Friday, April 27, 2018

SQF revisited - Every Day Fiction

Every Day Fiction publishes fiction of 1000 words or fewer. All genres are acceptable, as well as stories that don't fit neatly into any category. The magazine caters to an adult readership, but is not interested in publishing stories containing gratuitous sex and violence. Since much of EDF’s readership may be reading from work or over a meal, anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading on a workplace computer or wouldn’t want to read while eating is unlikely to be suitable for this market.

SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a story and why?

CGC: The very first thing I look for is competent prose. Almost anything else can be addressed in a rewrite if the piece overall seems worth it, but if the basic word-stringing skills aren’t there, the piece won’t be salvageable. Online flash fiction depends on readable prose—either sparse/clean or lyrical/poetic styles can work particularly well, so those are usually what we look for. Dense hard-to-read prose is a killer with an online readership, even if it’s well crafted; while a literary novel might get a careful close reading and complex prose might be appreciated, an online flash fiction piece has only seconds to hook a reader and stop him or her from clicking away.

Read the original interview here.

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