Orca Blog for May: Your Critical First Impression

Excellent observations and examples.

Most writers know that readers for literary journals have to

review hundreds of submissions. In practical terms this means readers may only

give each submission a paragraph or two to make a good impression before

deciding to reject or consider the piece further. That doesn’t give a writer

much of a chance. So what should a writer try to do to engage an Orca reader?

Your opening can establish character, setting, point of

view, conflict, and other aspects. But more importantly it must establish the

voice of the story, and create some connection to the character’s situation,

also known as the stakes.

Let’s look at a couple of examples, one that doesn’t quite

work, and one that does:

Here’s a first paragraph, written by me to approximate many

of the stories we receive in our submission queue:

Jim Stone walked past the gates of O’Hare’s spacious Terminal B, checking his…

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