At least, they seem to reject mine at the speed of light

TomKnighton wrote:They definitely live up to their name. They get through stories at the speed of light it seems.
At least, they seem to reject mine at the speed of light
TomKnighton wrote:Possibly not. They have to get a lot of submissions, and they reject pretty quickly, so I suspect they start it off, and if it doesn't grab him, it's gone.
All the more reason to make it work in the first couple of paragraphs
E.CaimanSands wrote:Oh no no nooo. This isn't the spirit behind the Five Minute Rant thread. Here we're meant to vent about our rejections/inevitable failures. For instance:
Swampslush Magazine rejected my story. How dare they.My story was a work of genius. Their magazine must be a pile of steaming gator dung.
All their first readers must be fungal spores ejected by the Great Mushroom of the Deeper Bayou.
All their editors must be horse fly larvae that will never hatch.
All their subscribers must be poisonous toads whose taste for fiction extends to said gator dung. I shall never submit to them again. They are not worthy of my brilliance.
![]()
Ishmael wrote:I wrote a reply on the Blog thread to Bob's blog article on the Bechdel Test. Then I thought my reply sounded like a rant, so I moved it here.
As a prescriptive test to detect one form of discrimination the Bechdel Test cannot stand alone as an analytical tool.
It does not pretend to detect any other form of discrimination than misogyny and thus it would fail to detect misandry. I have recently come across a fair amount of misandry from female authors who apparently consider that two wrongs make a right. I can imagine that women find repugnant the description of stereotypical female-in-relation-to-male roles, but the portrayal of, or uncritical praise for, the stereotypical portrayal of male-in-relation-to-female roles just alienates men who already understand the problem. 'Men' are not 'all the same' any more than women are.
It automatically fails any story of human isolation; hence Robinson Crusoe is a sexist story.
It automatically fails any close study of a heterosexual couple, even when not in a relationship with each other.
A great example is 'The Cold Equations' by Tom Godwin.
It has a tendency to fail on superficialities a story that actually examines stereotypical relationships in an innovative way, such as 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
I don't like prescriptivism about what stories must or must not include. I really don't like the modern taking-offence industry. I really really don't like the taking-offence-on-behalf-of-others-who-might-be-offended industry. This last regularly causes disharmony by ignorant stereotyping of the very people upon whose behalf offence is taken. Usually they are stereotyped as the sort of people who take unnecessary offence.
Taking offence leads to anger and retaliation. Constructive engagement is better. I may be wrong, but I doubt that any liberal reformer would mean to be taken so literally as to result in 'Newspeak' rules.
Descends from soapbox. Mops brow. Goes off to hide from the wrath to come.
Isto wrote:E.CaimanSands wrote:Oh no no nooo. This isn't the spirit behind the Five Minute Rant thread. Here we're meant to vent about our rejections/inevitable failures. For instance:
Swampslush Magazine rejected my story. How dare they.My story was a work of genius. Their magazine must be a pile of steaming gator dung.
All their first readers must be fungal spores ejected by the Great Mushroom of the Deeper Bayou.
All their editors must be horse fly larvae that will never hatch.
All their subscribers must be poisonous toads whose taste for fiction extends to said gator dung. I shall never submit to them again. They are not worthy of my brilliance.
![]()
Oh, I do admire you from afar!
Isto wrote:That being said, I really don't know what you're on about. I suppose I should take
a look at this Bechdel test thing before I voice my opinion. But, generally speaking, taking automatic offence because a person has this or that point of view doesn't promote good listening.
Ishmael wrote:Isto wrote:That being said, I really don't know what you're on about. I suppose I should take
a look at this Bechdel test thing before I voice my opinion. But, generally speaking, taking automatic offence because a person has this or that point of view doesn't promote good listening.
That is pretty much what I'm on about.
Of course it is always tricky to criticise offence-takers, because they tend to respond with reflex accusations of bigotry. In fact the prejudice is their own.
Ishmael wrote:I wrote a reply on the Blog thread to Bob's blog article on the Bechdel Test. Then I thought my reply sounded like a rant, so I moved it here.
