Talkin’ Tags: How I Write Dialogue
If you’ve spent any time among writers, be it on social media or even in private writing groups, you will have almost certainly heard the “rule” that you should only use said when it comes to dialogue tags. I think this originated in Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Good Writing (though I could be wrong there), and I’ve seen it discussed dozens of times on various blogs and social media. I was even an adherent myself at one point, though my views have changed, which you’ll see in a moment. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about how I write dialogue and which tags I tend to use, not use, and why.
Before we get further into this, a quick disclaimer. This is not an article about which dialogue tags YOU should use (or not use). That’s going to be entirely up to you, your style, your genre, and your audience. This is an article about how I write dialogue NOT how YOU should write dialogue. If what I do works for you, awesome. If not, also awesome. You be you.
Okay, with that out of the way, I honestly don’t think “only use said” is terrible advice, and I tend to agree that said is great in the sense that it’s pretty much invisible to the reader. That said (hah!), I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using other tags, and, personally, I prefer a broader tag repertoire that breaks down into five categories roughly based on how often I use them.
- Tier One – Simple Said. I use said probably 80% of the time (maybe even a bit more) when I’m writing dialogue. Most of the time, I almost always want the character’s words to do the heavy lifting and the tag is only there to remind the reader who’s speaking. Said is entirely unobtrusive, so it’s perfect for this, and it also works for my style, which tends to be pretty spare and stripped down.
- Tier Two – We’re Still Just Talking. The second tier of tags are still pretty unobtrusive in my opinion. They’re very neutral and don’t really bring any kind of baggage to the dialogue itself. I’m talking about words like asked, replied, responded, etc. Though I still try to use them sparingly, they’re great for adding variety to my dialogue when I feel like the sheer volume of saids is starting to jump off the page (and potentially at the reader).
- Tier Three – Taggage Baggage. The third tier of dialogue tags include words like yelled, shouted, whispered, and the occasional muttered or grumbled. These words are still part of normal human speech, which is kind of my litmus test for tags I’m willing to use, but they absolutely impart a tone or even an emotional state, so I’m careful with them. I generally save them for when I feel like the dialogue itself may not be hitting the tone I want. Now, there’s an argument that in those cases I should just revise the dialogue, but there are times where I feel one of these bolder tags adds something to the narrative. YMMV, of course.
- Tier Four – Call of the Wild. The next group of dialogue tags are the one I use the least, and I tend to think of them as, well, animal noises. I’m talking about words like roared, growled, hissed, hooted, screeched, and so on. Now I’ve seen authors use this fourth tier of dialogue tags very effectively, so it absolutely can be done, and I’m not judging anyone for hooting and hissing and whatnot. For me, though, these tags tend to clash with my characters’ voices. But, hey, I’m not a tag teetotaler, and you will find the occasional roared, growled, or rumbled in my work.
- Tier Five – Tag Free. The fifth tier of dialogue tags is, well, no tags at all. When I’m revising I keep an eye out for places where I can completely remove dialogue tags, especially if it’s clear who’s talking by context. This is handy when, like in tier two, I feel like I’m going a little heavy on said. A mix of tags and no tags creates a nice rhythm, and if you throw in some action beats, too, I think it makes conversations feel more natural. IMHO and all that.
But, hey, the above is just a claim without any real evidence, right? Well, I went though a couple of lengthy sections of dialogue from my current WIP and counted up all the dialogue tags I used. Let’s see how I did.
- Says- 49
- Action Beat -32
- No Tag – 6
- Asks – 4
- Mutters- 2
- Whispers – 2
- Repeats – 2
- Admits – 1
- Repeats – 1
- Replies – 1
- Rumbles – 1
- Shouts – 1
- Yells – 1
So that’s 103 lines of dialogue, and of that 103, 38 use no tag at all (tier five). Of the remaining 65, 49 use says, which is 75% and in line with the percentage I cited earlier. Looking at the rest, I’ve got 8 tags (12%) from tier two, 6 tags (9%) from tier three, and a single representative from tier four (1%).
This is raw first-draft dialogue, and in revision, there’ll be some changed. For example, I don’t think rumbles make the cut (though it may end up as something like grumbles). I’m also not thrilled with repeats and admits, which are technically tier two in my mind, though kinda on the fringe. As for my uses of yells, shouts, mutters, and whispers, I think I’ll likely lose one mutter and just pick either yell or shout and use it twice. The biggest change, though, will be removing dialogue tags entirely. In the quick readthrough I did to tally my tags, I saw a number of opportunities to cut tags or replace them with action beats.
