20 common publishing failures

Twenty common reasons why a short story failed to get published.

1.  Well-worn theme – the magazine may already have a glut of the same type of stories. Study your market and try a topic that’s a little different.
2. Too dull.
3. Too melodramatic.
4. The wrong central character.
5. Slow beginning.
6. Uninteresting characters.
7. Change of view point. Whose story is it?
8. Time span too long. A short story cannot cope with a War and Peace epic.
9. Plot too contrived. The ending has to be logical.
10. Trivial (another word for boring).
11. Over-blown descriptions.
12. Muddled or confusing.
13. No shape – have a clear structure with a beginning, middle & end.
14. Lack of conflict (boring again!).
15. Too little dialogue.
16. Unbelievable dialogue.
17. Goes off on a tangent. Stick to the point.
18. Bad writing.
19. Bad spelling and punctuation.
20. Unsatisfactory ending. It doesn’t need to be a Hollywood-swell-the-music ending but the reader feel it was worth taking the time to read it.