WHY THE EDITORS BUY

ADVENTURE

As Adventure readers include the cultured and critical as well as those of simple tastes, we seek the kind of workmanship that will stand the difficult test of meeting the approval of both groups. But in selecting our fiction it always seems to us that only that part of the story is effective that reaches the reader’s mind and the highest literary attainment is likely to go hand in hand with simplicity and clearness.

We regard it as vitally important that the illusion should be kept up. We want the reader to leave his own world and to live entirely in the world of the story. For this reason we dislike too pronounced mannerisms of style, too unusual names for characters, misstatements in local color, improbability in plot details. We also wish that the author would avoid the obtrusion of his own personality into the story, too much surface cleverness, the specific call upon the reader to philosophize (thus making him think, rather than keeping him in the receptive mood), a too cynical or sophisticated attitude on the author’s part. In general the two points—clearness and keeping the illusion—are probably those which we emphasize most particularly. We have in addition certain types of story that we try to avoid:—those that involve international or political questions; we dislike stories of opium smuggling; stories in which all of the main characters are “natives”; stories which feature intermarriage. Generally speaking, we do not care much for a villain in the rôle of central character; nor for much high society atmosphere; millionaire circles; prisons; slums; lost wills; psychopathic cases; gangsters. Of course exceptions to all of the above sometimes force themselves upon us by sheer merit.

We do not insist upon the accepted idea of the “happy ending” but we prefer stories that uplift rather than depress. We consider only the net effect of the story on the reader for the man or woman who is reading a magazine, is doing so, primarily with the idea of enjoying or relaxing, not to be made uncomfortable or unhappy. However, a story to sell to Adventure need not be artificially shaped. We are looking for stories that will please our readers and the range of selection is wide indeed.

Arthur S. Hoffman.

Adventure.

The Ridgeway Company, Publishers,

Spring and Macdougal Streets,

New York City.

THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE

In buying a story for The American Magazine I have four leading questions in mind:

Is it interesting?

Is it true?

Does it add to our store of knowledge of human nature?

Is there a lift to it?

Not all four requirements are always met in the stories I take but they are the main guide-posts. Let me take these questions in their order and be more detailed and explicit concerning each one.

If a story isn’t interesting, or has a very limited field of interest, no matter how well written it is, I cannot use it in The American Magazine. And the interest must not be sporadic, it must be cumulative in its effect. A story should grip the reader’s attention at the beginning and hold it steadily all the way through. Good progressive writing is far more effective than that which contains a number of thrills linked together by long, arid paragraphs.

In asking myself—is it true?—I do not intend to convey the meaning that I am looking for stories of real happenings. As a matter of fact, I am of the opinion that fiction doesn’t dare be as wild and exciting as real life. As Byron wisely said, “Truth is always strange—stranger than fiction.” Consequently I look for stories that ring true, the characters in which have their counterparts in everyday life or are so vividly created by the writer that they are accepted by the reader as natural, even if unusual, human beings. In the making of a plot I want sanity enthroned, the believable things of life depicted; not cock and bull fakes, which although they may create momentary excitement will cause the reader to lay the story down and say, “It’s all right, but it’s highly colored and far-fetched.” I would infinitely rather have less excitement, fewer dramatic pyrotechnics and have the reader slap his knee and exclaim, “Can you beat that for the real thing!” I want him to corroborate and testify to the convincingness and obvious truth of the story out of his own experiences and observations or through the instinctive acceptance of it by his imagination.

I hope, however, from the foregoing words writers will not run away with the idea that so long as the characters are lifelike a story will get across. The ideal story for this magazine is one that has a convincing plot as well as convincing characters. But I would rather sacrifice plot to characterization any day of the week. If a story comes into the office slender of plot but brimful of human wisdom and accurate character work, I buy it. As a matter of fact, some of the most successful stories I have published have been of this type. I do not, however, buy a story that is strong on plot if the characters are overdrawn or unnatural and it has an atmosphere of unreality.

This brings me to my third question: “Does it add to our store of knowledge of human nature?” If the people in a story are natural, if they meet problems with sense of humor, if their actions are interestingly sane and normal, and the story presents news of human nature wisely and accurately, the reader can scarcely avoid learning something to his advantage. His sympathy and imagination are going to be aroused and quickened only by stories that are probable in both character and plot, because they alone will give him a true slant on human nature and add to his understanding of it.

In commenting on the last question, I feel I cannot too strongly emphasize the need of the quality which I define as “lift.” A story may be surpassingly true, the characterization good, the plot well thought out, but if it does not stir the emotion, if it doesn’t make the reader feel better, I am not keen for it. I want cheerful stories that leave a sense of satisfaction in their wake—stories that are full of warmth, charm, friendliness, and right living. Highly colored, far-fetched or gloomy fiction may interest for a moment, but it will not yield genuine and lasting pleasure. I avoid unpleasantly tragic and morbid stories, no matter how well written, because they usually leave a distinct effect of depression. The reader has to recover from them; climb painfully back to a normal belief in human kind. I must have stories that touch the heart as well as appeal to the intellect. They must satisfy the reader and leave him with the feeling of time well spent.

In dividing my answer to your question into definite heads I see that these overlap each other and that consequently my explanations do the same in a measure. But at least they are not contradictory, and I hope the cumulative effect makes my practice clear. You realize much must be left out of an attempt to set down briefly an editorial policy relating to so wide and varied a literary field as that of fiction.

John M. Siddall.

The American Magazine.

The Crowell Publishing Co.,

381 Fourth Avenue,

New York City.

THE AMERICAN BOY

The American Boy aims to interest and help boys between the ages of twelve and twenty, recognizing the fact that to be helpful to the boy it is necessary first to secure his interest and command his attention. Stories and articles should be of such literary quality as will inculcate the best literary standards in the boy reader, as well as interest him and have an effective message. The atmosphere must be wholesome, alive, vigorous, and inspiring, and stories should be a force for good, not repelling the boy reader by too obvious moralizing, but implying the moral by the characters and the action. The magazine endeavors to put before its boys, through the medium of stories, boy heroes who can set them fine examples; in business stories, it endeavors to inculcate the principles of good business; in athletic stories, it sets forth high athletic ideals.

The American Boy is always particularly careful in the presentation of facts. Stories and articles should always teach truth. Fiction stories, of course, need not be true stories—stories of actual facts—but they should give accurate pictures of the phases of life they are representing; they should not misrepresent the facts of geography, natural science, history, business, or human relationships. Writers who get into the American Boy are those who have a story to tell—a point to make—that is worth while; a story of daring which provides a hero (always demanded by boys); a story of adventure that satisfies the boy’s natural longing to roam; a story of an exciting game which, enthralling the boy, makes clear to him what is right and what is wrong; a story of service that will aid the boy to adjust himself to social life; a story of business that will give the boy a true impression of the workaday world he is to enter. Material with a strong feminine element is not used in the American Boy; nor is “little kid” material. The average age of American Boy readers is sixteen; and boys of that age are interested in the doings, not of boys younger than themselves, but of boys their own age, or older, and of men.

Something to be borne in mind by those who essay to write for a boys’ magazine is the distinct difference between stories of boys and stories for boys. The story of boys is particularly popular just now in adult magazines. It tells of a boy from the adult viewpoint. To the adult, what the boy does is often distinctly humorous. To the boy it is serious business, and he would be properly offended should one poke fun at him in his own magazine. The story for boys must be handled from the boy viewpoint, not from the adult viewpoint. This does not mean that the story should be “written down”—quite the reverse. Once having grasped the boy viewpoint and secured the proper angle, the writer should use the same style and diction as in handling the story of similar sort for the ordinary adult publication.

The story for boys need not necessarily be a story of boys. True, a boy is more likely to be interested in a story with a boy hero than in a story of an adult hero. The magazine wishes to place before its readers fictional characters whom the boy may emulate. It is such characters which arouse his enthusiasm.

Walter P. McGuire.

The American Boy.

Detroit, Michigan.

ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY

Why are manuscripts rejected? “Why is a mouse when it spins?” Perhaps the reply to the ancient wheeze, “Because the higher the fewer,” is as satisfactory an answer to the first question as any. There are so many reasons, in fact; so many varied and diverse considerations that enter into the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript that a direct and concise answer is impossible. Wholly aside from the merit of the story there is the question of the editorial, business, political, and religious policy of the magazine; the quantity and character of the material on hand; the length of the story which exigencies of make-up may make impossible for that particular magazine, at that particular time, and a dozen other considerations, varying with each publication and of which the author is quite unconscious.

