give here is get a reliable crystal ball.
Step 7 is when you become a big name author – well I don’t have any experience of that at all, so can only comment on what I observe. A lot of people say that it’s luck. I don’t. It’s having a big enough imagination and the ability to control the complexity of big projects. These are skills that can only be developed with practice. Did I hear you say that you can’t build up your imaginative skills? Of course you can. Keep trying. Believe me, it gets easier every time. Here’s the real but – the public only has so much money to spend. So there can only be a limited number of big list authors. It’s a case of the best athlete wins here. You’ve got to go somewhere in your writing where nobody else can hope to follow to have that competitive edge.
Almost everyone goes through these steps as part of the learning to write science fiction curve. All too often writers try, reach a peak of skills, hit the frustration barrier of a glass ceiling, give up and settle to bumbling along at the level they have achieved. What they probably don’t realise is that with practice, their writing continues to improve. They should keep on trying to reach the next level, break whatever glass ceiling is in their way. With time, people can get to step 6. Getting to step 7 depends on how well your interests align with readers.
