Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 4 | Page 35

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SO YOU WANT TO WRITE...(CONT’D)
THE THIRD STEP— If you’re including your stories solely, your next step is
to select stories for the project. You may consider sending a few to friends or
critics and see what they think. You may not have many stories in your cache,
so you’ll need to get writing if you’re going to fill an anthology.
When outlining the anthology, a certain flow should be attempted.
That is, don’t start with a feel-good story, follow it up with death and
destruction, and then go back to fluffy. Think about a story or novel in general.
There’s an intro, things build up, there’s a climax, and a conclusion. The
anthology should follow the same suit. Instead of outlining chapters, you’re
outlining short stories that make sense.
If you’re including stories from others, it can be quite maddening. Folks
say they want to participate, but it takes them months to finally send the
story. Then you read it and it doesn’t fit or it’s rife with errors. Do you accept it
and “fix” it? Or do you have to reject it? It’s a strange feeling when you’ve
received rejection letters- a difficult feeling to handle- and now you have to
issue one. However, if the story stinks or doesn’t work, you must pass on it.
When you write the rejection letter, remember the feeling you get when you
read the ones you get. I call mine, “No thank you letters.”
One tip here. Although I use an editor and I’m an established author
with a decent following, I still made decisions to hedge the bet that my
anthology would be successful. I included work from Sunny Frazier, a wellknown award winning short story author, and tied in Jim and Jay Padar who’d
published a similar successful anthology. In addition, I decided to donate all
proceeds to the families of fallen heroes.
THE FOURTH STEP—You have all your stories, they’re edited and in the
order you’d like to see, and now it’s time to format. Formatting will drive you
crazy. If you go into it knowing it’s difficult