Generally speaking however 90 per cent of manuscripts are rejected because they fail to grip the interest in the first few pages. It might be remembered that the editor in his official capacity is not an analyst or critic. He is first and foremost a buyer; and moreover a buyer of comparatively small quantities picked from an enormous mass of material in a limited time. It would be a total impossibility for him to read and weigh in its entirety every manuscript that comes before him. Also it is unnecessary. One doesn’t have to eat the whole of the egg to discover it is passé. He is a buyer and he knows, or is supposed to, the tastes and desires of his principal—that is to say the particular fraction of the general public to which his particular periodical caters—he knows what they want and it is from that point of view that he reads. It is his job and his joy to supply his readers not only with what they want but with the best of what they want, and, if authors would only believe it, there is more rejoicing in the editorial heaven over one new writer of promise than over the ninety and nine who have already arrived.

An editor is not an incompetent ass because he rejects for his adventure magazine a story that later is snapped up by the Century or Atlantic, although authors are apt to chortle gleefully over such a contretemps; nor is there any truth in the oft repeated rumors—propagated by the failures—of a cabal to suppress budding genius, and a clique of editors to guard the Olympian heights from all but those bearing the stamp of approval of their masters. As a matter of fact if an author after real and conscientious effort fails to sell it is either because his stuff does not measure up to standard or because he is persistently peddling to the wrong market. You can’t sell the finest line of fancy flower pots to a fish dealer.

It is this latter point that should be stressed especially. Far too many really able authors fail to understand the value of a thorough knowledge of the market. Most of them haven’t even a general knowledge of it; do not think of it at all. To them a magazine is a magazine. Their attitude is “You publish stories, Why not mine?” and they send a beautifully written and wholly plotless character sketch to a publication using only rapid fire adventure stuff and a charming little New England pastoral to one of the magazines devoted wholly to sex topics, and then wonder why they come back.

Perhaps speaking broadly it is this ignorance of market that accounts for at least a large percentage of the rejections that afflict authors (aside from the vast army of amateurs, novices and hopeless incompetents) whose work is really good.

Elliot Balestier.

Argosy-Allstory Weekly.

The Frank A. Munsey Co.,

280 Broadway,

New York City.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

It really would not serve your purpose if I were to write you about my principles of accepting stories. They are too capricious, and would only tend to lower the feelings of respect which you are inculcating in your readers.

Quite seriously, my selection is made according to the whim of one individual.

Ellery Sedgwick.

The Atlantic Monthly.

8 Arlington Street,

Boston, Mass.

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

When you ask me what kind of stories we want for The Century, I am puzzled about answering, for the truth is we like almost all kinds, provided they are done with distinction. I think I may speak for the editorial staff when I say that distinction is the mark at which we are aiming.

The Century is a family magazine, edited for the mature members of the family. Every one who reads the magazine knows that we welcome new writers. Indeed, it is a day of rejoicing when the mail yields a story of real promise by an unknown writer.

We do not want war stories, for the public is tired of war-fiction; nor “machine-made” stories, the cheap clap-trap that has nothing to recommend it but facility.

For myself, I have a confession to make. It is this: “I do not know much about art, but I know what I like!” I am aware that the knowing will look askance upon this avowal of the Philistine, but it is a good creed and wears well. And I believe that the editor who pleases himself in the selection of manuscripts stands a better chance of pleasing others than he who guesses at the tastes of a fickle general public whom he fancies as remote from himself in their likings as a race of Martians.

Simplicity and Sincerity are the true gods in art as in life; of that I am sure.

You ask me to mention several short stories published in The Century within four or five years that we like particularly and to tell you why. I think first of “The Friends,” by Stacy Aumonier, printed in October, 1915. This story is an unplotted, realistic study of two drunkards, friends whose only bond was drink. It is perhaps the most powerful prohibition tract ever published and not a word of prohibition in it! An analysis of Aumonier’s work—any bit of it—will reveal a sureness of touch which is a refreshment to the soul. Some of his stories are finer than others, of course, but like Phyllis Bottome and Anne Douglas Sedgwick, there is always distinction about his work.

Some of the critics were good enough to call “The Friends” the best story published in any magazine that year. To me, besides my admiration for it as an artistic creation, it stands for two things: one, an example of an interesting phenomenon,—Mr. Aumonier was a man in middle life, I am told, when he began writing, and evidently found a beautiful and finished technique in his pocket!—the other, a warning never to judge a story by what it is not. It would be fatally easy to write “no plot” across such a manuscript and lose it forever.

“A Source of Irritation,” also by Stacy Aumonier, published in The Century for January, 1918, is a delicious bit of humor to my way of thinking. It is pleasant to know that Aumonier’s many-sided mind has humor and gaiety, too, in its composition.

“The Wedding Jest” and “Porcelain Cups” by James Branch Cabell, printed in September, 1919, and November, 1919 seem to me very lovely. In the stodge of every-day literary expression, such delicacy and grace are rare indeed. These stories are remarkable for that almost obsolete quality, “style.”

“The Fat of the Land,” by Anzia Yeszierska, a study of the Russian Jew in America and the reaction of the older generation to the loud prosperities of the younger, is excellent work, full of the intangible quality of race and keen in its psychology. It was published in The Century for August, 1919.

One wishes to mention, too, the black magic of “The Black Key,” by Joseph Hergesheimer, the rich embroideries of H. G. Dwight and Achmed Abdullah, the bold portraiture of Harvey O’Higgins, the subtly fine work of Marjory Morten. Also that exquisite study of innocence, “Red and White,” by Roland Pertwee; and Myla Jo Closser’s dog-story, “At the Gate.”

It is impossible for any magazine to sustain regularly the level of its best fiction, for the simple reason that such stories do not happen frequently—would there were more of them! Those I have mentioned are among the best, in my judgment, that The Century has published for several years, and it is towards work of such character that we are aiming.

I take it, dear Miss Wick, that you have asked me to characterize some of our most cherished stories in order to show by concrete examples the kind of fiction The Century wants; and I believe that you are right in thinking this plan the best way of saying it.

Sincerely yours,

Anne Stoddard.

The Century Magazine.

353 Fourth Avenue,

New York City.

COLLIER’S, THE NATIONAL WEEKLY

When a writer wants to please an editor, the surest way is to forget all about him. The editor is not reading the story for his own entertainment. He reads with only one idea in mind: “Will this story appeal to all kinds of people? Is it a good story?”

An editor of a magazine of general circulation seldom seeks one particular kind of story. He wants the best stories written. The quickest way to his favor is to write them.

There are no set rules for accomplishing this. Only a few landmarks are on the road. Know your subject. Have something to tell. Be sure that something happens in the story.

If nothing happens, if there is no action, you have perhaps written a very good essay or a very convincing argument—but you will not be able to sell it as a short story.

Remember that you are writing a short story, not a condensed novel. A short story, once started, has only one object—to end as quickly as possible.

There are only two people who can infallibly detect padding in a story. One is yourself. The other is the reader.

It pays, always, to be clean. A questionable story will attract many people—but it will repel more.

Few writers succeed in being convincing when they wander into fields they don’t know. Every man collects a mass of information concerning the road over which he has traveled, and the people he met on the way. Use this information. It will furnish all the short stories you can ever write.

Just as people strive for “happy endings” in their own affairs, so they like them in stories which they read for entertainment.

The enduring themes for short stories are the enduring themes in life itself; the old copybook virtues, like self-sacrifice, courage, generosity, resourcefulness and faith.

The writer succeeds in proportion as he makes his reader eager for another story by him. Editors have ways to judge this reaction. Forget the editor, and what you think he wants. Write directly to the man or woman who is going to buy the magazine and read your story.

Harford Powell, Jr.

Collier’s, The National Weekly.

416 West 13th Street,

New York City.

AINSLEE’S MAGAZINE

Ainslee’s publishes yearly a total of approximately a hundred and twenty short stories (from 5,000 to 8,000 words in length), twelve novelettes (from 20,000 to 30,000) and, in monthly installments, about four serials (from 50,000 to 70,000). And, to cull this relatively small amount of fiction, innumerable manuscripts are painstakingly gone over. At a rough estimate, erring on the side of too few rather than too many, ten thousand manuscripts are submitted yearly from various sources for consideration by Ainslee’s Magazine. Of these, eight thousand, I should say, are absolutely unsuited to publication anywhere, while the remaining number are perhaps creditable enough, but have been sent by their authors or the authors’ agents to the wrong magazine—which brings me to the registering of a simple, but curiously disregarded, bit of advice to those whose goal is writing for magazine publication. Study the magazine to which you contemplate submitting material. After all, each issue of a magazine, whatsoever its character, represents the nearest approach to their ideal for the publication, which the editors have been able, at the time to achieve, and should therefore constitute a fairly good working pattern for those whose stuff is to be “aimed at” that magazine. A rejection slip from a given publication is just as apt to mean that the story, albeit distinctive, does not fit the special needs of the magazine as to indicate total unfittedness for publication anywhere.

