Before reading slush at Apex, I thought I understood that beginnings are make or break when it comes to storytelling. Some editors hit reject if they aren’t interested by the end of the first page, paragraph, or sentence. As a horror writer, the idea that all the blood, sweat, and tears poured into my manuscript would be for nothing if I didn’t have a perfect opening horrified me. It wasn’t until I got my hands dirty, digging through Apex’s slush pile, that I realized how true it is: for your story to stand out, it must start strong.

If you haven’t read it, Jason Sizemore wrote an article on this topic a few years ago here. I’ll do my best to not make this a haunting echo of what he said and to share my perspective on what I look for as a slash—err, I mean, slush reader.

It bears repeating, however, that the beginning of your story should check off multiple boxes. Those boxes are Character, Setting, Plot, and Genre.

GENRE

In my experience, genre is easiest, so I’ll start there. How important is it for the writer to establish genre right out of the creaking iron gate? Very. Here’s why: as a slush reader, I don’t look at your cover letter until after I’ve first read your entire story. This helps me (your slush reader) to not have any opportunities to build a biased opinion of your work via a poorly constructed submission letter. It also means I won’t know your story is, let’s say, hard sci-fi before I read it. I want a blind read, or at least as close to one as I can generate. And being that Apex is a speculative fiction magazine, I expect to see a speculative element—or hint of genre—right away.

Here are a pair of examples from my own published work.

“Feuerhund” (Tales to Terrify) opens with, “I climb after Zeke into the old, abandoned hearse.” A single sentence yet you can guess this will be a horror story. Two characters are entering a vehicle made for transporting corpses, after all.

“Town Z” (The Dark) opens with, “You and Bromwick set the town afire.” Again, a single sentence, but two characters have burned down their town, so you know this is going in a darker direction.

Tying in genre doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple detail, a line or two, is fine. If you’re writing horror, your story might open with a character who is wielding a bloody knife. If sci-fi, drop that knife for a laser gun. If fantasy, ditch that laser gun for a cursed sword. You get the idea. Let me, as the slush reader, know what kind of story I’m in for, and I’ll be confident I’m in the hands of a writer who knows what they’re doing.

SETTING

I can’t speak for other slush readers, but I’m not crazy about stories that unfold with overly descriptive scenery. In flash or short fiction, you only have so many words to draw me in. Choose wisely. Cut harshly. Give me a few solid details of the world, of whatever space your character occupies, enough that I can fill in the blanks. I don’t need paragraphs describing how bony and dead forest trees are. Or, how gray and stormy the sky is. I can’t tell you how many stories in Apex’s slush pile start with descriptions of the sky. While I admit I like the opening to William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” when you read story after story like this, they all bleed together.

If you must start your story with more descriptive prose, I pray you find a more original way to do it. When I carve out an hour or two of my day to sit down and dig through slush, I want to find something different that excites me, not something I’ve seen already.

CHARACTER

Who are they? What do they want? Why do they want it? Everybody wants something. Your character should, too. How do they think, talk, or react in stressful situations? Is their dialogue different in tone than the narrative? Do they have weird habits? Are they haunted by their past? What secrets will they take with them to the grave? A perfect protagonist is boring. Don’t be afraid to give your character faults. They feel more human, more alive, on the page, that way.

If nothing else, make your character interesting. If they’re interesting, that’s halfway to victory. I don’t have to like them. Some of my favorite characters in fiction are extremely unlikable. Think Alex from A Clockwork Orange, who is a fifteen-year-old boy with sociopathic tendencies to commit ultra-violence… and a fondness for classical music, particularly Beethoven. So long as your character is interesting, I’m all in…

… almost. The other thing your character needs is purpose, and action, on their part. When I say action, I don’t mean you must start in media res. Let’s say your character is a zombie. They don’t have to be in the middle of an epic battle between the undead and the living, the weight of the future resting on their rotten shoulders. But they had better be doing something other than shambling along, reflecting on the cold apocalyptic world around them, then shambling along some more. Sounds boring, right? Surely, there are more interesting things going on in your zombie’s life. If there aren’t, this might not be the zombie you want to follow and write about.

I want to be along for the ride. An adventure! I want a character who’s engaged with their world, caught up in conflict.

PLOT

The big, groaning engine of your story. The thing that keeps pages turning. Think back to your character question: What do they want? OK, what obstacle must they overcome to get what they want? What happens if they don’t get it? Is it a matter of life or death? Great! Up the stakes as much as you can. Don’t throw everything at me in an info dump. Do give me enough that I’m grounded and eager to see how things play out.

I used to find plot difficult. I was anti-structure, anti-rule, a rebel. I wanted to write things my way. I never finished anything. Everything was a mess. Nothing clicked. Learning story structure—and there are many how-to books on the topic—helped me to understand there are ways to even things out. Bad pacing often occurs from a problem early on. Good pacing has a rhythm, like a steady heartbeat.

Keep in mind, whatever challenges your character faces externally should affect them internally. Give them a hard time. Put them through hell. From the beginning. For better or worse. That doesn’t mean your character must change going forward. In stories that keep me awake at night, the main character ends up in, if not the same place, a worse place than they started (see A Clockwork Orange again, the American version).

Foreshadow “bad” endings from the beginning and they can be impactful. Tragedies ring truer to real life. Often, people don’t learn from their mistakes. They double down on their destructive behavior. They let their past haunt them. Their worst trait possesses them. So long as it makes sense for your character, I’m in. If I can look back and say, “Ah, I should’ve seen that coming!” you’ve done a stellar job.

So far, of the couple hundred stories I’ve read for Apex, I’ve recommended two. Harsh as those numbers might seem, not a lot of slush comes my way that checks the boxes we’ve discussed. At least, not in a timely fashion. Some do but don’t quite fit the magazine, and those stories are hard to let go of.

AN EXCEPTION?

I can think of only one exception to everything I’ve said. Occasionally, a writer will come along with a unique voice, or style, or whatever you want to call how they spin words together. Even so, remember that style rarely trumps substance.

CONCLUSION

I hate to think I might never know how awesome page two or three of your work is because I didn’t make it past page one. Give your story good bones. Layer elements like meat on a skeleton. Build it into a living, breathing thing. Do that, and your story is sure to be a cut above the rest. I am sure to keep reading.