Unlocking the Novel (or Memoir) for Lit Mags

"The first chapter of my second novel was originally a short story."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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From the first hint of an idea to a final proofread, it usually takes me around six to eight years to write a novel. That’s a long time. It’s an especially long time to be listening to the same characters trying to figure out what it is they want to do and how they want to be seen in the world, a world, that on top of everything else, I have to create especially for them. As with couples in a long marriage, it’s a good idea to take a break from one another now and again. Plus, world-building can be exhausting. Even God rested on the seventh day.

So, when I find myself lost in the weeds, I will often step back to write a short story or essay that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel at hand in order to clear the brain. That can take anywhere from one to three months. Add another few months to get a piece placed in a lit mag, and voilà, a little literary gratification to keep the wheels turning. Write enough stories and you might even, after oh, say, fifteen-plus years, have enough for a short fiction collection.

Sometimes though, writing a shorter piece isn’t a step back from a book-length project (novel or memoir), but a deeper dive. It might even be an impetus. The first chapter of Float, my second novel, was originally a short story. As soon as I finished writing it, I knew the story wanted more out of me, going so far as to suggest it wanted to be a novel when it grew up.

I began those first tentative steps towards making that happen, but in the meantime, I sent the story out to lit mags. “Float,” the story, won the Doug Fir Fiction Award and was published in Bear Deluxe Magazine, a lit mag that focused on environmental issues. Sadly, Bear Deluxe now seems to be defunct, but in 2010 that award and publication gave me the confidence to continue writing the novel.

Have a look at your own first chapter to send out. They are often easy to develop into a free-standing story because you don’t have to give any backstory, although B.B. Garin, who reads for the novel excerpt contest at Masters Review, has this crucial caveat, from her essay “What Makes a Great Novel Excerpt?”: “What is important to consider, not just with the first chapter but with an excerpt from any point in the novel, is does it end on a cliffhanger? If the answer is yes, this is probably not your best option.”

Sometimes all it takes is a little nip and tuck to create a narrative arc with an ending that feels satisfying, but if your first chapter stubbornly remains a chapter, there are a number of lit mags and literary organizations out there that sponsor first chapter contests such as Craft Literary, Gutsy Great Novelists, and, if you are a member, the Chicago Writers Association.

Better yet, there are many lit mags that happily read novel excerpts, and they don’t have to be first chapters or chapters reformulated into short stories. An excerpt can come from anywhere in a manuscript as long as it is easy for a reader to drop into, which means keeping the number of points of view to a minimum and not moving your characters around from scene to scene too much.

Not finding an excerpt in your manuscript that fits the bill? Keep in mind that just because it is a novel excerpt does not mean you can’t rework it to make it more accessible. If you need to bring the reader up to speed about some action or circumstance, add it, but in as few sentences as possible. For instance, if a character has lost a job or a spouse earlier in the novel, mention it for context, but there is usually no need to go into detail about it. But if characters are referencing a past event that has no bearing on what is going on in that section, delete it.

In the same vein, if there are characters in the novel who happen to be in the excerpt, but they don’t serve your purposes, get rid of them. Also, avoid lingering on any complicated plot turns, which can confuse a reader who has no way of knowing what action came before. Single internal monologues often work well, as do excerpts that focus on place. And always, as B.B. Garin advises, craft your ending so that the section feels complete. That doesn’t mean tacking your novel’s ending onto the excerpt, but perhaps adding something to make the reader reflect on where the excerpt began, and how the character changed. Change is the operative word in fiction, and Garin emphasizes this: “Like any effective story, a novel excerpt needs an element of change in order for it to feel like it possesses a complete arc.”

Once you’ve selected a possibility or two from what is often an unwieldy work-in-progress, poke around through submission guidelines to see who might be interested in excerpts. Sometimes a lit mag won’t say it outright on their website, but will include excerpts under their Submittable guidelines, so look both places. If all else fails, drop an editor an email. Some lit mags that will read novel excerpts include the Kenyon Review, Litbreak, Terrian.org, the Halcyone, The West Trade Review, and The Write Launch. Azure accepts excerpts, and intriguingly write in their guidelines: “If your submission is part of a novel-length work or feature-length screenplay, there exists the possibility of publishing it in installments in future issues. In this case, please indicate your intentions in your cover letter.”

Some lit mags seem to read excerpts reluctantly. In their Submittable guidelines, the Beloit Fiction Journal says “we occasionally publish excerpts.” Others encourage them. Shenandoah takes novel excerpts “with great enthusiasm,” and I can vouch for that. I once got a wildly enthusiastic rejection from their fiction editor, Morgan Davis, that was much appreciated. She wrote, “I realize the danger of having to decline novel-in-progress submissions, so let me start this off by saying: KEEP GOING! I so appreciate the chance to read your work, and though this wasn’t a fit for Shenandoah, I wish you all the best as you head to the finish.” For all I know, this is their standard rejection for an excerpt, but it is the sort of response that can help keep a novel writer trudging on.

I was also buoyed by a lit mag called Novel Slices that only published novel excerpts. I submitted the first chapter of Arroyo Circle —what was then my novel-in-progress and is now my novel-finally-published—which was accepted for an early issue in 2021. Sadly, it too is now defunct, and yet the editor, Hardy Griffen, continues to help promote the book.

As with any lit mag submission, I’ve found that the best shot for an acceptance is if there is a particular theme that aligns with your own. Read the guidelines closely to get a feel for how a lit mag interprets their theme, which is usually wide-ranging and abstract, but can also be quite literal. Buddhist-leaning Still Point Quarterly had a call for a fire issue, so I sent them a Buddhist-leaning excerpt from the wildfire section of Arroyo Circle. Still Point did not explicitly say that they took excerpts, but my submission did not require much in the way of backstory and was spot on to the theme.

In another instance, Michigan State University Library bought a short-story-dispensing machine called Short Édition that spits out free fiction on a piece of paper not much bigger than a grocery receipt. MSU had a call for teeny pieces on the theme of water, and since Arroyo Circle also had a flood (fire and flood are often two sides of the same coin in mountainous regions), I extrapolated a section from that scene and they accepted it for the machine, then followed it with a print anthology.

Once in a while I find it useful while writing a novel to jump forward in the action and write a section in order to learn more about my characters, putting them in a situation that I know I’m going to write my way to eventually. These sections lend themselves to being formed into a story, since they are written out of consecutive order. While I was still flailing around in the first half of Arroyo Circle, I knew there would be a Covid scene in the second half. I wanted to write it while the experience was still fresh around me during the lockdown, and by the time I was finished, the scene was clearly a story in its own right. “Flying Home” was published in the Stonecoast Review, and then in two anthologies (Among Animals 3 and Awake in the World, V.3) long before the book was released.

By the time I got to the Covid part of the book, the material had to be reshaped to fit into the narrative flow (I had gotten rid of some characters and changed many circumstances), but the core stood up well over time. More than that, I got to know the main character better by jumping ahead to a fresh crisis. Finally, there was one scene that I transformed into a short story that fit so perfectly with the theme of survival in an ecologically changed world that I included it in my short fiction manuscript Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival. Right before that collection was published, the story was picked up by Terrain.org.

One novel, eight literary magazines or anthology credits to its name. Did it help Arroyo Circle find a publisher? You’d have to ask Green Writers Press, but it certainly didn’t hurt. What excerpting does do is get the word out that there is something interesting in the works, and more than that, it gives a writer hope, a vulnerable asset that needs to be refreshed over the long haul of novel writing. So let bits of your work see the light of day in a lit mag, and maybe you’ll move that much closer to making hope a reality.

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