Ainslee’s Magazine aims to be a high-class, clean, distinctive fiction magazine. It has no room for, nor time for, the frankly salacious, or “sexy.” It is looking always for the proverbial good story, well told. That story may move around any clean, healthy, up-to-date theme, but it should have in it, preferably, woman and love interest. The people of the story should be human, not wooden. They should talk like you and I talk, not like Maria Edgeworth’s people “conversed.” And the tale itself must be colorful. If a story is to have any holding quality whatever, it must transfer its readers to the scene of the action. And to do this, the thing must have in it real atmosphere. Plot basis, then, along with good characterization, atmosphere, and love and woman interest are essentials for the typical Ainslee’s story.

We like to think that stories in Ainslee’s Magazine, though varied in character, are uniformly good. We hesitate, therefore, to talk of “better and best.” But, by way of illustration of the points we have sought to make, we call attention to Marie Van Vorst’s “The Week-End Guest” in the December issue of Ainslee’s—a good story on all counts, and well suited to Ainslee’s.

Helen L. Lieder.

Ainslee’s Magazine.

Street & Smith Corporation,

Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street,

New York City.

COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE

The first essential for editing a popular magazine for Americans is that the editor be a sane, normal, every-day American. No mystical genius is required.

He is merchandising a commodity to the American public. If his taste is the taste of the average American, and he puts within the covers of a magazine stories which he has enjoyed reading, other Americans of similar taste in reading will buy his magazine in quantities sufficient to make it a success.

At least, that is the theory I have followed. I know quite well that I am no genius, yet I have seen magazines grow under my direction. And I have no rule for buying a story except that it must be sufficiently interesting and sufficiently well told to interest me.

All sorts of stories interest me. Some time ago, for the satisfaction of a friend of mine, I named the ten short stories which I had liked best of all those I had published. It was interesting even to me to see how they varied. The ten stories were: Back Pay by Fannie Hurst; Hassayampa Jim by Peter B. Kyne; Kazan by James Oliver Curwood; The Story I Can’t Write by Rupert Hughes; The Last Adventure by Frank R. Adams; Boston Blackie’s Mary by Jack Boyle; The Juggler by Arthur Springer; The Snide by Harris Merton Lyon; The Ghost’s Story by Basil King; The Dummy Chucker by Arthur Somers Roche. That’s about as catholic a list as I can imagine.

“Back Pay,” “The Snide” and “The Last Adventure” might be classified as “sex” stories, although I dislike that term. “The Story I Can’t Write” was a trick story; “Boston Blackie’s Mary” was a prison story; “Hassayampa Jim” was a Western story; “The Dummy Chucker” was an O’Henry-ish bit of writing; “Kazan” was a dog story; “The Ghost’s Story” was a story of the supernatural (it was the story from which Mr. King later built his photoplay “Earthbound”); “The Juggler” was a character study with an extraordinary twist in the ending.

No two of these stories in any way resembled each other. I suppose that’s because I believe in variety, not because of any rule that variety makes a good magazine, but because my taste in reading varies. I am likely this evening to read Cellini for relaxation; tomorrow evening to read Mark Twain, the following evening to read De Maupassant. I like each one of them while I am reading him, but I don’t want too much of any one of them.

That probably is true of the average reader of American magazines. He has his favorite authors but he doesn’t want too much of any of them. I think Peter B. Kyne, James Oliver Curwood, Fannie Hurst, Ben Ames Williams, and Frank R. Adams are doing the best work of any magazine writers of to-day, but I feel quite sure that a magazine filled with their work and only their work, month after month, would become a bore.

Each one of these writers is a friend of mine; yet, I am quite sure, neither they nor I would enjoy talking together every evening for a year. I find that I am the average American in virtually everything; that I like what he likes without stopping to find out why; and I believe, too, that there is no reading too good for the American public—that there is nothing real and worth while that is “over his head.”

Ray Long.

Cosmopolitan.

Good Housekeeping.

Harper’s Bazar.

Hearst’s Magazine.

119 West 40th Street,

New York City.

THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

The Country Gentleman addresses a class of readers whose interests are keyed to country life and the industry of agriculture. This field is big enough to include more than half of the nation’s population. Our editorial problem is not one of tying in narrowly to scientific discussions of only the growing phases of farming but ranges throughout the innumerable business and social problems of the American country-side. It is our aim to discuss everything that should help to broaden the farmer’s vision of his own problems and also of all interrelated problems that help to make him a vital factor as a citizen of the United States.

In presenting fiction, we aim, so far as possible, to confine the themes to country life and the open spaces of the world outdoors. We eschew jazzily up-to-date urbanized fiction, sex novels, the eternal triangle and the purely psychologic story. Naturally we will always give a preference to fiction related to farming by first-class writers who are thoroughly familiar with farming.

It is our feeling that the American farmer is interested in everything that has any contact with country life. Hunting and fishing and outdoor adventure are his life-long sports. He has a deep and genuine affection for animals that serve him. He manifests a very live interest in stories that deal with his marketing problems, and his ever-pressing problem of financing his business. He has an alert interest in his schools, his newspapers, in local, state and national government. He enjoys character studies and has a vastly sharper sense of humor than he is commonly credited with. Likewise he is a shrewd critic and quickly resents the sort of attempted slurs that are so frequently made upon rural folk by those who are wholly ignorant of farming.

We feel justified in being guided by several successful experiments we have made with our fiction. We persuaded Mr. Freeman Tilden, who is a farmer himself and thoroughly familiar with all phases of agriculture, to create a character in Old Man Crabtree who might be defined as “a Wallingford baiter.” Mr. Crabtree is a shrewd retired country banker. His experience had taught him all the tricks of “high finance” and he was always on the lookout for the specialists in shoddy and sham when they came to town. In the climax the skinners were invariably neatly flayed by Old Man Crabtree. These stories of Mr. Tilden were real and drew in a continuous flow of favorable comment.

Zane Grey has always been able to strike a responsive chord with the lovers of outdoor life, of whom the American farmer is undoubtedly in the majority. They like his descriptions of the frontier as it was in the 70’s and they seem to be keen for his vigorous characters, notwithstanding how strenuous.

We like good dog stories of the sort Albert Payson Terhune has been writing for us. And we like small town stories when they are as good as those Tom P. Morgan is writing; but then, Tom Morgan lived these stories for fifty years before he began to write them.

The great majority of our contributors have specialized in some agricultural pursuit. Many of them are living on their farms and conducting them as successful business enterprises. We number among our most valued contributors the heads of leading agricultural colleges, federal and state government experts, graduates of agricultural colleges who are now devoting all their time to writing, county agricultural agents, engineers who are specializing in agricultural mechanics and so on. Among them are such well-known men as Eugene Davenport, Dean of the Illinois College of Agriculture, Herbert Quick, until recently a member of the Federal Farm Loan Board, Frank A. Waugh, Professor of Horticulture, Massachusetts College of Agriculture, E. V. Wilcox and J. Sidney Cates, for many years employed as farm management experts by the United States Department of Agriculture, and P. S. Lovejoy, Professor of Forestry, University of Michigan.

Such writers as I have described above supply the bulk of the contents of The Country Gentleman and consequently to preserve a balanced ration, as a livestock feeder would say, we try our utmost to obtain the sort of fiction that will round out the ensemble.

Barton W. Currie.

The Country Gentleman.

Curtis Publishing Co.,

Independence Square,

Philadelphia, Pa.

THE DELINEATOR

We Delineator editors think that we know a good story when we see it; vide the magazine. Yet no issue of the magazine, and perhaps no six issues, contain all the types of good stories that we like.

The average intelligent American woman or girl, in the home or in business, is the person we have chiefly in mind when choosing stories. The above-the-average woman, of course, is not forgotten.

Nor do we exclude any special type of story. We prefer stories that will interest everyone—men, women and high-brows—but we want stories for women first. Other things being equal, the hero should be a woman. We think we have no prejudices and we certainly have no rules.

James E. Tower.

The Delineator.

The Butterick Publishing Co.,

Spring and Macdougal Streets,

New York City.

THE DESIGNER

Both Arthur Tomalin, the editor, and Emily R. Burt, his assistant, felt hesitant to express their ideas on what constituted a good and therefore a desirable story for The Designer. They both made much of the fact that a story to appeal to women readers should mirror life as it is, and as it daily affects the great body of both men and women who are seeking to weather its problems and complexities. Sympathy and understanding are perhaps the two qualities upon which they put greatest stress.