As a prescriptive test to detect one form of discrimination the Bechdel Test cannot stand alone as an analytical tool.
It does not pretend to detect any other form of discrimination than misogyny and thus it would fail to detect misandry. I have recently come across a fair amount of misandry from female authors who apparently consider that two wrongs make a right. I can imagine that women find repugnant the description of stereotypical female-in-relation-to-male roles, but the portrayal of, or uncritical praise for, the stereotypical portrayal of male-in-relation-to-female roles just alienates men who already understand the problem. 'Men' are not 'all the same' any more than women are.
It automatically fails any story of human isolation; hence Robinson Crusoe is a sexist story.
It automatically fails any close study of a heterosexual couple, even when not in a relationship with each other.
A great example is 'The Cold Equations' by Tom Godwin.
It has a tendency to fail on superficialities a story that actually examines stereotypical relationships in an innovative way, such as 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
Ishmael wrote:Isto wrote:That being said, I really don't know what you're on about. I suppose I should take
a look at this Bechdel test thing before I voice my opinion. But, generally speaking, taking automatic offence because a person has this or that point of view doesn't promote good listening.
That is pretty much what I'm on about.
Of course it is always tricky to criticise offence-takers, because they tend to respond with reflex accusations of bigotry. In fact the prejudice is their own.
Lin wrote:Food for thought, though: movies that passed the Bechdel test turned more of a profit on average than those that didn't. So it has some practical implications as well.
Isto wrote:Ishmael wrote:Isto wrote:That being said, I really don't know what you're on about. I suppose I should take
a look at this Bechdel test thing before I voice my opinion. But, generally speaking, taking automatic offence because a person has this or that point of view doesn't promote good listening.
That is pretty much what I'm on about.
Of course it is always tricky to criticise offence-takers, because they tend to respond with reflex accusations of bigotry. In fact the prejudice is their own.
Ok. I looked it up. I consider myself a feminist of sorts. And, because of that, I totally fail the 'test' time and time again. One of my stories never names my female protagonist. Nor does she talk to another woman (or really anyone else after the first page) which is quite the point. She is socially invisible. She dissolves before our eyes. She is every woman you pass in the hallway, grocery store, sidewalk that is seen as an obstacle but not a person. In another of my stories, a woman disrespects herself, acts in a very stereotypical way, until she's forced to realize that she's better than that. She grows into a very strong character if one is patient enough to watch it happen. Not the main plot, but important for the world-building. Now for MY rant. I am SOOOO frustrated by the arbitrary rules of fiction. One person says we need X, Y, and Z within a specific number of pages. Not too many. Not too few. Stop and paint the scene. Name and describe the people. What are they wearing? Do I care? Oh, it's moving too slowly. Where's the chase scene? The violence? What the...? It's fiction. Aren't the twists and turns... the mystery, the unfolding ... part of the joy of reading? Are we so impatient that we can't kick back and enjoy the ride?whew.
Almost done. When a publisher holds a story for so long that a personal apology is enclosed with the rejection, I just wish they'd toss a crumb as to why. Is this 5 minute rant supposed to make me feel better? Can't say it did.
Isto wrote:Now for MY rant. I am SOOOO frustrated by the arbitrary rules of fiction. One person says we need X, Y, and Z within a specific number of pages. Not too many. Not too few. Stop and paint the scene. Name and describe the people. What are they wearing? Do I care? Oh, it's moving too slowly. Where's the chase scene? The violence? What the...? It's fiction. Aren't the twists and turns... the mystery, the unfolding ... part of the joy of reading? Are we so impatient that we can't kick back and enjoy the ride?whew.
Lin wrote:I think you're missing the point of the Bechdel test (and not just you--I think that this is something many people on both sides of the issue misconstrue). It was never intended to be an actual test used on all works to diagnose whether or not the work is sexist. It was created by a cartoonist as a humorous way to illustrate how many movies neglect to give their women characters any interests beyond the men characters. Of course it fails as a prescriptive tool. It's useful as a critique of a larger issue, not necessarily individual works.
