Excerpt
Introduction
by Dave Farland
As you may know, the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests are the world's largest talent hunt for new authors and illustrators. We receive thousands of submissions of short stories and artwork each quarter from all over the globe, and our judges handpick the very best works which are collected and published in this volume. Every year the Contests continue to grow, and this year they were larger than ever.
You've seen competitions like this in other fields: The Voice for singers, or The World of Dance for dancers. Both of those shows lend themselves well to television. But this global talent hunt is showcased here in these pages. You can read our winning stories in the anthology or see the gorgeous art for each story on the art plates that follow this article.
As the first reader for the writers Contest, I get to look at thousands of stories each year in search of the best new writers of speculative fiction in the world, and I think we have a tremendous lineup this year.
A lot of authors are curious about the selection process, and I thought I would talk about it just a bit.
When I look for stories, I don't get to see the authors' names. I don't know where the story was sent from, and I have no idea of the gender or age or color of the writer. Frankly, I don't care. I get to judge the stories on quality alone.
So I search for science fiction, fantasy, and speculative horror stories that fit our guidelines. The short stories can't be too long—no more than about seventy pages—nor can they be too short. It would be difficult to write a story that was very short and still have it be powerful and convincingly brilliant, so most of our stories here fall between 5,000 and 17,000 words long.
As a writer, I've written a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so I don't care which genre of stories you enter, so long as they are speculative fiction. Nor do I care what sex or nationality the characters are.
I do, however, look for commercial fiction—stories that could be sold in an anthology that goes in some cases to elementary schools. For that reason, extreme violence, sexual content, and profanity can be problematic.
I base my judgment of the story on three elements.
First, I look for a fresh and original concept. I want to see ideas in the story that I haven't seen done a thousand times. I love seeing concepts that are new, or that are at least twisted into some new form that I haven't read before.
Second, I study the storytelling skill of the author. I'm looking for intriguing characters that I care about deeply. I ask myself, does the author plot well? Does he or she put in intriguing twists and turns? Are the scenes developed well, and does the climax and the ending of the story work?
Third, I'm looking for stories that show strong writing skills on a verbal level, where the prose is electric and stylistically elegant.
When I find a story that scores high in all three of these categories, I know that I have a potential winner.
But I won't know what my lineup is until I see all of the stories. It's a process of elimination. So I read through the stories and make multiple passes, searching for the best each quarter. Some stories get rejected pretty quickly. Either the idea has been overdone or the content of the story is offensive or perhaps stylistically the writer just doesn't intrigue me.
But if everything looks great, then I put the stories into my "hold" file, for deeper study. This often means that I have to read the whole story to see if the plot holds together and it reaches a great conclusion.
Normally, I will find three or four dozen stories that I like, and then I have to consider each one again, deciding which of those tales will be categorized with finalists, semi-finalists, silver honorable mentions, and honorable mentions.
A lot of authors ask, "What does it take to win an honorable mention?" Here is what it means: Very often I will see a story where the author shows some promise. Sometimes the author has a great style, or an excellent concept, or maybe crafts scenes well. In short, if you win an honorable mention, I see something that I like in your work, and I want you to keep writing. But I have to admit that some of the honorable mentions are exceptionally well done and are just a hair's breadth from being finalists.
A silver honorable mention is usually a very good story that is pretty much publishable, though it might be that the author needs to go through and do a final pass or a bit of rewriting.
With semi-finalist stories, I offer critiques so that the author can find out what needs to be done to be publishable.
And, of course, there are the finalists—the eight stories that go on to our blue-ribbon panel of judges each quarter, so that they can select our first, second, and third place winners.
As I'm judging the stories, our Illustrators of the Future Contest Coordinating Judge, Echo Chernik, looks at the art submissions each quarter and then sends her finalist selections on to the illustrator judges so that they can pick the three winners.
Those art Contest winners are each assigned a prize-winning story to illustrate, so that we get a great artist matched with each writing Contest winner. You can see these commissioned pieces in this book.
Ultimately, as I put the anthology together, I am hoping that I can find diverse types of stories. I want to have strong fantasy pieces, whether they be medieval, contemporary, magical realism, or so on. I also want strong science fiction, whether set on Earth, in space, or on other worlds. I want some creepy horror in the anthology, and I am always searching for top-notch humor.
This year, I'm happy to say that our authors and artists really delivered some exceptional work! So go ahead and dive in. Their artistry will take you to distant worlds in the far future or will explore original fantasy landscapes. You'll find authors who know how to tell a powerful story and write exquisitely. And hopefully we will help you discover one of your new favorite artists of all time!