The Designer.

The Butterick Publishing Co.

12 Vandam Street,

New York City.

THE DIAL

I do not believe it is possible to formulate any laws in accordance with which one can judge the merit of fiction any more than it is possible to formulate such laws for the judgment of any other æsthetic object. In deciding whether or not we accept for publication in The Dial a story submitted to us we are guided almost wholly by the intensity of the impression made upon us by that story. Of course the means by which the author attains this intensity are very varied and of course each manner of attack presupposes its own technique. However, it would be inappropriate for me in this letter to endeavour to sketch out my personal opinion of what would be the technique of any particular type of story.

But of course all stories, whatever their character, depend in part for their intensity upon the delicacy of the writer’s perception of verbal values as well as upon the delicacy of his perception of character and environment. And of course prose rhythms are quite as important as those in verse.

Perhaps I might add that my personal feeling is that dialogue is much over-done in American fiction of to-day and that the best writers depend upon it merely to relieve pure narrative.

I regard fiction as quite as pure an art as poetry or as music and therefore give no preference to one story because it delineates real life rather than Ultima Thule.

I am sorry I am not able to go into the subject more thoroughly and more satisfactorily.

Scofield Thayer.

The Dial.

152 West 13th Street,

New York City.

DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE

Detective Story Magazine is a weekly publication. It is therefore a large market, and is constantly in need of short stories of 2,500 to 6,000 or 7,000 words, novelettes of 12,000 or 15,000, and novels of 25,000 words. Serials should run from 36,000 to 100,000 words in length, and break up approximately in about 12,000 word installments.

It must not be deduced that only detective stories are needed for this publication. When one speaks of a detective story we think of a narrative which begins with the murder of somebody, the police being called in, and then the efforts of the police or the efforts of some wise investigator of crime to solve the mystery of who killed the deceased. Of course, this story with variations—if it is well done—is always acceptable. While we are dealing with it we might say that, in general, such stories are divided into two types, one in which the method is the predominating theme, and the other in which the motive is played up prominently. The first type of story suggests the puzzle. There is always a type of mind which revels in puzzles. A person mysteriously disappears from a room, and after wading through 60,000 or 70,000 words, mostly questions and answers, we learn that the method of removing the body was through, we will say, the fireplace, which was on hinges. Of course, this is the easiest type of detective story to write, and, as is quite obvious, it is written backwards. We mean by that, an author first evolves an ingenious method of killing some one, or of removing some one, and then builds about this a story, leaving the disclosure of the method of killing or removal to the end of the story. We think a far better way to do this story, and a way that interests more people, is to have the motive the predominating feature. The method by which, we will say, a young woman disappears, either through her own efforts or through the efforts of others, is interesting enough in its way, but that which interests the public generally, and her friends in particular, is not how she disappeared, so much as why she disappeared.

Now to take up the other types of stories that Detective Story Magazine is interested in: We are glad to consider any story into which crime enters. When one stops to consider a moment, one must realize how important a feature crime is in the life of every person. In using the word crime, we mean deception in any form. All persons constantly resort to some types of deception. Thus the crime story, so called, lends itself to an infinite variety of situations from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For instance, in almost every family there is the urge for money, in many for the bare necessities of life, while in others simply for more luxury. Thus hundreds of thousands of persons are being sorely tempted every day to deceive. The stories of their temptations cannot help, if well told, but be interesting. Above all things in a detective story or a crime story, the narrative must get on, move along. While character work is much desired, it is demanded that this type of story have suspense and be written in such a way that one is urged on from page to page to see what is going to happen next. While this can be accomplished without dramatic situations and unexpected happenings occurring every so often, it is usually found necessary to resort to these methods for keeping up interest. Authors must not fall into the common mistake, however, of feeling that when we say a story should get on we simply mean that there should be action, physical movement in it. Running up and down stairs alone does not make for excitement, but very often does make for confusion. Also, saying that people are excited or nervous or in fear does not interest the reader very much. The author must show by the actions of his characters that they are excited or frightened. A crime story, then, is one which gets on, has plenty of strong situations, and in which the motive, conflict, is the dominating feature. It is, perhaps, needless to add that in a crime story the author must be fair to his readers—that is, he must not explain the mystery by introducing a reason for the commission of the crime of which the reader has not been made aware.

F. E. Blackwell.

Detective Story Magazine.

Street and Smith,

79 Seventh Avenue,

New York City.

EVERYBODY’S MAGAZINE

That word “Everybody’s” is the watchword of Everybody’s fiction. And what it means is simply that in choosing stories the editors of Everybody’s bear in mind an audience of “regular folks,” with a large variety of tastes and with tastes for different things at different times. We are not thinking specifically of business men. Nor specifically of professional men. Nor of women merely as club members. Nor of women merely as housewives. We are thinking of the splendid average of folks, with normal human interests and normal human emotions. And we take stories with a view to offering in each number a well-balanced ration of these interests and emotions, stories of love, adventure, business, sentiment, children, humor, sport; of city and country; of rich and poor.

The only types of stories that are barred are those that lack wide contact with the average human experience—that depict fantastic or morbid or unreal motives or isolated emotional reactions. This does not necessarily bar an occasional use of morbid experience, soundly based—such as “The Wrists on the Door,” by Horace Fish, a horror story, strange and fantastic in atmosphere, with a big truth at the bottom of it.

It is our guess that the largest group of people reads for sheer entertainment, and with two motives—unconscious, perhaps; either to gain a heightened sense of their own situations, their own personalities through reading stories of their own sort of life; or to be transported by reading as by magic from their own environment into another world. And we have a notion that, as the worry and perplexity of life increase, the eagerness to gain escape through reading increases too. That is why Everybody’s has stressed stories of adventurous action—such as Charles Saxby’s “In Camera,” Clarence B. Kelland’s “Cheese in the Trap,” David Churchill’s “Igor’s Trail,” Edison Marshall’s “The Elephant Remembers.” That is the reason for an intensification of the search for humor—for Dorothy De Jagers’ cheerful New York stories and for Samuel Hopkins Adams’ “Cab Sir?” reprinted in this volume as a story on which Everybody’s readers expressed themselves with cordial approval.

At the same time—paradoxical as it may seem—Everybody’s has not barred war stories. We do not believe it is possible to ask real writers to shut the doors on the most tremendous experience of their lives—and still do their best work. We hold a high standard for war stories, but the story itself is the test and such a piece of work as James Hopper’s “The Scoop of Charles Hamilton Potts” goes over as easily as a love idyll.

As for length, there is no rigid requirement. Short stories are preferred, in order to make possible the maximum of variety in each number, but ten thousand words won’t kill a story of our sort that is worth—ten thousand words.

Cleanness is a requisite—cleanness without priggishness or sentimental dishonesty; open-eyed wholesomeness that strengthens one’s faith in human nature.

Virginia Roderick.

Everybody’s Magazine.

Spring and Macdougal Streets,

New York City.

FARM AND FIRESIDE

We want good fiction for Farm and Fireside, and we will pay good money for it. The only kind we don’t want is the extreme stuff—sexy-pink-tea and blood-and-thunder. We don’t demand a farm setting. Aside from that, we have no specifications. Just one request:

If you are not interested in selling your best stories to a publication that is made for men and women who farm, please do not waste your postage and our time.

As to length—3,000 to 5,000 words for short stories, and up to 10,000 for two-part, and 15,000 for three-part serials.

We pay on acceptance, price to fit quality; no limit.

Address Editor, Farm and Fireside, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.

George Martin.

Farm and Fireside.

The Crowell Publishing Co.,

381 Fourth Avenue,

New York City.

THE FORUM

The Forum is not publishing fiction. My own personal view, however, is that a serious magazine should print some fiction, and in the course of time The Forum will.

If I should be the one selecting the fiction by that time, I would look for intelligence and imagination.

George Henry Payne.

The Forum.

118 East 28th Street,

New York City.

HARPER’S MAGAZINE

Harper’s Magazine is constantly seeking the work of new writers, and it probably publishes more stories by hitherto unknown writers than any other fiction periodical of reputable standing.

Harper’s Magazine has no editorial prejudices, and does not ask its contributors to make their work conform to any fixed or arbitrary specifications. There is no such thing as a “Harper type” of story. Any story is acceptable which in dignity of conception and quality of workmanship has real value, provided it is also interesting.

Stories of a youthful turn, with a glimmer of humor, are particularly desired. Three thousand to seven thousand words is the preferred length.

Lee Foster Hartman.

Harper’s Magazine.

Franklin Square,

New York City.

