Flickr photo by Kerry Lannert

Unlike most fiction writing, a themed anthology is really a collaborative medium. It works best when all the gears mesh, when the reader is carried from one page to the next and one story to the next effortlessly and emotionally.

This requires, of course, that all the individual stories combine to make the book a compelling overall experience. But obviously, any individual writer can’t know what everyone else is writing!

That’s where we come in. With only two months remaining in the submission period for Volume 2, this is our director’s voice saying “Here is how you can play your part most effectively in this collaboration. Here is what we want and don’t want — what will work in the final book, and what won’t.”

Why are there Approaches to Avoid?

During the Volume 1 submission process, we watched a lot of folks barrel down certain trails with their stories — trails that very quickly became extremely well-worn. When lots of stories are overly similar, it presents a few problems:

• As editors, we become tired of seeing the same tropes over and over again. When writers unwittingly write something that we consider a cliché, it tends to dispose us against that story. Fresh ideas make stories more likely to be bought by us.

• Regardless of our personal feelings, we feel that the easy places to go with the concept don’t provide an interesting experience for a reader of the final book. If all the stories explore only the obvious things that everybody else would also think of, why bother? Fresh ideas are more compelling for the reader.

• Any writer who writes a story that covers ground extremely well-trod is spending time and energy that could instead be applied to a more compelling story. Fresh ideas are a better use of the writer’s effort.

Clearly, it’s in everyone’s best interest to try and avoid the well-worn trails! To nip these issues in the bud during the Volume 1 submission process, we created a section in our guidelines called Approaches to Avoid. We have basically the same list this time around, and below we’ve gone further into detail about the plot elements we’d recommend you steer clear of.

If you have written — or want to write — or are halfway done writing a story that tags each of these no-nos like you’re rounding the bases in the World Series, don’t take it personally! But do take it to heart. This is your second chance! We’ll gladly read another story by you that does something different. Please write that story for us!

One more thing: we understand why these ideas are so common. It’s not bad to write a story like this; our first book had several examples of each of the below. But now we want to go deeper. Your task, as a writer, is to prove to us that you can go deeper.

All About the Prediction (And Nothing Else)

We want to see stories in which the machine plays a part — in which characters or society are affected by its presence, and we get a window into an interesting world that’s different from our own. That can be done a million different ways, and not all of them have to be all about a single person getting, or not getting, or coming to terms with their prediction. We see a lot of stories that share the same basic DNA:

A person is tested for the very first time. What could the prediction mean? Drastic measures must be undertaken to avoid this fate! But, oh no — their prediction comes true in a strange way! DEAD. Fade to black.

OR

A person does not want to be tested. But then they are (for work reasons, or because of peer pressure, or accidentally) and now they are stuck with the knowledge. The End.

OR

A person gets their prediction. They will prove the machines wrong by dying in some other way instead! But the plan goes awry, and they die in the predicted way. Fade to black.

These stories can be fine, but we have by now read a lot of them. They are easy, and we understand why this is a common first stop for a writer. But now let’s move on! Let’s do something different.

The List of Changes

This is the story that just explains stuff. “There was a guy who got tested, and this happened to him. Then another guy got tested, and this happened. The government did this, and then the Church did this.” And on, and on.

Stories should have a central conflict, with a beginning, middle, and end. A list of ideas can be cool — but then find a voice on the ground, a personal perspective, a character who is affected by the changes. Show us that person’s experience, rather than just talking about the world in general.

The Tease

This is any story titled something like “GLOBAL ALIEN INVASION” that gets the reader excited when they read the table of contents, but then there is not remotely a global alien invasion in the actual story.

Philosophy 101

This story is just a construct for people to debate or explain The Nature of Fate. Sometimes the argument is about the existence or non-existence of God or free will. By the end of the story, maybe one character is convinced of another’s argument, but nothing has actually happened in a narrative sense. In stories, events happen. A person does something that changes things. Then, the changed situation affects them in a new way. Then they react to the new situation, etc.

The Resigned Misanthrope

A person gets a sad prediction, say SUICIDE or CANCER or ALONE, and then just resigns him/herself to that fate. These kinds of stories make readers sad. We’re not saying that every story has to be lighthearted, or even pleasant. But we do not want readers to not want to finish the book because it’s too depressing. So we are unlikely to publish stories that are too bleak.

The Golden Sunset

In this story, everyone comes to peace with their prediction, and sometimes there is what amounts to a suicide as the 90-year-old with “DROWNING” solemnly hugs his family and then steps off a pier. This is possible to handle well, but it’s tricky to make work if it’s the entire dramatic content of the story.

The Fly on the Wall

For some reason, there is a tendency with relationship-based stories to spend a lot of time just talking. Just talking about nothing, just being in the relationship. Maybe the couple has a meal; maybe they have a fight. Maybe the prediction causes a rift in the relationship.

All this is stuff that would probably happen for real in a world where the machine exists. But let’s say we have 30 windows into that world, and 30 windows only. We want to see as much of that world as possible in the short time we have — as much variety as we can cram in. Stories about more-or-less normal people doing nothing but more-or-less normal things have a hard time competing in that race.

The Letter of the Law

Someone realizes that if their prediction reads “POISON,” they cannot be killed by anything else ever. So they go around tempting fate and defying death in implausible ways. This is a hard story to do well, because by now we (the readers and the editors) know that: 1. Something non-predicted might not kill you, but it can certainly paralyze you for life until you do die in the predicted way. 2. It is easy to play with wordplay to find a way that something seemingly innocuous can kill you (say, a car hits you because the driver was reaching down to pick up a dropped Poison CD).

Another expression of this same idea is when everybody takes a prediction literally, often to prove the existence of something the machine prints the name of (aliens, God, Armageddon, etc). The same exceptions apply — because maybe someone will die of “GOD” when a religious fanatic kills them.

A more subtle version of this is when somebody receives what seems like an obvious prediction, and cannot take it any way but literally. You can tell interesting character stories about a person who feels they have to interpret the prediction this way, but in general, it’s always super dicey to make an easily-disproven semantic argument the main thrust of any plot.

The Rehash

Everybody who reads our book will have already read the explanation of the concept. They probably will have read the first book too. Any story that spends a ton of time re-explaining the concept, or which is overly similar to any of the stories in the first book, has a very low chance of being bought for the second book. (Read the first book if you’re unsure if you’re breaking new ground or not.)

The Super Unpleasant Experience

We know that in a book about death, there will be some unpleasantness. What we probably don’t need is a completely unbroken experience of repulsiveness, where characters ooze all sorts of fluids and there’s sexual violence and everybody hates their life and wants to die. It’s just not fun for anybody to read.

The Death-Happy World

This is the story where people drop dead like flies all the time, but everybody takes it in stride. It’s possible to tell a story about someone discovering that since the machine’s invention, people die more often and of stranger things — but absent that explanation, or a deliberately farcical situation, we expect a world that operates pretty much like our own. When people act cavalier about murder, for example, or when brains are getting splattered on the sidewalk every Tuesday morning at 8 o’clock, it jolts us out of the believability of the story.

Not About the Machine at All

This seems obvious to me, but I guess some people don’t read the submission guidelines well enough. (Those same people are unlikely to be reading this post, but I’ll mention it anyway.) We are not going to publish any story that doesn’t involve a machine that can predict your death. I don’t think that’s too much to ask?

Okay, Smarty, So What DO You Want?

Your mission, as a writer, is to come up with the best possible story that fits into our world. The only major difference between that world and this world is that people in that world can undergo a blood test to find out how they are going to die.

So the stories that we’re interested in are those that, in an interesting or entertaining way, somehow explore some aspect of how this machine would affect the world or people individually.

For instance, how would such a machine affect the way we understand science or religion? How would it change the way we make war, or investigate crimes, or distribute social services, or treat sick people? How would people feel when they learned their fate? How would they feel when they learned the fates of their loved ones? Would people face discrimination if others knew how they were going to die?

In general, what’s the kind of story that immediately pops into your mind? Now, can you go deeper?

Think of something that exists in today’s world, and ask yourself, “In the world in which the machine exists, how would that thing change?” Who would it affect? Who would it not? Would everybody react negatively, or would some react positively? Why would they?

What’s your personal immediate reaction to the machine? What kind of character would want to convince you of the opposite perspective? Could you create the world of that character? What factors have made them feel that way?

How would the initial invention of the machine affect society? What would a society that had been raised with the machine look like? What if it was taken away from them?

Would the machine be taken at face value? Would it be trusted, or not? Who would have an interest in either establishing or damaging the credibility of the machine’s results?

How would the machine affect businesses? What kinds of new products and services would be invented, and which would become obsolete? Who are the people who would be affected by those ramifications?

Would the machine itself be commercially successful? Who would want it to be available, and who would want to repress it? What would they do to achieve their goals?

What if the machine existed in a different time or place, or an unusual setting? What if its use was confined to only a certain geographical area, a certain class of people, or a certain time in history? Why would that be, and who would it affect?

How would the machine affect a non-Western society? A nontraditional family? Someone with wealth? Someone impoverished? Anyone who’s not a generic urban/suburban middle-class white person?

This is only a partial list, but I hope it helps clarify your thinking about the sorts of ways you can distinguish your own stories. I’ll write more later about craftsmanship, which I think is a subject all its own. In the meantime, the three of us continue to look forward to reading your work! It’s tremendously exciting for us every time a new submission shows up in the inbox, and we want to do all we can to help you make your story the best it can be.

Machine of Death Volume 2 submissions are now officially open! The full details of how to submit a story or illustration portfolio for possible publication in our next guaranteed-amazing anthology are right here. Please, spread the word!

We announced that there would be a follow-up volume at our talent show last week. Here’s the first piece of video from that — my incredibly successful performance of “Boom! And a Bear Comes Out” (the party hit of the summer).

Machine of Death Talent Show – Opening from Vimeo.

Then, at the very end of the show, after a packed lineup of amazing performances (which we’ll see more of soon), we made the formal announcement. Here’s the video of that — I apologize that the camera cuts off my head! I didn’t frame it very well, and for that I take full responsibility. To make the video more watchable, I’ve added some extra Malki-heads here in the blog to compensate.

Machine of Death Volume 2 Announcement on Vimeo.

Also, here are some submissions questions folks have asked, along with our answers! Feel free to leave more questions in the comments, or use our Ask Us Anything form.

Q: Will every submission (of reasonable length and proper SPG) be read?

A: Yes, of course! Though it should not be surprising that our patience is greater earlier in the reading period. So take the time you need, but it’s probably to your benefit to submit earlier than the very last second.

Q: By previously unpublished, do you mean ‘not appeared in print before’ or ‘not appeared anywhere before’? ’Cause I wrote a story almost immediately after I heard about the first book, and I put it on my livejournal. Do I have to write other stories, or take that one down, or nothing of that, to submit?

A: In this case, we mean ‘not appeared in a commercial publication before.’ We’ve heard from several folks who wrote their own stories on personal blogs right after reading the first book, and it’s perfectly fine to submit them! If it’s already been posted on your site, it’s okay to leave it up.

Q: Is there any problem with having multiple authors for one story?

A: Nope, no problem at all. One person should be chosen to be the point person for communication, though.

Q: I don’t know what quality/number of submissions were received the first time (and I do plan to submit a story myself), but I really hope that volume 2 will include a lot more diverse authors and characters than before — I was disappointed in the tiny handful of female main characters, for example. Definitely passing the word along to fellow writers!

A: To be honest, the balance of male/female characters wasn’t something we paid close attention to the first time around. We are definitely hoping for more diversity of all kinds in the next book, so more female points of view would be a great start! Thanks for sharing that challenge with our potential writers!

Q: Do you take submissions from people under 18?

A: We do, but it’s up to you to ensure that your parent or guardian is willing to sign a contract on your behalf in case your story is chosen. If so, great!

Q: I am a writer. My partner is an artist. Would you consider a submission that is, instead of a 7,500 word story, a 7-10 page (i’m just guessing here) comic?

A: We’re reluctant to ask anybody to do that much work just for a submission — but if you want to, you are welcome to! The final book will be 6 x 9″ black & white, so just keep that in mind when laying out the art.

Q: By “no simultaneous submissions,” do you mean not to submit another story in general until you email me back with a decision, or are you referring to emailing multiple stories in a single email? I am working on a second story, and was wondering if when I finish and get it refined enough, whether or not I can just send it out, or if only one un-judged story can be in your inbox at a time per author.

A: In publishing, “simultaneous submissions” refer to stories that are submitted to more than one publisher at the same time. We won’t be announcing anything about the Vol.2 stories until we’ve read everything and made our final decisions, so you can feel free to submit your stories whenever you like!

Now! What are you waiting for? Get writin’ and emailin’! We can’t wait to read your work. You have until July 15 to submit!

We’re doing it again! We’re putting out a second volume of Machine of Death, and if you’re a writer or an artist then this is your chance to be involved.

Skip to: How to submit a story • What we’re looking for • Approaches to avoid • How to submit an art portfolio

If you’re interested in submitting a story or an art portfolio, we strongly recommend you take a look at our first book to get an idea of what kind of stuff we’re looking for. The book is available in tons of places (if you live in the U.S. or Canada, check your local bookstore!) and there’s even a free PDF if you can’t get it any other place. So go ahead and give it a look! We’ll be here when you get back.

Open Submissions for Writers

Anybody can submit a story to Machine of Death, and we mean anybody. There are only two eligibility requirements: any story you submit must be written in English, and you (or a legal guardian, if you’re a minor) must be willing and able to sign a contract if the story is accepted. That’s it!

Our first book featured stories written by people who had never been published before, and people who make their living writing. There were stories by video game reviewers, lexicographers, comedians, poets, cartoonists, college students, and plenty of folks with totally square day jobs. Our writers were living in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia. (Africa and Antarctica — show us what you got!) We love this diversity; we think different viewpoints, different life experiences, and different writing styles make for a unique and awesome book. So yes, absolutely anybody can submit a story — including you!
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