So, there you have it. My take on dialogue tags, which I use, and when I use them. Again, this is hyper-specific to my writing, style, and voice. It is not a condemnation of any type of dialogue tag, though, I’ll admit, I’m hard-pressed to approve of something like ejaculated or pontificated, but, hey, if you can make those work, more power to ya. 🙂
Vampires and Demons and Hitmen, Oh My!
If you’re even passingly familiar with my work, then you’ll have noticed I tend to gravitate to certain tropes. Like, a lot. The top three are: vampires, demons, and hitmen/organized crime. There are definitely others (and I’ll likely do a part two for this post), but these tend to be the most common. Anyway, I thought I’d do a little public self-reflection and attempt to explain WHY I return to these particular monstrous wells again and again. Let’s dive in.
Vampires
Goddamn, do I love me some vampires, which can be tough as a writer as they are still generally maligned in editorial circles unless you do something really different with them. What attracts me to vampires is less the monstrous aspects of the bloodsuckers and more what remains of their humanity. Although I certainly dabble with vampires as pure monsters, I really like the idea of exploring certain aspects of humanity through the lens of the undead and immortal. I’m certainly not unique in this approach, though I do tend to shy away from more romantic interpretations (though, there’s nothing wrong with that). My favorite premise is the vampire where you don’t expect them: baseball, Uber drivers, ER nurses, dentists, etc. That juxtaposition of the mundane and the monstrous, where a put-upon vampire has to grit their fangs and deal with shitty customers/patients just tickles me to no end.
If you’d like to check out some of my published vampire pieces (that are also free to read/listen to, here are some of the better ones.
Demons
My favorite subgenre of horror films is demon-possession, and to say that they’ve influenced my work is quite the understatement. Though I’m an atheist, I was raised evangelical Christian, so demons and Satan and all that were a big part of my childhood. (Fun, huh?). So, it’s not too surprising that fallen angels and the denizens of hell make frequent appearances in my work and not always as monsters/villains. My demons tend to be of the Judeo-Christian variety simply because that’s the mythology I’m most familiar with. Like vampires, demons are great for exploring the human condition, and they tend to lend themselves to stories about anger, betrayal, and regret. This is not to say that I don’t sometimes use demons as simple boogeymen, but my favorite stories are the ones where the demons are more nuanced characters or even protagonists.
Some of my published demon-centric stories.
Hitmen/Organized Crime
I’m an absolute sucker for a good mafia/organized crime move/series, and I’ve watched Goodfellas, Casino, Eastern Promises, and a slew of shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Jackal more times than I can count. Hitmen, especially, intrigue me, and it’s no surprise they show up in my work a lot. I think a lot of this comes down to my love of the antihero, and what’s more antiheroic than someone who kills for money. Now, I of course know that REAL hitmen and organized crime is nothing like how it’s portrayed in popular media, so it’s essentially crime-coded fantasy. Speaking of fantasy, one of my favorite things to do is mix organize crime with my other favorite tropes, so, yeah, I’ve published stories about vampire hitmen, demons that work for the mob, and, of course, a bunch of just straight up crime fiction. I don’t mean to repeat myself here, but I think the reason I’m drawn to this trope is what it says about people in general, and how, especially with organized crime, a lot of the bad decisions and terrible things people do is a result of feeling like they have no other choice. That’s a bit reductionist, of course, and there’s certainly more nuance to be had in the genre, but for a broad strokes motivation, it’s compelling.
Here are some of my hitmen stories, both pure crime and hybrid horror pieces.
- The Ripple Effect – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
- Grandfather’s Pond – Flash Point SF
- Drums – The Arcanist
And there’s a tiny little peak into why I write what I write. Although vampires, demons, and hitmen are certainly the most common, I have been known to write stories centering on zombies, time travel, and dinosaurs pretty frequently, so I’ll discuss those in an upcoming article and hopefully impart something more compelling than, hey, I just like ’em. 😉
Thoughts on my overused tropes/monsters? What tropes do you tend to fall back on? Tell me about it in the comments.
