A "Settled" Verdict

No, "Settled" was not accepted by the Death Rattle Writers Festival -- but it's okay. Here is what I heard from them, first via my professional Facebook account and then as sent to my personal email (this is the order I read them in, not the order they were received).

Facebook:

(we really liked your short story by the way, we got booked up and we just had to cut off submissions without exceptions but we would love to do a reading with you or something in the future!)

Email:

Due to the high volume of prose submissions, we are remorseful to inform you that we did not select 'Settled' to be read at this years festival.

That being said we are grateful for the submission, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. You have a great voice and a strong sense of narrative and we would definitely like to work with you in the future. I hope you won't mind us updating you on future reading opportunities and projects the Death Rattle is working on. Thanks again for your time, and we hope you will still come and enjoy the festival.

So they like it, they are just having issues and handled them unethically. Note to those trying to set a deadline for submissions: If you ask writers for three weeks' patience in reading their story, don't put the deadline two weeks before the event. The math does not add up.

And note for writers: Even though the deadline is Saturday, don't wait until then to send it. Better safe than sorry.

Another note for writers: If you get a rejection note, and you will, know that the more personalized it is, the more they were impressed. In this case, I felt like they truly enjoyed it but didn't have the time for a longer note. Most of the email is a form letter, obviously, and the bit about keeping me updated is just them adding me to their mailing list.

If I had been the one judging my own piece, I wouldn't have been so complimentary. The writing is good, but the story is atrocious.

The anatomy of "Settled":

Character intro
Comedic prose
Character intro
Comedic prose
Story begins
Tension (a single line of it)
Climax
Comedic prose
Resolution
Comedic prose

Pulling out all the jokes, you have this:

Character intro
Character intro
Story begins
Tension
Climax
Resolution

Things that are missing: central conflict, conflict development, tension buildup.

The story arc was not at all decent, basically, and to kick myself in the butt for poor storytelling skills, I will write a few posts covering those three missing elements once I finish talking about how the festival goes (I plan on attending anyway).