How To Know if Your Work Fits a Literary Journal (ft. Erik Harper Klass)

Increase your chances of getting published with these 10 tips.

created for Chill Subs by Mariam Chagelishvili

---

If you didn't know, Karina and I met through Lit Mag News, Becky Tuch's Newsletter about all things Lit Mag. I submitted an article to her called "My 6 Step No B.S. Guide to Submitting Short Stories to Lit Mags." In leu of pay, I chose a year's subscription to her newsletter where I saw her interview with Karina. If this hadn't happened, who knows? We may never have met. But, that's not the point of this. Point is, before getting to know so many editors through Chill Subs, I wrote:

"The writer-to-editor relationship is basically a bunch of needy kids asking all of our literary mommies and daddies to put our work up on their refrigerators. It’s a weird dynamic, but that’s what it is."

And now, after a year of being deeply involved in this industry, I can see that is both still true, and very wrong. Editors are often writers. Their magazines are often labors of love. We are siblings. But sometimes, it can still feel like a parent-child relationship.

A prime example of this is the constant remonstrations to, "read the magazine before you submit." And when writers ask why, everyone rolls their eyes like, "Well, duh. Because we said so." It's obvious to an editor. As obvious as, "Clean your room!" "Eat your vegetables!" and "Don't pick that!" So, why elaborate?

But the lit world is hugely competitive. People have little time. And nobody has stopped to talk much about why or how. What am I looking for? How many pieces should I read?

Whether right, wrong, obvious, silly, whatever, a lot of writers are not academics. I doubt I'm alone in saying that, when I started writing, I wouldn't have had a damn clue what I was looking for if I read a lit mag to see if my work would fit. I worked overnight shifts as a CNA and wrote exhausted little stories in my spare time. Nobody handed me Reading Like a Writer and said, "Here is how!" And still, I don't think I am an expert. So I asked Erik Harper Klass to help me out (Another person I met through Lit Mag News! FFS Becky, let me grow).  

Erik has read more literary magazines than anyone I know. His entire business model at Submitit is based on the idea that you can increase your chances of acceptance by reading and analyzing a magazine. He reads, and reads, and reads, and refines his system. But I wanted to know what he has found that could help any writer who wanted to put this theory into practice. What to look for, read for, analyze.

Here’s my thinking: if you consider the time spent submitting to 10 magazines that maybe fit compared with the time it would take to find 3 magazines that perfectly fit, does that increase your chances of success? Erik, I’m sure, would say, “Absolutely.”

So, here is what he has to say on the matter.

---

---

Before submitting to a journal, read at least two of its stories. If the stories seem wildly different, read a few more. Below are things to look for. You might note that I’m much more focused on elements of craft and style than plot or subject matter. (Needless to say, plot and subject are more important in themed journals.)

1. Start with the following two important elements of craft: descriptive details and figurative language. If the prose is overflowing with details and figurative language—literary devices that top-tier journals often emphasize—and if these are things you emphasize in your own work, target these journals.  

2. Another important element of craft has to do with sentence structure. Focus on the structural form of sentences and the variety of these forms. Sentence structure is one of the fingerprints of style. (As with all of these, if the topic is a concern of yours in your own writing, match with similar journals. If not, don’t.)

3. The last element of craft to focus on is what I’ll call poetics. Is there poetry (figuratively speaking) in the prose? Verbal playfulness? Alliteration and assonance? Rhyme? Neologism? Interesting vocabulary? In other words, is the sound of the prose significant? (Not surprisingly, journals that publish poetry often prefer poetic prose.)

4. Consider experimentation, especially of form. Journals that publish experimental work are pretty consistent in their sensibilities. (Note: Don’t trust a journal’s claim that it publishes “experimental fiction.” About half who say they do, do not. Sci-fi, fantasy, and just all-around weirdness are not experimental, per se. They’re speculative. So, once again, you must read these journals.)

5. If you write genre fiction (including speculative), submit to journals that publish genre fiction. (Did I need to write this one?)

6. Some journals love casual, even colloquial, language. Some—I’d say most of the top journals—don’t, especially when other elements of craft are missing. Submit accordingly.

7. Consider difficulty. In my nerdy numerical analysis of literary journals, “difficulty” is one of the lowest average scores. This makes me very sad. Clearly, we’re all getting dumber and the end is nigh. So if your work is difficult, submit with care.

8. Lightness of tone and humor are two elements that seem to frequently show up in some journals, and rarely in others.

9. On the other hand, some journals are drawn to dark themes. Checking for this darkness often means reading to the ends of stories (note that most of the topics above (conveniently) do not require reading entire sample stories).

10. Finally, look for international settings, historical settings, topicality, and underrepresented voices (typically in the story world). These things, I’ve found, are often less important than the topics above, which focus on language at the word and sentence level. But they’re each worth considering.

If you want to take this to the next level, create a spreadsheet and start rating journals in the categories above. For example, a journal like Conjunctions scores high (based on my readings) in categories like “difficult” and “experimental,” but relatively low in “topicality” and “humor.” A journal like Alaska Quarterly Review (I’m just picking a few journals at random) scores high in all of the craft categories, including “poetics,” but not high at all in “experimental”; AQR’s work also tends to be quite dark. Finally, one more example: The Malahat Review scores high in “underrepresented voices” and (perhaps not surprisingly) “international settings”; its scores are above average, but not off the charts, in most of the craft categories.

This is all a bit of a science, I think, because different categories should probably be weighted differently (that’s part of my secret sauce), but at least, if you have the wherewithal, you should give yourself a place to numerically keep track of these things.

To conclude, I do believe it’s important to read literary journals before you submit. Otherwise you’re just kind of spitting in the wind (and likely not in the right direction – gross). I hope the list above will help you get started. Good luck!