Swings & Misses V: The Rejection Streak Returns
Anecdotally, a good acceptance rate for short fiction tends to be around ten percent. With regards to rejections, that percentage generally works out to a statistically consistent ten to fifteen noes in a row . . . except when it doesn’t, and you go on a rejection heater like the one I just ended. To whit, my last acceptance ended the longest rejection streak of my career, a staggering FORTY consecutive rejections before Incensepunk Magazine (bless them) put me out of my misery with yesterday’s yes.
So what the hell happened? We’ll discuss, but first some stats.
- Duration: 1/18/26 to 5/2/26 (105 days)
- Rejections: 40
- Stories: 22
- Markets: 32
Those 40 noes in a row eclipses my second longest streak, way back in 2018, by 13 rejections. Oof and also yikes. The only thing you can do when you hit a rough spot like this is to keep writing and submitting, but it’s hard not to start questioning your talent, your skill, and your sanity after about thirty not for us’s. Of course, me being me, I want to know WHY. There are no concrete answers, unfortunately, but I can put on my rejectomancer hat and make some educated guesses, and maybe we can learn something from them.
- Luck. As I’ve said many, many, many times, getting an acceptance is about putting the right story in front of the right editor at the right time. Get any one of those wrong, and you get a rejection. Obviously, it’s possible to get that wrong A LOT, and when that happens, the noes pile up in your inbox and you eventually post about it on your blog. Seriously, though, luck does play a part in getting published, and here’s some fairly compelling evidence for that. The story that broke the streak was also rejected three times during the streak. So, if I’d sent that story to Incensepunk first, well, I wouldn’t be making this post. 🙂
- Market Changes. When you’ve been submitting fiction as long as I have, you see publishers come and go pretty frequently. Usually, this is no big deal, but recently, a couple of markets that I could generally rely on to publish my work have either gone on hiatus or changed their guidelines with regards to how often they publish individual authors. This is not to say that I was in any way guaranteed an acceptance from these markets, but I generally like my chances, and they’ve broken up rejections streaks before.
- Trends. We’re getting further into what I’d call pure speculation at this point, but I have noticed a change in market and editorial preferences of late that might have contributed to this latest streak. Essentially, what I’ve seen, especially with newer markets, is a move away from darker more downbeat stories to those that are more hopeful and uplifting (I can’t possibly imagine why). This speculation is backed up somewhat by a few of the personal rejections I received in this latest string of noes where the editor flat out said they’re looking for stories with a more positive vibe. My work does tend to be pretty dark, and though I don’t want to make any wholesale changes to my style, it might not hurt to write a few stories that aren’t so relentlessly grim.
- It’s not them; it’s me. When you go on a long rejections streak like this, you should absolutely take a good, long look at your work and see if it’s lacking in any way. This ties into point three somewhat, but during prior streaks I noticed that my work had gotten a little stale. I wasn’t taking chances, and I was defaulting to concepts and narratives that were comfortable rather than challenging. I’d say that definitely happened here, too, so it’s time to stretch a little, challenge myself, and write outside my comfort zone. When I’ve done that in the past, the acceptances came more frequently.
It’d been a while since my last one back in 2022, so I was overdue, and boy, did the streak come back with a vengeance. Still, surviving these little (or not so little) statistical blips is just part of sending out a lot of submissions, though, as I listed in point four above, it can often be an indicator that’s it time to make some changes, too. So, don’t let a long rejection streak get you down too much, and maybe even take it as an opportunity to fine tune your work and your submission targeting.
Thoughts on my record-setting rejection streak? Care to share one of your own? Tell me about in the comments.
800 Rejections or That Which Does Not Accept You Makes You Stronger
On April 4th of this year, I hit another big submission milestone. I received my 800th rejections since I started recording them on Duotrope back in 2012. As usual, I have some dirty details on my nice round number of noes and not for uses. Let’s get to it!
Rejected Stories
First, let’s talk about the stories that were rejected. I had a total of 171 distinct stories rejected in the thirteen years and change I’ve been submitting. I went on to sell 81 of those rejected stories, which is roughly 47% or within spitting distance of half. That’s not bad, especially when I consider many of the unsold stories come from when I started submitting, and were simply not ready for primetime.
Most Rejected Stories
Below are my top ten most rejections stories.