JUDGE

Judge’s need is for honest-to-goodness humor, the short story (under a thousand words) that forces a healthy chuckle, the poem that tickles the fancy and stirs the risibles (whatever they are) and the good old-fashioned joke with a modern setting and a sophisticated idea. Clean fun, smart fun, spontaneous fun expressed in any literary form will be acceptable and paid for generously.

Judge’s circulation is booming; that is happening only because this magazine is human, modern, entertaining, American and very often genuinely humorous.

Perriton Maxwell.

Judge.

225 Fifth Avenue,

New York City.

LESLIE’S

At present a great number of Americans, both men and women, are seriously interested in business conditions and its problems. For this reason when we decided to limit our publishing to one type of story—we publish but one story a week, and that of limited length—we decided for the time being to publish only business stories. We prefer those of constructive turn or of such dramatic intensity that interest is compelled. We do not want love stories in a business setting. We do occasionally accept the humorous story, as often a writer in this guise can present a more fundamental truth or give a better picture of actual conditions than could be projected in any other way.

In asking for business stories we do not feel that we are limiting the writer. American business is so broad in scope, so diversified in character, so tied up with the every day life of all of us, it has so many facets of interest, so many angles of approach that any one who writes can surely produce a business story if he or she will. A good business story is bound to be an interesting story, and interest to my mind is after all the aim and end of all fiction writing.

Perriton Maxwell.

Leslie’s.

225 Fifth Avenue,

New York City.

LIFE

Life’s principal need is humor. After humor comes sentiment, and after sentiment, satire. Life will consider original jokes, short (very short) dialogues, epigrams, epigrammatical comments, light verse and manuscripts up to 500 words on subjects of topical or news interest containing these three elements singly or in combination. Before submitting, it is best to make a comprehensive study of what is printed in the magazine and to model the contribution on similar lines. By reason of the seeming simplicity of its contents, Life is constantly receiving contributions which make no pretense at literary preparation and are therefore unavailable.

Henry William Hanemann.

Life.

17 West 31st Street,

New York City.

LIVE STORIES

Live Stories is not afraid of ideas. Outside of humor, it insists upon something more than just a good story. Humor, of course, is more than humor only when handled by a master. There are not many masters of humor in America; in fact, neither American writers nor readers have a real sense of humor. They have, mostly, a keen sense of the ridiculous and a really brilliant appreciation of wit. Doubtless the difficulty every editor experiences in getting good humorous stories is thus explained. It also accounts for Live Stories’ belief that it is useless to look for an idea in humorous contributions. “There ain’t no such animal” in America, and if there were it is doubtful if the public would appreciate it.

In the list of short stories memorable, one finds that each is based on an idea; that is, each is more than a story. “The Fall of The House of Usher,” “They,” “The Man Without a Country,” “Lear of the Steppes,” “A Bit of String,” are striking examples that come readily to mind. The list could be extended to embrace all of the great short stories. O. Henry, you will notice, is not represented here. Indeed, the bulk of O. Henry’s stories are without ideas. Have you never noticed that it is difficult to remember an O. Henry story? The explanation lies in the fact that they are just stories—delightful, captivating, what you will—but they are not intense, compelling an undivided concentration.

Live Stories has, deliberately, gone in for ideas. It was this policy that led it to publish Thomas Grant Springer’s, “The Blood of the Dragon,” a story that won honorable mention by the O. Henry Memorial Committee of the Society of Arts and Sciences. “The Blood of the Dragon” was rejected by a large number of New York editors who, doubtless, were entirely right in their position. Yet this study of the Chinese character will be remembered long after the stories those editors published are forgotten.

To entertain and more, that is the policy of Live Stories. It does not want trick stories; it doesn’t want a fabricated and artificial drama; it does not want action simply for action; it does not want weeping authors. It does want the tenseness incident to an inevitable situation. It wants drama, happy or tragic, based upon a fundamental idea. In short, Live Stories wants ideas, clearly, forcibly, dramatically evolved.

Grove Wilson.

Live Stories.

The New Fiction Publishing Company,

35-37 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York City.

McCALL’S MAGAZINE

McCall’s finds it hard to specify its standards of the perfect McCall story, because we believe a magazine should cultivate a diversity of story types. A publication with a circulation of over one million and a half, read by people scattered all over the United States, should carefully select from a wide field.

In a short story, we demand first, perhaps that it be a story; that it tell itself convincingly, and interestingly, with its due measure of plot, characterization and charm of style. Honesty and truthfulness in theme and treatment are essential. Though we are opposed to the sentimental and saccharine tale which has been the accepted convention for the woman’s magazine, we believe in romance and adventure and glamour. Life is colored with those three things, and a story is either dull or fantastic unless it bear relation to life.

Although McCall’s is a woman’s magazine, we believe there is no sex in reading, that a woman is not necessarily interested in the old conventionally accepted story in which gilded heroes and heroines pranced through a hectic and golden existence, in which the heroine’s name was always Gwen or Violet, in which the desired male prize was always married off to the poor but noble girl at the consummating altar. Nor need all women’s magazine stories have to do with the abuse of the sacrificial mother or the efforts of an orphan stenographer alone in a great city. Love and money and fame may be fundamental pillars of plots, as of life; but to-day’s woman, even as to-day’s flapper, demands more than the sentimental narration of their intertwinings.

As for the young author, we welcome him—or her. The famous and the arrived have their place, but the world is ever to the oncoming. If there is a germ of a story in any neophyte’s contribution, McCall’s is only too glad to throw all its energies into framing for it a more effective setting.

Bessie Beatty.

McCall’s Magazine.

236-250 West Thirty-seventh Street,

New York City.

McCLURE’S MAGAZINE

It is difficult to frame rigidly the deciding factors in selecting fiction for a magazine that is planned for the general reading public. Any reply that I may make must be human rather than formal.

You see, the work of buying for and making a magazine is a firing line job. Tactics and strategy go into preparation for the battle, but in the strife one does many things because they have to be done.

Reduced to practicality, I buy what I want when I get it.

You will say, to tell you what I want, since I know it. But if I did, you would be misled, for all wants are not constant.

Fundamentals, of course, are, but they are rather the fundamentals of art—an idea to convey, a picture to paint, in short, creation. A creative thought first, then an object modeled with the tools of craftsmanship. Finally, a composition (in the painting rather than the writing sense) that, when looked at from points in a sense afar, tells that the creator wants to tell.

I am trying here, perhaps indistinctly, to state that said creator has to build for perspective. He has to make things, actions and persons seem real. For example, the actor is made up for the appearance he will make to you sitting on the other side of the footlights. He does not strive, in the laying on of paint, for the effect on you standing at his side, but on you more remote. Contrariwise, if he did not make up, he would seem to you in that audience as unreal, and unnatural.

There is a good lesson in this for the young writer, if I can get it over.

It is the distinction between crude photographic reality and the art of reality; it is the proof of the uselessness of writing from life alone, without the craft of employing materials so that the reader (the audience of the theatre) sees the picture not only of the actuality of life, but of the life the author meant that he should see.

Not that the author departs from the rôle of observer and picture maker. The artist is indeed the mirror of nature. That is his function—high and chosen.

He has that which is not given to us of colder blood and thought. His temperature is higher, he sees often what we do not see. Creation is fever, let us say, but after creation comes craft, and that is as cold and critical and laborious as creation is hot.

The actor must be master of himself, tiniest muscle of the finger and act of the mind, to portray the frenzy of emotion. The writer must have the craft to weave texture in sentence and word, to get clarity and simplicity, to lay tone on tone of character lineament, all the while keeping plot a-moving and reader interest unfaltering. No work can be harder than this—even where talent has been granted, and craftsmanship acquired.

Personally, I do not believe that the untalented (persons without creative imagination) should be encouraged to study the mechanics of fiction technique. The waste is in energy which might win success in some other field.

Markets may prove to be lower than the ideals of writers, but that should be the fault of the markets and not of the writers. Nor will this course of faithfulness to ideals fail in recompense in one form or another, for this is the law:

The best art has the best chance of popularity and the only chance of long life.

Recognition often is delayed, but won in time, generally in due time.

Because, for one thing, it drives through discouragement. If the talent is not hardy enough to do so, the chances are that it is not sufficiently virile to deserve the crown.

In general, money gainful success comes to the talented American writer too soon if not too easily. If one works harder than ever after success has come, no harm is done. And if one stops working, success passes. So the situation, after all, contains its own remedy.

You ask me finally, if I have any suggestion as to what writers should send to a particular magazine. I have noticed for years, that writers study a magazine with the aim of sending it material of the order of which it appears to publish most. For convenience, we will call this a magazine major. I am quite sure the selling method is wrong, and that magazines should be studied for their minors instead. It stands to reason that editors will have more difficulty in supplying the minor balances. Mind, I do not say the lesser, for I am referring to quantity, not quality.

