Now that I've worked in the offices of two different prestigious literary magazines, I've learned a thing or two about what comes in the slush pile most often. It's astonishing how many stories arrive that run through nearly identical storylines or patterns. While there is an exception to every rule, and any one of these stories could be written beautifully and prove me wrong, I've heard editors at both magazines declare they will
never publish some of the below storylines because they're so ubiquitous and interchangeable.
So if you're on the publishing trail, be warned and avoid these five plotlines!
The break-up
Yes, break-up stories are the NUMBER ONE story we get in the slush pile. They are everywhere, and every last one of them hashes over the same details, the same gradual growing apart, the same pattern of fights and touching reunions. Avoid this most common of storylines.
Diary of the madman
This is another one that I've seen many many times in workshops as student work, but never successfully in print. It's because it was done almost two hundred years ago (Gogol's
Diary of a Madman) and few works since have added much to the genre. A story with gleefully over-the-top prose, cliche phrasings, and quivering narcissism is so not new.
Dead child
This may sound callous, but I went to a panel discussion of several editors of literary magazines lately, and they all agreed this was the most common plot choice of all. Need a crisis for your characters to slowly and poignantly recover from? No problem -- just kill off a kid! Seriously, there's no describing how tragic this event is in real life, but in story world, this plotline has been done and done.
After the jump: two more plotlines to avoid.