- Time Has No Memory* (25)
- Set in Stone (25)
- Signs and Wonders (23)
- Trapping Disaster (22)
- Paper Cut* (18)
- The Scars You Keep* (16)
- Caroline* (15)
- The Downer* (15)
- Coffin Shopping (12)
- Bites* (12)
These are the stories that have racked up the most rejections. The ones marked with an asterisk are ones I eventually sold. One thing these stories all have in common is they’re short stories instead of flash. For whatever reason, I sell flash much, much quicker than I do shorts. That likely has to do with the fact that there are fewer slots available for short stories and they represent a larger investment of both money and time for the publisher. The one I’m most proud of here is “Times Has No Memory” which took me almost five years to sell, with final round rejections from a bunch of pro markets. I eventually sold it to Abyss & Apex last year, and you can read it for free right here.
Rejecting Markets
So, who’s responsible for my 800 rejections? Well, a whole bunch of publishers, actually. A full 178 of them, to be exact. These markets range from tiny for-the-love-of-it publishers to the biggest, most recognizable magazines in the SFF industry. I get around when it comes to rejections. One interesting and kind of sad statistic from this list is that a full 70 of these markets have gone defunct or are on indefinite hiatus. It’s a tough gig to run a genre mag, and no mistake.
Most Rejecting Markets
Below are ten markets that have rejected me the most.
- The Molotov Cocktail (54)
- Flash Fiction Online* (44)
- The Arcanist (31)
- Apex Magazine* (28)
- Flame Tree Press (25)
- NewMyths.com (25)
- Daily Science Fiction* (24)
- The Dark Magazine* (24)
- Factor Four Magazine (23)
- The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction* (17)
The markets marked with an asterisk are ones that I have yet to sell a story to. I know; that FFO number is pretty high, but I keep making it to the final round of consideration, so I’m gonna keep on submitting to them. Apex is a tougher nut to crack, but I’ve made it out of the slush pile enough and to the final round of their monthly flash fiction contest, so I think they’re worth keeping after as well. Of course, Daily Science Fiction is sadly on indefinite hiatus, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get the chance to publish with them. Now, the numbers for The Molotov Cocktail and The Arcanist look pretty high, BUT I’ve published 17 stories with Molotov and 16 with The Arcanist, so my hit to miss ratio was still pretty good.
Lessons Learned
The big question is what have I learned from 800 rejections? Well, a few things that make getting rejected easier and allow me to put it in its proper perspective. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, then you’ll have heard me say these things before, but they bear repeating for new folks and as a reminder to the veterans.
- A rejection is often more about timing than the quality of the story. I mean, look, most of pieces, even my best pieces, received a bunch of rejections before I sold them. You have to put the right story in front of the right editor at the right time. Sometimes, you get lucky and you do that right out of the gate. Other times, like in the case of “Time Has No Memory” you get rejected 26 times before you finally get that combo correct.
- Don’t dwell on rejections. Move on. This is one of the most important lessons you can learn from rejection. They sting, especially at first, but most of the time, a rejection doesn’t tell you anything other than the publisher is not going to publish your story. There’s no feedback, and even when there is, it’s often highly specific to that market. So, feel your feels, then get that story back out there. You’ll feel better; I promise.
- If you believe in a story, stick with it. If you take away anything from his post, it should be that perseverance does pay off, and good stories do find a home eventually. So keep writing, keep submitting, and keep going.
And there you have it. The crunchy details on 800 rejections. Thoughts and opinions? Tales of your own rejection woes. Tell me about it in the comments.
The Millennial Milestone – 1,000 Submissions!
A few days ago, I hit a submission milestone more than a decade in the making. Yep, 1,000 submissions. It’s been a long road with a lot of ups and downs, but it feels pretty damn good to see that giant round number on Duotrope. I’ve even held off on sending out more subs recently because I just like looking at it. 🙂 Anyway, as I always do when I hit a big submissions milestone, I’ve broken down all the crunchy details for you. So, let’s dive in and see what 1,000 submissions actually looks like.
Basic Stats
Okay, first, here are the basic nuts and bolts.
- Submissions: 1,000
- Acceptance: 120
- Rejections: 797
- Lost/Returned: 3
- Never Responded: 25
- Withdrawn: 32
- Pending: 23
- Acceptance Percentage: 13%
Most of these categories are pretty obvious, and things like acceptances, rejections, and pending don’t need further explanation. Now, I’ll admit, I don’t even remember why I labeled three submissions as lost/returned instead of never responded. I will say, that I use never responded now for markets that a) don’t respond and b) don’t have a notice in their guidelines that says a non-response is basically a rejection. Withdrawn is also pretty obvious, though the vast majority of my withdrawn subs, especially early on, were from markets that didn’t respond after one or multiple submission status queries. Now I use it for the rare occasions I sell a story that’s been sim-subbed or I remove a story for other, miscellaneous reasons. The acceptance percentage is simply the number of acceptances divided by the number submissions minus pending, withdrawn, lost/returned, and never responded. An argument could be made that I should count never responded as rejections, so if you want that number, it drops my acceptance percentage to 12.7 percent.