You see, a general magazine circulation may be likened to a circle, divided into segments. No one unit of contents will have appeal for the whole circle. That would be universality, practically impossible to achieve. But it can be aimed at. Certain basic factors are known. One kind of material can be depended upon for a larger segment than another. The smaller segments, however, are no less essential, and more effort will have to be used to fill them than will be used to supply the largest segment. Circulation comes from adding interest to interest—up to the point of harmony. Beyond, of course, lies confusion, but the problem of how far to go and when to stop is an editor’s, not a writer’s. It is sufficient for a writer to be able to know how to take market advantage of an editor’s need of maximum circulation pull from the smaller as well as the larger segments of the circle.

Edgar Sisson.

McClure’s Magazine.

25 West Forty-fourth Street,

New York City.

METROPOLITAN

In choosing fiction for a popular magazine one must be sure first of all that the story will appeal to a large audience of readers. It must have the essential quality of holding the attention. A story which the Editor has to make an effort to read is not very likely to receive much attention from any one else. On the other hand, if a story, through qualities of form, construction, style and the needed element of suspense, literally carries one along from page to page, it has at least the first essential quality of a popular magazine story.

Every Editor, of course, will tell you this. We shall not differ a great deal, either, I imagine, in what we say afterward. Every Editor likes dramatic suspense, every Editor likes naturalness and humor in the characters when he can get it.

But when you apply yourself to the practical task of selecting manuscripts for your own publication you do consciously or unconsciously evolve a set of rules by which the final verdict of yes or no is governed. We buy eight or ten short stories a month for the Metropolitan in addition to an occasional serial. Naturally these stories are not to be all of one kind. I should say, however, that there is a sort of category into which we prefer our stories to fall. It is perhaps somewhat the same with magazine editors as with other persons such as painters and musicians who manifest their tastes more directly—we go in for very different degrees of intensity in the portrayal of a life, and so on. I can think of Editors who pin their faith, because they like it, to clever, thin, mauvish specimens of the art of fiction; of others who love the middle register of common life; and still others who go in for the heights and depths of emotion, the passionate crises which after all do enter into the lives of practically all people. There are many ways of interesting the public; our way in the Metropolitan lies a good deal in the field last mentioned. We believe in dynamic fiction, we like it so much that we would rather have a crudely done but expressive story from a new hand than a manufactured, tepid yarn from the best of practiced writers. Manufactured stuff in general we abhor, although we do not fail to see that many of our contemporaries do quite well with it. But stop, there is a kind of manufactured story which we welcome; detective stories, night life adventures, the thriller which produces a murder of the unpopular character and skilful escape of the hero,—we like these in spite of the fact that the whole thing is a frame. Of this class of stories it is to be said that they resemble a play in which you take for granted a good deal of unreality without which the thing could not take place at all, and lend yourself to the breathless character of the performance.

We care nothing about happy or unhappy endings. Of course when the only thing a writer really has to offer you as a reward for reading a lot of pages is a peculiarly lugubrious finish we decline to be enthusiastic. But there are many stories which are far better for having sad endings. And if we think so we are confident that the public, which is also human, thinks so too. But there is one thing we have strong convictions about; namely, length. Ten years ago five thousand words was a good length for a short story. Since that time, unhappily, writers have become so proficient on the typewriter, that they pour out eight, ten and twelve thousand words without being able to stop. In most cases this is utterly unnecessary and spoils the performance for any purpose except filling space, or encouraging a siesta on the part of the reader. Conditions of magazine publication have encouraged authors to write at length instead of compressing and intensifying their work. We do not hold with this school. For the Metropolitan we want short stories—the shorter the better, provided everything is put in that should be. No master of the short story has made a practice of writing the long, ungainly things which are commonly produced nowadays. Poe didn’t. Maupassant didn’t. O. Henry and Kipling didn’t. It is not to the point to argue that all of these men wrote at times lengthy tales; when they did there was some excuse for it; but their finest work was always short. When we begin to receive in our office a flood of manuscripts ranging from two to five thousand words, then we shall think a new inspiration has come to the great benefit of the whole writing profession.

In this connection note the work of Booth Tarkington. The best short stories we have ever published came from his pen and they filled no more than from fifteen to twenty pages of typewritten paper. There is a man who builds up a short story piece by piece, every word, every sentence counts. And this reminds us to say that the William Sylvanus Baxter stories may not be supposed to fall quite in the circle which we drew a little way above to mark our special Metropolitan field. But they do. Intense reality may quite as readily, though by no means so easily, appear in the form of humor as along lines of emotional stress. Moreover, the great humanity and genius of Booth Tarkington place him beyond the need of classification of any sort. He is a great writer in any style he chooses, and for example of another style of his writing we refer to “The Magnificent Ambersons,” that pointed and tragic novel of real life which appeared as a serial in the Metropolitan.

If we looked for eight or ten Booth Tarkington’s a month we would very quickly enter a padded cell, although we may confide that the Circulation Manager will have no objections if we describe each one of our writers in terms just as superlative. Let us hasten to say, then, without raking up a list of famous names, as we might do, that we are extremely enthusiastic about many, many authors who do not perhaps sell us more than one story apiece a year. There are exceptions like Elinor Mordaunt, whose remarkable tale-telling talent, whose romantic flair for the picturesque and dramatic, whose love of the salt sea and strange adventures and adventurers, have been deeply appreciated in the Metropolitan many times in the last few years. But as a rule we do not harry and pursue one author. We want the fresh and new, the deeply felt, the sincere, the genuine effort, wherever we can find it. We look for it continually.

Sonya Levien.

Metropolitan.

432 Fourth Avenue,

New York City.

THE MODERN PRISCILLA

The Modern Priscilla finds its readers among the highly intelligent home-abiding women of the country, and in the choice of suitable fiction for them, stories of dramatic interest having to do with the affairs of real people are what is most desired.

We do not want sapless stories, but those that are vital, colorful, interesting, and concerned with the actual problems of to-day.

We plan always to publish two stories a month, not over four thousand words in length.

The Editors.

Modern Priscilla.

85 Broad Street,

Boston, Mass.

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

At the time of the compilation of this book there had been a recent change in editorial management. The editors in charge said that they were constantly on the look out for good short stories, the kind that were being published in The Red Book, The Saturday Evening Post and The Cosmopolitan. As a matter of fact the stories that are usually published in Munsey’s Magazine are generally shorter; another point of differentiation that might be brought out is that they are lighter in manner of treatment if not in actual theme. This though is only a generalization and many exceptions can immediately be pointed out for they have in the past published stories by men like Cobb and Abdullah that the other editors had feared as too extreme.

Munsey’s Magazine.

The Frank A. Munsey Co.,

280 Broadway,

New York City.

MYSTERY MAGAZINE

The first requirement for stories in Mystery Magazine, is interest. Literary style is of no consequence if the stories arouse and hold our readers’ interest from beginning to end. The types required, are detective stories and mystery stories. In the former we must have plots containing absorbing mysteries, with few principal characters, a pretty love theme, plenty relevant dialogue, lively action, and local color pertaining to the police department. A slight touch of comedy is permissible, but dramatic climaxes are the rule. Long drawn descriptions tire. Large numbers of characters confuse, and too much dialogue is irksome. These romances must be distinctly, as their name implies, detective stories, and they must cater to girls as well as to men.

The mystery stories must be based upon popular occult theories, with lucid and logical explanations of the phenomena, or they can be mere mysteries of a material nature. In short we only purchase good wholesome stories, with gripping interest, tense situations and powerful, mystifying plots, having a simple explanation. Sex problems and stories of loose morals are not wanted.

Lu Senarens.

Mystery Magazine.

Frank Tousey, Publisher,

168 West 23rd Street,

New York City.

THE OUTLOOK

The Outlook has only a limited space available for the publication of fiction, and therefore there are certain arbitrary bounds which we must set, bounds which have little or no relation to literary merit. We do not use continued stories and we practically never accept single stories of more than five thousand words in length, and seldom stories of more than three or four thousand words.

Within this rather narrow limit we are anxious to secure stories which show that the author has a background or experience and a knowledge of human nature. Fiction which indicates the fact that its author has a sense of form, as well as an idea to express, is doubly welcome. Stories which are sentimental do not appeal to us, but we are also convinced that stories with real strength can be written which are not raw, crude, or offensive to good taste. We do not think that the adjective “strong” and the adjective “unpleasant” are necessarily synonymous.

After all, the editorial selection of fiction depends so much upon the personal equation and upon the immediate needs of a journal that it is difficult to give any more definite guide than that we have presented here to those who desire to submit fiction to The Outlook.

The Editors of The Outlook.

The Outlook Company.

381 Fourth Avenue,

New York City.

THE PARISIENNE

The following is in response to your question about what kind of fiction we want for The Parisienne and Saucy Stories:

The Parisienne and Saucy Stories differ only very slightly in type of fiction. Both want stories with very rapid action and strong, novel plots. The Parisienne wants romance, gaiety, adventure, mystery, in the foreign and society setting. Saucy Stories wants melodrama, adventure, mystery, romance, preferably in an American setting. Both prefer the sex element, though this is not absolutely essential. We want, however, to emphasize especially that neither magazine wants stories that are unpleasantly risqué. Occult stories are acceptable but nothing horrible.

But, as a matter of fact, it is easier to say what we do not want than what we do want—here are some of the constant rejections:

First and last, nothing that is risqué.

Fillers in which the mysterious he, she or it turns out to be a cat, dog or baby.

Stories in which the husband, wife or fiancé fails to recognize wife, husband or fiancée masquerading in any guise.

Stories in which the mysterious man whom husband suspects turns out to be the brother, or the unknown lady whom wife suspects turns out to be the sister.

Stories in which the denouement explains that the entire plot is merely a rehearsal for the movies or a play.

Stories in which the supposed farmer’s daughter turns out to be a famous movie star.

Stories in which the starving heroine is persuaded to play the part of an imaginary wife in order that the rich relative will leave his money to the nephew whom he wanted to see marry before passing on.

Stories in which a will demands that two people who hate each other marry and they do fall in love with one another.

Stories in which all complications are explained by the unknown existence of a twin.

War stories.

Suicide stories.

We realize that this list is quite incomplete, but we hope that it will act as a suggestion to would-be Parisienne and Saucy Stories contributors that they consider very carefully before submitting a story, whether the plot answer our first requisite—novelty.

And we want to make an earnest plea that authors will not only read this short article carefully, but will look over both magazines and get some idea of the type of fiction required before sending in stories that are totally unsuited to either publication.

The Editors.

The Parisienne.

Saucy Stories.

25 West Forty-fifth Street,

New York City.

THE PEOPLE’S HOME JOURNAL

The conscientious writer of fiction, the man who takes his work seriously, is sure to get his innings. And at no time in the history of magazines has this been so true as now. War conditions were responsible for a four-years’ opportunity seized by too many mediocre writers to get their wares before the reading public. The result has been a healthy, vigorous reaction against the sort of stuff Editors were perhaps obliged to accept when so many able-bodied, sober-minded drivers of the quill were across the sea fighting for battle honors instead of bay wreaths.

Because for thirty-six years The People’s Home Journal has been called “the magazine for every member of the family,” it has offered a more inclusive market for fiction than magazines making their principal appeal to women. Big stories of the out of doors have helped to swell the Journal’s circulation. On the other hand, the kind of story that surprises the laugh before the tear is over is popular with our readers.

Certainly these readers will not stand either for the dry-as-dust, categorical type of story, nor for the rapid-fire type, the kind manufactured, not created. The Journal’s rising newsstand sales respond barometer-wise to a Journal serial built around love, mystery or high adventure, but crowded with real things happening and truthful in its transcript of healthy emotions. Studies in morbid pathology come to every Editor’s desk, usually from the amateur, but the sane reactions which follow situations dealing with real people are what most readers understand and like. The villain who might be your next-door neighbor, the hero who could have jostled elbows with you in the subway, the heroine who is the not impossible she of every man’s dreams are sure to score.

There will always be a demand for the psychological story. And the story dealing with mental processes can be made as tense and gripping as the so-called action story if it has actual story interest. But too many psychological stories start out to prove something of no importance.

In the last analysis, “the story’s the thing,” whether it deals with battle, murder or sudden death, or with the complexities of mind induced by a given situation.

If I were asked to explain briefly what I considered the chief characteristic of The People’s Home Journal story, I would say that it is dramatic because it interprets life in a way to stir the emotions, and I would add that it usually contains a message, always clear to the reader, a message which lingers in his memory when perhaps the plot, the characters and the story’s charm have faded.

Mary Botsford Charlton.

The People’s Home Journal.

76-88 Lafayette Street,

New York City.

PEOPLE’S MAGAZINE

It is one of the easiest things in the world to make a statement of the negative side of a proposition and it is correspondingly difficult to give an adequate and intelligent idea of all that is involved in the positive.

So, it is invariably my impulse to tell what I don’t want when I am asked to explain the needs of the magazine of which I happen to be the editor. At the present time I am in editorial charge of the People’s Magazine, and its special aversions can be briefly and, I hope, comprehensively stated.

We will return, as promptly as courtesy permits, all manuscripts purporting to be stories—the magazine uses only fiction—but which are, in fact, nothing more than catalogues or monologues. “Catalogues” include fiction in which descriptive writing prevails, with a minimum amount of action and characterization. This applies also to so-called “machine-made” stories, narratives merely of events, bare recitals of what happened to so-and-so under such-and-such conditions. The objection to such stories is that, as a rule they are anemic in substance, superficial in conception and perfunctory in execution. They are lacking in real vital, dramatic interest. Monologues, in the derivative sense in which I have used the term, obviously means a “story within a story,” or one told by one of the characters.

Specifically, the People’s Magazine will not publish a sex story, or even what is, generically and innocuously, a love story, though as to the latter, one which is otherwise acceptable will not be rejected because it embodies a love interest which is a necessary episode in the plot; it does not care for pseudo-scientific stories, or business stories constructed according to the formulas in common use; it objects to prize-fight or other sport stories, but only those of the conventional type which, after glancing at the opening, the average reader can finish for himself with little deviation from the text; it objects to society stories, high, middle-class or low, and it turns its back on horrors, sordidness and abnormality. And finally it cannot use mere character or psychological studies, which are not stories at all.

This is a very brief statement, limited by space requirements, of what the People’s Magazine does not want.

What it does want will take a little longer to tell. The prevailing note of the magazine is open air adventure, with a distinctly American flavor; with this qualification we impose no limitations as to place. Adventure stories with a setting in the United States or Canada may be put in a period within the limits of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. There is a mine of authentic material of highly dramatic character, much of which, to be sure, has been used in fiction, but by no means all. We do not object to the use in fictional forms of historical events and characters by name; in fact we rather welcome it.

Every one, of course, is familiar with the “western story.” Thanks to “The Virginian” it has been popularized by the magazines and vulgarized by the movies; we object, not to the “western story,” but to its formula. If anybody has anything fresh and original to contribute to it we will thank God and reward him according to his deserts and our ability. Open air adventure, American, but in any part of the world is, as I have said, the prevailing note, and we want to strike that note with a complete novel of from 30,000 to 50,000 words in every number.

In general, and excluding the type of stories I have already referred to as those that we don’t want, we will accept any short or continued story that is a really good one; this covers the mystery story.

Now a story, in order to deserve the name, must involve a conflict or duel, either of human beings, or—proceeding of course from human beings—ideas or emotions. Without the conflict there is no drama, and without the drama there is no story. And out of the conflict and complication should come a denouement which satisfies the reader’s sense of justice or his sense of the appropriateness of things in general. Such a denouement may incur the reproach of being a “happy ending,” but the author should rid himself of that bugaboo and not be afraid of utilizing it, if necessary. It’s only a cant phrase and does not mean a thing to the masses who read him and make his reputation for him. Personally, I believe that most unhappy endings are deliberately planned and thrown in as a sop to the Cerberus of “realism.”

A real story ought to have an initial impulse that carries it along, without faltering, from beginning to end, that is to say, movement. A great many stories sag at some point, or collapse in the middle or go to pieces at the end. Such catastrophes can be averted.

It sometimes seems to me that very, very few authors realize how much honest, sincere characterization helps a story—how much, indeed, it may help to make a genuine story out of a very slender plot. The human element is what gives a story such vitality as it has and time and effort devoted to it is well spent, and usually profitably spent.

This leads me to say that the human touch is the thing we look for in every manuscript that comes in to People’s editorial office; somewhere in each story we hope to find an unexpected display, by one or more of the characters, of courage, or generosity, or renunciation, or self-sacrifice, or some other human trait that brings to the reader a conviction that, after all, human nature is better than experience has taught him to believe. This is the sort of thing that people never weary of. Common-place characters, common-place experiences, common-place emotions take on dramatic color by these unlooked-for demonstrations.

Finally, we want our stories told in plain, direct, straightforward style. We object to any peculiarity of phraseology which tends to divert the attention of the reader from the substance of the story to the manner of the writer. But individuality of style, which is quite another thing, and honest slang, judiciously used, are welcome.

