How CSFG Selects Short Stories

Welcome to the third post in my series on short story editors. Recently an editor-friend of mine shared his editorial selection process on Facebook. Watching it was difficult at first because I hadn’t realised how emotionally draining the process of putting together a short story collection can be for editors – whether for an anthology or a magazine edition.

So, over the following posts, I’m going to interview the editors of Fablecroft, Ticonderoga, CSFG, Aurealis and Midnight Echo to find out more.

Here’s what the joint editors of this year’s Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (CSFG) anthology, Next, Rob Porteous and Simon Petrie, told me about their process…

Firstly, some stats:

“Next”
Edited by Simon Petrie and Rob Porteous

The title of your latest project: Next.

Its release date: April 2013

Published: print and ebook

One-sentence description: Thirty short stories that showcase the vitality and talent of Australia’s speculative fiction community.

Great! Now let’s get stuck in…

1. What’s the hardest part of putting together a short story collection, be it for a magazine edition or an anthology?

(SP) Fitting in the last few stories, from a range of dozens of possible pieces. Some stories are so close to perfection their choice is a no-brainer, but there are plenty of good stories that, with a little tweak or two, could be great. Choosing just a subset of those latter stories can seem arbitrary, even cruel, but I have to go with my instincts.

(RP) The reading. Simon and I read every story and reread the list before each stage of selection. And then read them all again at each stage of editing and polishing. By the end, I found it really hard to slow down and read each word of a story that I’d read maybe half a dozen times before.

2. What’s the easiest part of that process?

(RP) Perhaps not actually easy, but the funnest part is the editing. I love reading a piece analytically, seeing how it is put together, what drives the impact and what isn’t working. In principle, it is possible to read your own work like this, but it is much easier to start out analysing other people’s writing (and, yes, I always drive from the back seat too).

(SP) Writing an acceptance letter.

3. What’s the most emotional part (and which emotion)?

(SP) Envy. It’s great reading a story where I feel ‘Jeez, I wish I could’ve written that’. And the consolation is that I get to help introduce that story to the world. (Basking in reflected glory is one of the perks of the job.)

(RP) The winnowing – the part where you cut the long list down to the final anthology often on a fairly arbitrary basis – like if you have several stories that are too similar. Cutting is, of course, a euphemism for rejecting and I was grimly aware of how each author had laboured to create a great story and was watching their email, waiting to hear if it had been accepted – very distressing.

4. Often editors have a vision for their collection, so select stories that support that vision. Do you ever worry that readers won’t ‘get’ your vision once it’s presented to them and, if so, how do you cope with that worry?

(RP) Not at all. The anthology is first and foremost a set of great stories. If the reader takes them one at a time and doesn’t get the theme, they’ll still get a lot out of it. Actually, if the theme were too obvious (like ‘stories that have to have a shape-changer in them’ or ‘everybody dies’) it would sap some of the pleasure of the unexpected.

(SP) My vision’s generally ‘low-concept’: I prefer broad themes, because I think any anthology should try to be greater than the sum of its parts, and variety is the best way to achieve that. As long as the readers enjoy the experience of exploring the anthology, that’s the main thing.

Rob Porteous

5. Do you read stories blind, or know which author wrote each story as you read? Why do you prefer that method?

(SP) For Next we read blind, but on other editing I’ve done, I’ve frequently known the authors beforehand. What I like about blind reading is that it really focuses my attention on the story, above all other considerations. That doesn’t stop me from trying to guess the author’s identity (and usually getting it wrong).

(RP) Blind. Absolutely. Given the size of the Australian spec-fic community, you will get lots of stories from friends and famous writers. Blind reading lets you focus on the particular story in front of you and how it relates to the theme.

6. Once you’ve selected your favourite stories, how do you put them in order – by theme, by author, to develop a given theme…?

(RP) On the face of it, it was incredibly scientific. We created a spreadsheet with all the stories in order, all colour coded according to sub-genre and word count. In reality, there was a fair amount of art to it – with some stories crying out to be at the beginning and others demanding to be last. So we used both – art finessed with science!

(SP) I don’t know that there’s such a thing as an ideal story order. But I like to arrange stories to heighten the contrast—light versus shade, futuristic SF versus historical fantasy, that sort of thing—so as to give each story a ‘clean break’ from the one before. Putting too many similar stories together invites invidious comparisons.

7. Have you ever rejected a story that then went on to achieve greatness elsewhere? If so, what did you think about that, and did you alter your processes to avoid it happening again?

(SP) That depends on the reason for rejection. If it’s a question of space available, then yes, I regret it, but probably not enough to wish I’d used it in place of some other story I’d liked. But if I’d rejected because the story didn’t work for me: no, subsequent greatness doesn’t override that at all.

(RP) It’s certainly likely, given how many good stories had to be put to one side. But there was nothing about the process that I’d alter – if there turn out to be some that didn’t grab either of us but that go on to earn acclaim, it will be a matter of taste, I guess. It’s no different to reading an anthology of “Year’s Best Stories” and finding a couple of stories that you don’t like as much as the rest.

Simon Petrie

8. How often do you second-guess your judgment?

(RP) All the time. We kept on challenging our assessments all through the editing process. There were certainly a couple of stories that got better with each reading, and others that rated well at first impression but palled a little after a second or third time.

(SP) About once every seventeen seconds. Or more often, when I’m awake.

9. If you had just one piece of advice for writers submitting to you, what would it be (apart from to follow your guidelines)?

(SP) Read as much as you can, then make sure that what you write is different to what you’ve read by other people.

(RP) Get a beta reader. Or three. Many of the stories that didn’t make the long-list had really obvious flaws in story or technique. Beta readers would have helped spot the weaknesses and that might have lifted the stories into the long list. And even great stories can benefit from an independent view.

10. If you had just one piece of advice for editors thinking about putting together a short story collection, what would it be?

(RP) Get a co-editor! Because it can be lonely at the top. No, seriously, it really helped to have a second opinion and a second pair of eyes. And hands.

(SP) Seek professional help.

Thank you Simon & Rob! It sounds like both of you have had a lot of fun putting together this short story anthology – I’m looking forward to enjoying the pleasure of the unexpected when I read it. No invidious comparisons here! Thanks for sharing your experience with us 🙂