The Stories
Now let’s look at the stories that made up all those submissions. Below is the number of distinct stories, then those stories broken out by length. The number in parentheses is the number of each type of story I’ve actually sold.
- First Submission: 4/16/12
- Last Submission: 3/20/26
- Distinct Stories: 195
- Flash Fiction: 147 (76)
- Short Stories: 40 (23)
- Microfiction: 4 (3)
- Novels: 3 (0)
- Novellas: 1(1)
Hey, how about that perfect record on novellas? Not bad, huh? 😉 Anyway, 195 stories is a bunch, and one of the things I’m most proud of in this heap of stats is that I’ve sold a bit more than half of the stories I’ve written (103 out of 195). Looking back over my submission history, there are a bunch of stories that simply weren’t good enough to be submitted in the first place, but I think that’s a common issue for most writers when they first start seriously subbing their work. These days, I’m a bit better at only subbing stories that have a chance of selling. Obviously, the bulk of my output has been flash fiction, but my overall acceptance rate is about the same for short stories. It just takes me a lot longer to sell them.
Here are a couple of other numbers I wanted to share about individual stories.
- Most Subbed Story: 28
- Most Subbed Story Before a Sale: 26
My most subbed story period is an urban fantasy piece called “Set in Stone.” I shopped it for years, and though I got a couple of final-round rejections, I never could place it. It now lives in the trunk. On the other hand, “Time Has No Memory” was also subbed for years, but I did manage to sell that one to Abyss & Apex. It comes out next month. 🙂
The Markets
Finally, let’s take a look at the markets whose inboxes I’ve been haunting over that last decade and change. Couple of notes here. At one point I was tracking my novel queries through Duotrope, which was a mistake that just kind of muddied the waters. Those queries are included in my submission total, but I’ve removed them from the distinct markets list because, well, agents aren’t markets. In the case that I sent a novel directly to a publisher, though, I included that publisher in the numbers below. It’s not perfect, but it’s what I got. Also, I’m kinda going off memory for some of these markets as to whether they’re semi-pro or token. That’s primarily because so many of the markets on my list don’t exist anymore, so I have no reliable way to look that up. I think I’m mostly right, though, especially with the pro markets.
- Distinct Markets: 227
- Pro Markets: 92
- Semi-Pro Markets: 127
- Token Markets: 8
As you can see, I generally restrict my submission to pro and semi-pro markets, though some of these markets make semi-pro by the skin of their teeth. Lately, I send to pro markets first, then to semi-pro, and then I usually trunk the story or wait until more pro or semi-pro markets open for subs. I will occasionally send a piece to a token publisher, but it’s usually a reprint.
Couple of other numbers regarding individual markets you might find interesting.
- Most Subs to a Single Market: 72
- Most Subs to a Single Market Without a Sale: 44
The most subs to a single market is to The Molotov Cocktail, mostly on account of their flash fiction contests. I do have 17 acceptances there, though. The other market that I’ve sent a TON of work to where I actually sold them something was The Arcanist, now sadly on hiatus. I sent them 50 submissions and sold them 16 stories. Now for the bad news. The market that I have submitted to most without a single sale to my name is Flash Fiction Online. I’ve made it to the final round of their deliberations enough that I’ll keep trying, but, man, 44 noes in row does sting a bit.
And there you have it. One thousand submissions in all their glory and shame. Let me know what you think about my little milestone, and feel free to share one of your own in the comments.
I’ll see ya at 2,000! 😉
Three Things I Learned from 100 Story Sales
Since I started submitting work seriously in 2013, I’ve sold* 120 short stories. Like the piles of rejections I’ve racked up in that same time, my much smaller heap of acceptances has taught me some valuable lessons about writing and the often arcane process of trying to get other people to publish your work. Let’s talk about three of them.