LDWriter2 wrote:In fact I have been thinking of doing a rant on my blog about Political Correctness in writing. I read one writer--as far as I could figure it's someone who doesn't have many stories or novels published--who stated it is our responsibility to include all typed of minorities in our writing. No, it's not. I have done a story where the MC is deaf and yet saves the day and I have included racial groups in some of my tale but that's because there are racial groups, so in any fairly large size group there would be people of different races.
A suggested explanation for boys being discouraged from reading in the UK is that children's literature is dominated by female editors and reviewers who tend to exclude technical issues and other traditional interests of boys as well as of girls who share such interests.
Ishmael wrote:I would suggest that a way of making sure people realise that something is not a test is not to call it a test and not to draw conclusions from what passes or fails it.
Ishmael wrote:A study reported in The Times pointed out that in the past two years all the judges of the UK's most prestigious children's book awards were women. Of reviews of children's books in national newspapers around two thirds to four fifths were by women, depending on genre. A parliamentary commission has found that boys' reading ages lag girls by a year.
Now I don't reason post hoc ergo propter hoc but neither would I dismiss the theory as irrelevant. I understand perfectly that in the vast majority of cases discrimination will flow the other way. I would rather it didn't flow either way.
s_c_baker wrote:
As for "political correctness," the term kind of makes me cringe, since it's so often used by the dominant cultural group (i.e. straight white males) to mean "how come I can't be racist/sexist/homophobic in public any more?" (see this excellent post: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n2/homepage.html)
s_c_baker wrote:This sounds like anti-feminist crap to me.
s_c_baker wrote:Unless there's actual data to support any correlation, it seems pretty irrelevant to me.
s_c_baker wrote:While it's certainly possible that the prevalence of female authors and "girl-targeted" books play some sort of role, I'd find it hard to believe that that and that alone would account for boys not reading as much, as early, or as easily.
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:My new time travel story (formerly "Variation on a Theme from Bradbury", but I thought better of it) just got bounced by those cruel fiends from Clarkesworld!
RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT!
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:My new time travel story (formerly "Variation on a Theme from Bradbury", but I thought better of it) just got bounced by those cruel fiends from Clarkesworld!
RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT!
Oh, well, off to Duotrope...
(FYI: I was advised by Mike Resnick to never publicly announce rejections OR submissions, only sales. So the only place you'll hear this news from me is here among the writer crowd, not out in public. I offer this in the spirit of sharing what we have learned. Follow it or ignore it, only you can decide.)
Welcome back.
The careful reader will have noted that I never even said that this certainly was an explanation, let alone the only explanation. I am sure the thirteen female judges of the CILIP panel selected what they believed were the best works. It is entirely possible that male judges would have made similar choices if given the chance.
It is also possible that those putting forward works for consideration have some regard to who will be doing the judging. That does seem to be a feature of WotF.
I am as wary of the potential for gender bias in this field as in any other. It is a truism, given the pyramidal ability distribution, that if you confine your candidate selection to one sex you are forced to accept candidates from further down the ability scale than if you were to select from both sexes. The same applies to racial, religious etc. discrimination. Apart from being immoral it is inefficient.
Now if you don't like a particular outcome you investigate each and every possible cause. You don't begin by excluding some possible causes on arbitrary grounds. There is a correlation. Some correlations are quite spurious. The birth rate in Lapland is well correlated with the incidence of storks, I was once told. Some correlations however are not spurious. The point of the article was that a study needs to be done.
s_c_baker wrote:Fair enough. I thought we were just arguing for the sake of argument.![]()
Ishmael wrote:s_c_baker wrote:Fair enough. I thought we were just arguing for the sake of argument.![]()
Moi?!!!???!!!!
Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:My new time travel story (formerly "Variation on a Theme from Bradbury", but I thought better of it) just got bounced by those cruel fiends from Clarkesworld!
RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT! RANT!
Oh, well, off to Duotrope...
(FYI: I was advised by Mike Resnick to never publicly announce rejections OR submissions, only sales. So the only place you'll hear this news from me is here among the writer crowd, not out in public. I offer this in the spirit of sharing what we have learned. Follow it or ignore it, only you can decide.)
Return to “Writing: Craft, Talent, Technique”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest