One of the many amazing needle-felted monsters made by Moxie.

There are now only 11 days left until Volume 2 submissions close. That’s not much time, right? If you’re still dithering or haven’t started working on something, are you already plumb out of luck?

Maybe not. If you haven’t submitted yet, or even started on a submission — I still think it’s possible to put together a shortish, one-to-two-thousand word piece in the time remaining.

But why would you? Is that really enough time to tell an interesting story?

Yes, absolutely! And here’s why stories don’t always need to be epic to be interesting.

An example from improv

Improv theater teaches you that “whatever the scene starts being about, is what it’s about.”

Improv is written collaboratively, as the actors discover and affirm and reinforce each other’s choices. It’s a structure that’s built, brick by brick, by every player in the scene. If information is presented in a scene — say, if one person says “I’m hungry” — then that’s a single brick.

It’s possible for the next player to say “Me too,” and the first person to respond “I wonder what’s for lunch,” and so on — because they haven’t figured out what the scene’s about yet, and they’re just filling time with small talk, waiting for something interesting to be said that will inform everyone what they should really be talking about. The conversation can continue forever about nothing, as the players place bricks on the ground everywhere, but never two on top of one another.

Sometimes, after a period of feeling around in the dark, the players land on something that feels more substantial — finally figuring out how to bridge those original bricks, or ignoring them and placing more new bricks elsewhere. Other times they never do, and the scene ends up just being a pile of bricks arranged haphazardly.

To avoid this situation, improvisers are taught that whatever the scene starts being about, is what it’s about. If one person says “I’m hungry,” then the second person could say “Well, of course! You haven’t eaten for days!” And the scene would be about that person being hungry. Why are they hungry? What has prevented them from eating? A diet? A stomach trauma? Torture? Are they too poor to buy food? Are they on a hunger strike? Are they always hungry, no matter how much they eat? Do they have a tapeworm? How do the other characters feel about the hunger? How does it make them react?

The point is that there are infinite reasons why that person could be hungry. There’s no reason to place bricks anywhere else, because that simple declaration, “I’m hungry,” is enough. The entire scene can be built on top of it. The character’s hunger can be explored to reveal deeper issues — problems with relationships, or self-esteem, or conflicts with other characters in the scene. Thematic elements can arise. The scene has the potential to become emotionally resonant.

All this can come from just “I’m hungry” — if you will just dig into it, and keep digging. There is never any limit to how deep you can go on even the smallest detail.

Trust that the depth is there.

How does this relate to short stories?

A story can easily be grand in scope, about huge events and a lifetime’s worth of drama. That’s fine.

But it’s also possible to craft stories with much tighter scope. In these last 11 days, if you still want to write a story and you don’t think you can — well, you can. You can make it short, and specific, and about one thing. Not a lifetime, not the birth and death of a marriage, not a worldwide revolution…just, for example, someone who’s hungry.

Stories can start at Level One and go to Level Fifty, hitting a bunch of notes along the way and twisting and turning like a Grand Prix car…

Or, they can start at Level One and go to 1.01, then 1.015, then 1.0151, then 1.0152. They can dig into details. Themes can be illuminated through the use of metaphors — Lucy’s relationship with her mother need not be described over the years; rather we might hear a single conversation that we understand to be typical. Jim’s fear of water need not be recounted in anecdotes from his childhood, but rather his behavior at a beach trip could be described in intimate detail.

In other words, stories can start with a character who’s hungry, and then instead of going past that to show every meal that she eats or doesn’t eat for the rest of her life, she can tell us why she’s hungry. And how that hunger feels, and what she says that indicates what’s led to this, and who else cares about her hunger, and how that person reacts… and by the end of the thing, after we’ve explored this detail that seemed at first to be insignificant, we understand this character’s place in the web of herself and her relationships and her society. Small, rich moments are like pinhole cameras: tiny windows into larger thematic ideas.

It doesn’t have to be long.

And it doesn’t have to be convoluted. If you don’t know what to write, start with anything. If you dig into it, if you ask “why,” if you ask “what does this mean,” if you ask “who does this affect” — I promise you that any small thing at all will be enough.

We’ve received a lot of serious, 4,000-word-plus stories. Many of them are great! The average (mean) length of the stories we’ve received so far is 3,360. The median length is 2,900. So, a lot of longer stories.

This means there’s plenty of room for shorter, punchy, funny (usually “short” and “funny” work really well together) stories in the 1,000-to-1,500-word range.

You still, in other words, have time.

Here it is, the last in the series by Orpheos! You can watch them all here!

Episode 8 – Waiting for the End of the World from Orpheos.

Big ups to Orpheos for pulling these all together! The quality and professionalism evident in these videos is really great. If you haven’t seen them all yet, check them out! Orpheos has them all on their site, and we’ve got them linked to here.

