If You Don't Write Fiction

by Charles Phelps Cushing

Every editor knows that nine out of ten of the unsolicited manuscripts which he will find piled upon his desk for reading to-morrow morning will prove to be wholly unfitted for the uses of his magazine. The man outside the sanctum fails utterly to understand the editor's dilemma.

This is the situation which has produced the "staff writer," and has brought down upon the editor the protests of his more discriminating readers against "standardized fiction" and against sundry uninspired articles produced to measure by faithful hacks. The editor defends his course in printing this sort of material upon the ground that a magazine made up wholly of unsolicited material would be a horrid mélange, far more distressing to the consumer than the present type of popular periodical which is so largely made to order. All editors read unsolicited material hopefully and eagerly. Many an editor gives this duty half of his working day and part of his evenings and Sundays. All of the reward of a discoverer is his if he can herald a new worth-while writer. Moreover, the interest of economy bids him be faithful in the task, for the novice does not demand the high rates of the renowned professional.

Yet even on the largest of our magazines, where the stream of contributions is enormous, the most diligent search is not fruitful of much material that is worth while. The big magazines have to order most of their material in advance, like so much sausage or silk; and much of the contents is planned for many months ahead. Scarcely any dependence can be placed upon the luck of what drifts into the office in the mails.

Inevitably, the magazines must have large recourse to "big names," not because of inbred snobbishness on the part of the editors but because the "big name," besides carrying advertising value, is more likely than a little one to stand for material with a "big" theme, handled by a writer of experience. A surer touch in selecting and handling topics of nation-wide appeal is what counts most heavily in favor of the writer with an established reputation. Often enough it is not his vastly superior craftsmanship. I know of several famous magazine writers who never in their lives have got their material into print in the form in which it originally was submitted. They are what the trade calls "go-getters." They deliver the "story" as best they can, and a more skillful stylist completes the job.

Success in marketing non-fiction to popular magazines appears to hinge largely upon the quality of the thinking the writer does before he sets pen to paper. A classic anecdote of New York's Fleet Street may illustrate the point:

The publisher of a national weekly was hiring a newspaper man as editor.

"Is this a writing job?" the applicant inquired.

"No!" growled the publisher, "a thinkin' job!"

The writer of non-fiction is in the same boat with the editor who buys his articles; he calls himself a writer, but primarily he is up against a thinking job. The actual writing of his material is secondary to good judgment in selecting what is known as a "compelling" theme. If he can produce a "real story" and get it onto paper in some sort of intelligent fashion, what remains to be done in the way of craftsmanship can be handled inside the magazine office by a "re-write man." Make sure, first of all, that what you have to say is something that ought to interest the large audience to which you address it.

Nobody with a grain of common sense would attempt to discuss "The Style of Walter Pater" to fifty thousand restless and croupy auditors in the vast San Diego stadium, but the average free lance sees nothing of equal absurdity about attempting to cram an essay on Pater down the throats of a miscellaneous crowd in a stadium which is from a hundred to two hundred times as large—the forum into which throng the thousands who read one of our large popular magazines.