- Short Sells. In my experience, the shorter the story, the easier it is to sell. I even have stats to back it up. To date, I have sold 85 flash fiction stories and 29 short stories. I’ve also sold a novella and a handful of micros, but, you know, sample size. It generally takes me about three submissions to sell a flash piece, while it takes an average of eight to sell a short story. Part of this might simply be because I’m better at writing flash fiction than I am at writing longer works, but there are definitely other factors at play. One, flash fiction markets tend to publish more often, sometimes once per week, hell, sometimes daily, so they tend to be open to subs more often and they need more subs than other journals. So, basically, your chances of selling a flash piece are just better because there are more open slots. Now, this is not to say you shouldn’t write and submit shorts–I mean, I do–but you should expect it to take a little longer to get stories over 1,000 words accepted. Of course, this could just be a me problem, and the rest of you are selling 5,000-word shorts on the first sub. 🙂
- Dance With the Ones That Brung Ya. Look, I definitely try to sell as many stories to as many markets as possible, but when I find a publisher that likes my work enough to publish it multiple times and pays a pro rate, I’m going back to that well. A LOT. You see, I am convinced that selling a story comes down to right editor, right time, right place, and when I sell multiple pieces to the same market, then I feel I’ve got two of those things in my favor. It’s even better when these markets that get me are pro rate publishers. So, yes, I’m gonna keep chasing acceptances at Flash Fiction Online, Small Wonders, Nightmare, and Apex, but I’m also gonna keep sending stories to Factor Four Magazine, MetaStellar, and The Flame Tree Flash Fiction Newsletter, all of which have published me three or more times. It’s good for my acceptance numbers, good for my confidence, and it puts more of my stories at respected markets for folks to read.
- It’s Okay to Ignore Editorial Feedback. Getting feedback on a rejection is great, and I have nothing but gratitude for editors that take the time to leave a personal note. For one, it tells you a lot about what the editor wants out of a story, and it can tell you when it’s time to revise. That said, a lot of feedback is simply editorial preference, and it’s perfectly okay to ignore it if it doesn’t fit your vision of the story. I’ve received feedback on stories that were rejected, decided not to action that feedback, and then sold the story to a pro market on the next submission. Conversely, I have taken editorial feedback to heart when it resonated with me, made the revisions, and then sold the story likely because of those revisions. This is not to say that the editorial feedback I ignore is wrong. It’s 100% right for that editor and that market, but ultimately not right for my story. It can be tricky to tell which is which of course, and it comes down to a gut feeling borne out of experience and a deep understanding of your specific goals with each story.
So, there you have it. Three lessons learned from 100-plus story sales. Now, admittedly, these are fairly specific to my personal experiences, but I think there’s some universal truths here that are applicable to anyone heading into the submission trenches.
What have you learned from your own story sales? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
*The vast majority of my short story publications are of the paid variety, but for the sake of transparency, there are some “for the love of it” publications in the mix.
2026 Writing Goals Bingo
Last year, I set a number of short fiction writing goals for myself that I represented in a bingo card as a fun bit of motivation and to have a snazzy graphic for blog posts. Though, at the end of the year, I did okay, I may have been a little too ambitious. Anyway, I’m doing the writing goals bingo thing again for 2026, but I’m being a tad more conservative with how high I set the bar in certain areas. So, without further ado, here’s the 2026 goals.
So, the five goals, which are each broken up into five sperate tiers above, are:
- 120 Submissions
- 100 Rejections
- 15 Acceptances
- 12 Pro Sales
- 30 New Stories
Each of the goals is pretty straight forward, but I’ll discuss each one and give you my reasoning for where I set the bar.
120 Submissions – Last year, I set this goal at 150, and I managed 122 submissions. I’m setting it at 120 this year because though it is a very steady pace, it’s not breakneck. That said, this is one of the goals I think I can easily hit or exceed since it’s entirely within my control.
100 Rejections – For me, hitting 100 rejections means I’m a) sending a lot of submissions and b) writing a lot of new material. So, it’s kind of gauge for how I’m doing other goals, and if I hit those, I should hit this one almost by default.
15 Acceptances – In 2025, I set this mark at 25 acceptances, which is, admittedly, bananas. I don’t regret doing it since I have flirted with 20 acceptances in a single year in the past, but in the current literary environment, and since I primarily submit to pro markets, 15 feels a lot more doable, and, hey, I WANT to succeed. 😉
12 Pro Sales – This is probably the most ambitious of my goals, as pro sales are pretty tough to come by. Last year, I had five pro sales, which was half of my ten total. I did, however, have A LOT of final-round rejections from pro markets, so I feel like ten or twelve is possible with a little luck. So, yeah, twelve is ambitious, but I think doable.