Hooray!!

Flickr photo by TXMagpie

Every now and then, we get questions from folks asking us if it is true that they, as a member of some specific group, can submit a story for Machine of Death. Invariably, the answer to that question is YES.

You only have to meet two requirements to submit to the book: (1) You must be able to send us a submission written in English, and (2) someone (usually you — but not always) must be willing and legally able to sign a contract on your behalf. Here are some answers to specific variations on this question:

I’m a teenager… Can I submit a story?

Yes, you can! There is no age restriction on who can submit stories to Machine of Death. If you are considered a minor in the place where you live and if your story is accepted, you will probably need to have a parent or legal guardian sign the contract on your behalf. (In the U.S. and Canada, this will be true if you are under 18 years old.) As long as your parent or guardian is willing to do that, then there are no problems at all!

I’m a creative writing teacher… Can my students submit stories?

Yes, they can! The above answer about minor writers still applies, of course, but we also know that teachers sometimes have to be careful about sharing information about their students. If you’re a teacher who would like to submit stories on behalf of your students but have reservations about including their contact information, then please get in touch with us! We’ll gladly work something out.

This is the ONLY time when we’ll accept stories that don’t have the writer’s full contact information, and we WILL need full contact info from the submitting teacher so we can get in touch about our decisions. Also, if any stories are accepted, at that point we’ll need to contact the student’s parent or legal guardian to get a contract signed.

But look, basically the answer is: Send us a note, and we’ll work something out.

I live in a country that’s not the U.S. or Canada… Can I submit a story?

Yes, you can! We love getting submissions from other countries, and our first book included stories from writers living in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, South Korea, Argentina, Germany and Sweden. We’d love the second book to be just as diverse or more so. Your story will need to be written in some form of English, but otherwise your location is irrelevant.

There are occasionally some challenges in paying writers who live outside of the U.S. and Canada, but so far we’ve been able to work with all of our overseas contributors to find solutions that don’t result in massive fees. As long as you’re willing to be a little patient, we’re sure we’ll find a way to pay you too, no matter where you live.

I live in another country… Should I try to give my story a more mainstream (“generic American”) setting? Should I Americanize spellings?

Absolutely not! We encourage everybody to give their stories vivid, evocative settings that feel as real as possible. This could mean writing about the place where you live, or a place you’ve visited, or a place you’ve researched. It could even mean writing about a made-up place that you invented. But when it comes to settings, we prefer specific to generic! We are not afraid of settings that might fall outside the day-to-day experience of most of our readers.

Since places have their own vocabularies, there’s no need for you to Americanize your spelling or word choice, either. We have confidence that our readers can handle some regional variation from story to story. But if there’s a word or phrase that you think a wide audience might find confusing, feel free to explain it in your text.

I want to collaborate with another person… Can two people submit one story together?

Yes, you can! We’ll accept stories that are written by more than one person. Include contact information for all collaborators when you submit, but let us know which person we should communicate with primarily.

In the event that a story with multiple authors is selected for the book, you will each probably have to sign your own contract. The details of that may depend partly on the nature of the collaboration, however. The collaborators will then split a single fee in whatever way they choose to divide it amongst themselves.

May I submit as both an author and an artist?

Yes, you can! But we ask that you please keep the submissions separate, e.g. send an email with your story submission(s) and a separate one for art submission. If you don’t have an online art portfolio you can use a site like imgur.com to upload images, or just attach some jpg files to the email.

I submitted a story and then realized some minor error (a typo, I formatted the title wrong, something like that). Should I re-submit?

No, it’s fine. Now, you should absolutely double- and triple-check your submissions to ensure that you are presenting the best, most readable, most professional work possible — BUT if an error slips through we’re not going to chuck an otherwise great story out the window. We’d prefer to read perfect versions, but at this point re-submissions clog up our record-keeping enough that it’s less of a hassle to just overlook the typo.

Everything will be proofread before publication anyway, and if we think something (like a title) needs to be changed we’ll work with you on that, rather than turn down the entire story because of that.

If you have any other questions for us, use our Ask Us Anything form!

There are now less than two weeks remaining to submit your stories. If you need to run your work through a mental checklist to make sure it’s as polished as it can be, read our post about common short story pitfalls.

If you’ve already submitted, hooray! Thanks so much! We’re absolutely thrilled to see such a great response (over 500 submissions so far!) and we can’t thank you enough for taking the time to participate. We’re as excited to see MOD2 as you are!

Taking Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics and turning them into new and exciting projects is a time-honored tradition. Ryan does it every weekday! It’s also how Machine of Death started, as you may know.

One fan-created Dinosaur Comics remix arrived in our mailbox as part of our mail-order Death Prediction program.

First, let’s look at the accompanying letter:

Hello, MOD Inc. or whatever you guys like to call yourselves! I discovered Machine of Death yesterday & have been tearing through stories like crazy. After much philosophical debate with my friends (debate that consisted primarily of everyone saying DO IT DO IT DO IT), I’ve decided to “get my finger pricked” and find out how I’m going to die.

My enclosed payment is a Dinosaur Comic I wrote for my boyfriend, Jordan, for Valentine’s Day. He’d gotten me a giant Squishable T-Rex for my birthday two weeks earlier, which I now cuddle with every night when I go to bed. I tried to determine how T-Rex would interpret such affection & went from there. I hope the comic does not make Ryan North cry.

Thank you all for making stuff like Machine of Death possible & for making my life & the lives of my friends a little more entertaining. I look forward to discovering my fate!

Sincerely,

Annica Redmond

Now check out the accompanying comic (click for bigger, or, the transcript is below):

Panel 1

T-Rex: Jordan Keagle! I must share some bad news with you, my friend…well, actually it is bad news for you, but very good news for me.

Panel 2

T-Rex: I have usurped your place in Annica’s heart!

Panel 3

T-Rex: She thought you were fine, you see, until I came along. Now we snuggle in her bed every night. And she shared her birthday cake with me. And she hugs me every time she enters the room.

Dromiceiomimus: T-Rex, I don’t think…

T-Rex: Snuggles, birthday cake and hugs, Dromiceiomimus! If that is not love, I do not know what is!

Panel 4

Utahraptor: T-Rex, I think you are both reading too far into Annica’s actions towards you & perhaps intentionally failing to see her actions towards Jordan. Yes, she hugs you & snuggles you, but so does everyone else who sees you, mostly because you are very soft & fat.

T-Rex: *GASP*

Panel 5

T-Rex: You mean–you mean Annica has just been using me for my body this whole time?!

Utahraptor: I never said–

T-Rex: And she ACTUALLY loves Jordan! The snuggles were lies! THE CAKE WAS A LIE! It seems I have been misreading her signals this whole time, Utahraptor! All her REALLY meaningful affection goes to Jordan!

Panel 6

T-Rex: Plus… plus also she kisses Jordan and that is a strong sign too.

Thank you for sending us this comic! I hope Jordan appreciated it as much as we do.

This is my very favorite of the death prediction requests that I’ve seen so far.

This watercolor painting is incredible. Look at that penguin! And look at that Death Machine! Either one alone would make for a great painting. Together they just can’t be beat. And I have to wonder: What is going on here? Is the penguin getting tested? Is this part of an ad campaign, and the penguin is a mascot? Has the machine been abandoned in an Antarctic wasteland, to save people from the evil of knowing how they’re going to die? I would like to see some stories about this painting. I feel like there’s a lot of material here.

But there’s more! The kick-ass painting came with a letter!

The letter reads:

Dear Machine of Death,

I’m Emese, a 22 years old girl from Hungary, and I’ve been a fan of your book since it was released. I read the e-book when it came out, but I could buy the actual book only as a christmas present /for myself./ But still it was awesome and worth every cent!

Today is my birthday. I heard that you are giving away death predictions, and thought that one would be awesome as a present /for myself again/. None of my friends have one yet, so being the first with it would be great! : D

Anyway, it might happen that no one will ever read this letter, since I’m not sure wether I wrote the adress right; or the predictions might be already ran out by the time you get this. But even then I just want you to know, that your work is awesome, but I’m probably not the first to tell you that.

I wish you all the best!

Sincerely,
Emese

This is a lovely piece of fan mail, ringing of sincerity, and just self-deprecating enough to be endearing without going overboard.

And that’s not all! There’s also something on the back of the painting:

This is the price of a letter from Hungary to the US. I don’t think you can use it for anything but I didn’t know what else to send in return.

It’s difficult to purchase US postage from foreign countries, so people in other countries cannot stamp their self-addressed envelopes before sending them to us. For international requests, we will provide postage, but we ask that the request include something worth about a dollar, which is roughly the cost of mailing a death prediction card internationally.

The postage required to send a letter to the US from Hungary is a fitting exchange for the postage required to send a letter to Hungary from the US. I’m fascinated to learn that they have Braille stamps in Hungary. I’d had no idea that Braille stamps existed anywhere, but maybe every country in the world has them and I’m just completely out of touch.

Anyway, every piece of this request was great. I enjoyed seeing the painting, and I enjoyed reading the letter, and I enjoyed seeing some Hungarian postage. Overall, opening this request was a great experience.

I don’t know what could be better than this watercolor penguin, but I look forward to seeing what you can come up with!