Writing Blog

20220627 Rejection

June 27, 2022, 2:00pm

Writing with an eye to selling work is fraught with some interesting pitfalls.

I recently had a novella rejected because of one main reason and almost one reason only – the age of the protagonists. Here’s the quote from the email:

“The readers all agree (the story) is well-written. It moves along well and makes sense. However, they all felt the age of the main characters should be lowered. If you can keep the story as is, but rewrite it to make the characters younger then we will consider it for our (series) roll-out in 2023.”

When I asked how young, the publisher informed me that they should be in their twenties, so “not too young”. Oh, they also felt the ending was “too soft”.

The story features a group of people aged 35 to 60, and is set over 20 years after they became infertile and 99.99% of the world’s population died. The whole setting of a city that is falling apart, over-run by vegetation and animals, would not make sense. Did these characters somehow survive from when they were pre-teens. How could city kids manage that? And, yes, that is a paraphrase of what I sent back, along with asking, “So you would like me to write a different story?”

They could not answer, so I guess the story is going down as a rejection.

So, if writing with an eye to publication, maybe you need to be aware that there will be certain things the publishing industry almost demands from unknown writers, and that means writing like everyone else, with their story beats and characterisations, and not like yourself.

Yes, I understand that self-publishing would stop that, but that’s not for me.

Anyway, just thought I’d share.