30 New Stories – Last year, I set another ambitious writing goal, which was to write a new story every week. I didn’t succeed, but I did manage 35 new stories, which is a good number, I think. I set the bar a little lower this year because I’ve got some other projects I want to work on. But if I can manage 30 new stories, I should have pretty good shot at hitting my other goals.
And those are my short story submission goals for 2026. Although I backed off a bit from last year’s goals, I think these are more than respectable, and if I can hit them all, that’ll be a hell of a good year.
What are your writing goals in 2026? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
What Happens to Rejected Stories?
Recently, it came to my attention that when I say “I have almost 800 rejections”, some folks think YOU’VE HAD 800 STORIES REJECTED?! That’s understandable without context, especially if you’re not in the biz. It did get me thinking, though. Just how many distinct stories have I had rejected? And, further, what happened to those stories? Let’s find out!
To date, I have 773 rejections since I started tracking them back in 2012. I ran a quick report on Dutrope, and those 773 rejections equate to 166 distinct pieces. Most of those pieces are flash fiction and short stories, but there’s a novella and a couple of novels mixed in there, too.
Looking deeper, here’s what happened to those 166 rejected stories.
- Accepted: 87 (418)
- Pending/Potential: 27 (182)
- Trunked: 52 (173)
I’ve broken the rejected stories into three broad categories with the number of stories and the total number of rejections each category is responsible for. Let’s drill down, and I’ll explain what each category means.
Accepted
Pretty straight forward. The stories in this category, despite racking up a ton of rejections, were eventually accepted and published somewhere. They constitute a full 54% of my rejections, which, honestly, makes me feel pretty good and definitely says something about sticking with stories you feel confident about even thought they’re getting rejected. In fact, thirty of these stories received five or more rejections and fourteen of them suffered through double digits. Persistence for the win, huh?
Pending/Potential
The twenty-seven stories in this category are either currently pending with a publisher, or they’re stories I think are good enough to keep sending out. Most are fairly recent pieces, but there’s a couple of veterans in here with over twenty rejections that I keep doggedly submitting. It’s possible and even likely that some of these stories will eventually be relegated to the next category.
Trunked
If you’re unfamiliar with this term, trunked simply means when an author has given up on publishing a story, generally because they’ve decided it’s just not good enough. Most of the fifty-two stories in this category are pretty old, originating in the early 2010s when I first started submitting seriously. There’s not very many recent stories in here, mostly because I’ve gotten better at identifying pieces that are just not gonna sell before I start submitting them. That said, I have on occasion resurrected a trunk story, spruced it up, and sold it. Often times, that’s because the story has a good premise, but I might not have had the chops to make the most out of it ten years ago. Now, with more experience, I can take some of these flawed pieces and polish them into something sellable.
There you have it. The fates of all my rejected stories. I’ll admit, I’m somewhat surprised at how it all shook out. The fact that the bulk of my rejections come from stories I eventually sell is, to be honest, pretty encouraging, and further proof that selling a story is about putting the right piece in front of the right editor at the right time.
Thoughts on all my no’s and not for us’s? Tell me about it in the comments.
2025: A Short Fiction Rearview Review
Welp, 2025 is over, and it’s time to tally up my submissions, rejections, and acceptances and see how I did. I set some lofty goals for the year, and though I fell short of more than one of them, it wasn’t a terrible year, and in fact, in at least one way, it was one of my best years. Lets get into it.
Short Story Submissions
Here are the basic numbers for my short story submissions in 2025.
- Submissions: 122
- Acceptances: 10
- Rejections: 86
- Pending: 20
- No Response/Withdrawn: 6
- Publications: 8
So, 122 submissions is my record for a single year. I’d hoped to get closer to 150, which would have given me 1,000 submissions total since I started tracking them, but that’s gonna have to wait until the end of Q1 this year. Ten acceptances is solid, and once you factor in pending stories, no responses, and withdrawals, I’m sitting at just over a 10% acceptance rate. Not too bad. That number could even go up if some of the pending subs I sent in 2025 come back as acceptances. (Duotrope counts them for the year a sub was sent not when it was accepted.)
The 86 rejections feels a little light for the number of submissions I sent, honestly. The last time I hit 120 subs, I had over 100 rejections (more acceptances, too). I think some of that has to do with the fact that markets are taking longer to respond to submissions, likely due to an increase in the number of submitters, and some of that likely has to do with an increase in the number of AI submissions.
I also got A LOT of close-but-no-cigar and final-round rejections this year. I haven’t yet confirmed, but it feels like more than any other year. Lots of heartbreakers from pro markets, and it feels like I could have easily had another five or so acceptances if I’d had a little better luck/timing, but, you know, c’est la vie.
Publications
Despite getting ten acceptances, I only managed eight short fiction publications in 2025, and a few of those were from sales I made in 2024. Some of this has to do with pro markets having a longer lead times for publications. For example, the stories I sold to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Abyss & Apex were sent in 2024, accepted in 2025, and will publish in 2026.
Anyway, here are some of my 2025 publications that you can read for free online. (The others are behind a paywall.)
- “Care and Fiending” published by Factor Four Magazine
- “Coin Flip” published by Flash Point SF
- “The Other Side of Empty” published by Dream, Theory Media
- “Thicker Than Water” published by Radon Journal
- “What Hope’s Worth” published by MetaStellar
2025 Goals
As I said at the beginning of the post, I set some lofty goals for 2025 for short fiction. I met some of them, and well, others, not so much. I was tracking them in a bingo format (another goals I failed to meet), which I updated for this post.
Damn! Just missed the O!
As you can see , I did okay with submissions, production, and, of course, rejection goals. I struggled with sales goals. Still, there’s more green than white, so not too terrible. I might do something similar to this for 2026, but I’ll likely tone down the new story and sales goals just a tad. 🙂
And that’s my 2025 short fiction review. How was year in the submission trenches? Tell me about it in the comments.
Ten Years of Rejectomancy – ALL the Numbers
So, this is truly the final post in my Ten Years of Rejectomancy series. As promised, I’m gonna give you ALL the numbers for each year and then a total of subs, rejections, and acceptances for the entire decade (plus the years before and this year). It’s been a blast to look back on the highs and lows of ten-plus years in the submission trenches, and I hope the journey has been inspiring, validating, and make a tad reassuring to those of you new to the submission grind. It’s tough, brutal at times, but if you keep at it, the acceptances do start piling up.
Okay, here’s the numbers for fourteen years of submissions. 🙂
So, in the ten official blog years, I managed 789 submissions and 105 acceptances. Not too bad, and good enough for 13.3% acceptance rate. I was over 15%, but 2023 and 2024 brought my career average down, and it looks like 2025 isn’t going to help much in that department either. Still, averaging ten acceptances per year is pretty solid, I think. You can see the pre-blog years and 2025 year-to-date (which may improve or worsen as I hear back on pending submissions), as well as an overall total for the 14 years I’ve been submitting short stories. I’m closing in on 1,000 submissions and 800 rejections, which are big milestones I should be celebrating in the first half of 2026.
I’d very much like to get back to double digit acceptances per year and push that acceptance percentage up to around 15% again. Things have gotten markedly tougher out there for a number of reasons. An inundation of AI subs at certain markets has increased wait times on submissions for one, and, sadly, there are just fewer speculative markets to submit to these days. I’m not complaining, mind you. You have to roll with the punches in this biz, but it is a noticeable downturn over the last couple of years. I guess it could simply be that I’m writing more garbage than I used to, but the number of final-round rejections I’ve been getting has actually increased, so as much as I’d like to believe I’m just getting worse in the ol’ writing department, that’s probably not true. 🙂
And there you have it, the entirety of my submission career and all ten years of the blog laid out in plain numbers. How’s your 2025 shaping up submissions-wise? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Finally, if you’ve missed any of my Ten Years of Rejectomancy posts and want to catch up, here are the links to all the others in the series.
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: The Pre-Blog Years
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year One – To Pro or Not to Pro
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Two- Maybe I’m Good at This?
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Three – Maybe I’m NOT Good at This?
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Four – Back On Track!
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Five – Consistency is Key
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Six – Best Year EVAR!
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Seven – The Whiplash Effect
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Eight – Solid and Serviceable
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Nine – A Question of Querying
- Ten Years of Rejectomancy: Year Ten – A Decade of Denial
Effectively Wild – A Baseball Horror Story
Night Walk & Other Dark Paths
Acts of War: Flashpoint
Acts of War: Aftershock
Acts of War: Stormbreak
Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 