I want to conclude with a word on some of the delusions, as they seem to me, about what is called “the art of the short story,” or of “short story writing.” I am almost tempted to say that there is no such art, but I have no desire to dogmatize because, in dealing in generalities, it is always necessary to add qualifications. I should say that story-telling is instinctive; that every human being has the story-telling sense. There’s nothing particularly original in that idea, but it seems to me that its significance has been curiously neglected with the result that so-called instruction in the forms of an alleged art has taken the place of the cultivation of an inherent impulse. The faculty of observation is the one which, first of all, makes any story possible. In O. Henry it was so highly developed that, at a glance, he saw a significance in things that simply did not exist for most people, even for trained writers. To this he added facility of expression and a sense of humor, which is fundamentally, a sense of proportion; and he paid little attention to forms. I speak of him because he illustrates so distinctly the points I have in mind and also because I was intimately acquainted with him and with his methods.

Of course “we can’t all be O. Henrys”—he was born with the story-telling sense fully developed—but we can attain a certain degree of approximation to his achievements by diligent cultivation of the three essentials that he had without cultivation, namely: observation, expression, proportion. And this is a lesson that must be self-taught—nobody can teach it, for the simple reason that one person cannot do another’s hard work.

A. L. Sessions.

People’s Popular Monthly.

79 Seventh Avenue,

New York City.

THE PEOPLE’S POPULAR MONTHLY

When we buy a short story there are three very different things which we desire that story to do:

First: It must tell a story compellingly—so compellingly that when one is through reading, there is a very definite emotional response which stays with the reader. If one is conscious of the means technically employed to place the story before the reader, that story has failed as such.

If, however, the narrative takes you out of yourself and gives you a definite feeling of sympathy with that of the people in the story—it is in this point successful.

Second: Having gripped the attention and taken a hold upon the feeling of the reader, it must, in order to qualify for a place in our pages, fill a very real need in the lives of our particular type of readers.

There are many splendid stories which we are forced to return, due to the fact that they do not fill this particular need.

We have among our readers a preponderance of people who have been limited in their mental experiences and are consequently limited in their intellectual grasp. They are, however, from the rural and small town districts in that opulent region extending from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, and are, by virtue of this fact, a peculiarly keen and progressive people. Their judgment is sincere and their viewpoint is human. Their lives are in many cases a bit monotonous and often isolated; in consequence of which a story should have a real narrative interest, and, in all cases, strong entertainment value, with a wholesome dose of brightness and good cheer. We return all morbidly tragic stories.

Third: When we have found a story which stirs the feeling and fills the need of our particular readers, it is then time, and not until then, to look to the technic of the story. That is something which can be regulated to a large extent by editing in those cases where errors are not too flagrant.

There is, of course, a certain readability of expression, absolutely imperative, but that is something incorporate with the first point. They are practically inseparable.

Therefore, granted that the style was such as to make the emotional feeling paramount to the word consciousness of the reader—then any errors which may have crept in are not too flagrant to be corrected.

Of course, we do not find, in as many cases as we wish, stories which meet all three requirements, and oftentimes our pages have in them things which fall short of these three points.

Elizabeth B. Canaday.

The People’s Popular Monthly.

Des Moines, Iowa.

PHOTOPLAY

I do not believe that any editor, whether of a fiction magazine or any periodical, can judge material successfully on any other than a very personal basis of likes and dislikes. In other words, I buy a story if I like it, and believe this to be the only method. Someone has to pass on it finally, and a publication must stand or fall on his judgment.

James R. Quirk.

Photoplay.

25 West Forty-fifth Street,

New York City.

PICTORIAL REVIEW

You ask me a pretty difficult question—I have no absolute rule for saying yes or no to a short story and, as far as that goes, I don’t think any other editor has. There are such things in magazine offices as editorial policies, but if they are good editorial policies they must be more or less elastic, subject to change without notice and not very well defined anyway. Folks come in and ask me what kind of stories Pictorial Review likes. The only answer I can give is “good stories.” If they ask why I buy this story and not that, I would say because I think it more interesting than the other, but to go further and to ask me to explain precisely why it is the more interesting is too much for me. There may be editors who can sit down and in a magic manner tell just exactly why they bought this story and refused that, but they must be smarter editors than I am. I really cannot do it with sincerity or conviction and do not try.

Do I buy stories because I like them myself or because I think our readers will like them? That’s another sticker. I generally buy stories because I like them myself, because if I disregarded my own taste and tried to pick out a story that our readers would like and which I didn’t like, I would be hopelessly at sea all the time.

I would really feel ashamed of myself were I to publish a story which I personally thought to be piffle just because I thought it would “sell the magazine.”

Moreover, I don’t think any editor knows just what his readers like or might like except in a general way. We have no exact way of telling and my experience has been to follow my own judgment and, when the Circulation Manager comes along and tells me the circulation of the magazine is increasing by leaps and bounds, I am then licensed to feel that my judgment must have been good. Because I am just a plain, ordinary type of person and there must be hundreds of thousands and millions of people in the country like me; and what interests me will quite generally interest them, at least I have found it so. Don’t take from this that the Circulation Manager comes along every month and tells me the circulation of the magazine is increasing by leaps and bounds, but sometimes he does, and then I know a certain story or serial in the magazine got across in a big way; but what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that I can go out off-hand and get another story just like it and ring the bell again. We don’t buy stories that way—writers do not write them that way—I wish they did because the editor’s job would be easy.

Now here’s another peculiar thing, Pictorial Review is a woman’s magazine, and yet I am a man and there is nothing particularly feminine about me in my tastes or activities. We do not pick out stories because we think they are good woman’s magazine stories; in fact, we have no earthly use for the typical woman’s magazine story, that sweet and pretty, mush and milk affair that used to grace the pages of our contemporaries. We found out years ago that women were interested in good, short stories that picture the vital, human things in life and that there was no real reason for their being obliged to go to the men’s magazines to read them. So we began to publish real stories in Pictorial Review.

I realize that all this is more or less indefinite and possibly of little help to the aspiring author, but if said aspiring author will bear in mind that the only way to sell short stories is to make them interesting and, if they are made sufficiently interesting, they will sell themselves—that’s all there is to it.

Arthur T. Vance.

Pictorial Review.

The Pictorial Review Company,

214-226 West 39th Street,

New York City.

POPULAR MAGAZINE

In selecting stories I bear in mind the fact that the buying of fiction is a business and not a literary occupation. This means that I have always in mind the ultimate consumer—the fellow who knows nothing of literature as such but who likes good stories.

What are these?

First and foremost, a story about a new phase of life and industry. The American reader is by no means a prude or intolerant, but he likes sane, almost practical stuff. He likes romance, but it must be normal and wholesome. He does not like the erotic or morbid. Without being in the least “literary,” his taste is surprisingly good. As a rule, he does not want tragedies, but will accept them if exceedingly well done. A good mystery story is sure-fire.

Current American fiction is one of the livest things in the world to-day. Keen intelligence goes into the making of it. It plays a bigger part in the formation of public opinion than most people know. It is a genuinely civilizing influence. As a rule, a man’s taste in fiction improves and his standards in stories become higher the more he reads. The very cheapest of the magazines are turning the foreign populations of the second generation in our cities into Americans at a surprising rate. The author of the day is writing for a big public, not a small, select one.

Here are a few things for the author to bear in mind. If a writer can describe human beings so well that they seem real; if he sometimes laughs at, sometimes is irritated with, sometimes loves these people who come to life in the pages of the story, he has his first great point. If he can write conversation such as you actually hear he has his second. If he can write good, straightforward English, at once clear, forcible, and vivid, he has the third. But all of these are of no use unless the author has the sense of construction that makes him write real stories,—that is, plots that unfold and develop to a logical conclusion, instead of mere sketches or anecdotes. The one satisfies; the other does not.

Successful authors all work hard, and the bigger an author is the more you can criticise his work to his face. He appreciates that it is a technical calling and he wants and appreciates intelligent criticism.

Are there many good writers who can’t get a hearing? Practically none. Names count in a fashion. The author who has a public gets stronger with his readers the more he writes. If a man has a literary gift and the energy and persistency back of it he will find fiction a good business.

But just because story-writing has taken on some of the aspects of commercialism it has by no means lost the romance, the humor, the humanity, that it had in the old Grub Street days. After all, we are dealing with the stuff that dreams are made of, the inspiration of ambition, the literature of hope and effort and human aspiration, the running chronicle of our ways, our manners, our civilization. Most of it will fade and pass with the fading years; some of it will live.

Charles Agnew MacLean.

Popular Magazine.

Street and Smith Corporation,

Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street,

New York City.