The Good, the Bad, and the Cringe: Instant Editor Nopes and How to Fix Them
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ABOUT THE EVENT ✏︎
Ever wonder what makes editors roll their eyes or hit DECLINE before you can say “flowing chestnut waves”? Yes, we’re mean sometimes, not fountains of love. We’re tired, OK? But there are so many ways to get rejected, why not avoid the easiest ones?
From pieces drowning in detail to misery porn (yuck), we’ll guide you through the most common “nopes” we see in submissions, then discuss what changes would make an editor go 🤩 and not 🤮. So if you're worried about writing stereotypes, wondering if your characters are “likable,” or suspect your beautiful prose is just self-indulgence, this workshop is for you.
We’ll talk about writing for yourself vs. writing for a reader, Goldilocks details, and outworn tropes that, like vintage underwear, need to be retired STAT. Like, do we need that many stories about hating (and murdering) a spouse? One more “piercing blue gaze,” and we might go blind.
Time permitting, we’ll work through some exercises together to practice transforming potential “nopes” into “heck yeahs!” Come ready to laugh, weep, cringe – and level up your work. And if you want some eyeballs on a WIP you’re feeling uneasy about, please send that bad boy over and we’ll workshop an excerpt live (we listen and we DO judge, but no one will know it’s yours ♥️ )
INSTRUCTOR BIOS ✏︎
Steve Chang is a craft nerd and fiction editor at Okay Donkey. His writing has appeared in Guernica, North American Review, The Southampton Review, etc. and received support from MASS MoCA, Loghaven, the KHN Center for the Arts, The Kerouac Project, and the Carolyn Moore Writers House. He's a MacDowell fellow but doesn't brag about it (much). He'd rather talk about your work.
Autumn Watts was fiction editor for Guernica Magazine (2014-2024). Editing is her heartwork, but her writing has also found homes in The Craft of Editing, Words Without Borders, AGNI, Indiana Review, and Guernica, among others, mentions in Best American Essays, Wigleaf Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and support from Bread Loaf and the Community of Writers.