Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 3: Writing Samples

Hello and welcome to the third and final instalment of my January 2023 edition of Writing For Black Library here on Track of Words – in this part our nine brilliant Black Library authors are discussing the tricky task of planning out short stories and putting together writing samples. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out the previous two articles first: part one, in which we discussed writing 100-word story pitches, and part two, which was all about what makes a great Space Marine story. If you’ve already read both of those, read on to find out what advice and recommendations our authors have for writing short stories in general.

Once again, before we crack on with the good stuff I’d just like to say a massive thank you to our nine authors for taking the time to contribute to these articles: Jonathan D. Beer, Sarah Cawkwell, Marc Collins, Denny Flowers, David Guymer, Gary Kloster, Jude Reid, Nicholas Wolf and Rob Young. Also the same caveats as I mentioned in the previous parts: these articles are about advice from authors rather than any suggestion that I personally have any insight into the BL open submissions process; and everything here is (in my opinion) great advice, but it’s still subjective. So don’t treat this as gospel, but I hope it will be useful to help steer you in the right direction.

Without further ado then, let’s delve into the interesting questions of figuring out what to write about, and how to put a writing sample together.

Throughout this interview series I wanted to pick the brains of our authors to get a general sense of what makes a great Black Library short story, and I really like this great comment from David Guymer about writing for BL in general, and the 2023 open subs window in particular:

“With the disclaimer that I’ve not spoken with any of the editors involved or have any insider knowledge of what they want, I’d say that they’re probably not looking for anyone to reinvent the wheel. In an open submission like this, they want to see people who know their lore and who can write well. A lot of great writers can’t write 40k. If you know your 40k, then you’re already working with an advantage, so use it. Keep your wacky ‘but what-if…’ ideas in the box for now and concentrate on showcasing how well you can handle the lore with a solidly written story. “

That feels like really valuable advice to start with, and I suspect this is a big part of why BL are asking for Space Marine stories (arguably the most popular of all BL stories) in this particular open subs window.

So what’s the first step? Well this might not fit with everyone’s approach to writing (you can insert the tired old ‘planner vs pantser’ trope here if you want), but I suspect it really is a good idea to spend some time carefully thinking about what you’re going to write.

Dan Abnett’s Kill Hill is one of my personal favourite Space Marine short stories

Plan first

“Writing short stories is a real art,” says Jude Reid. “You’ve got to get all the characterisation and quite a lot of the action of a novel crammed into a much tighter space.”

“Short stories present one of the greatest writing challenges”, agrees Sarah Cawkwell. “Always, always plot out your tale before you start writing it, because your characters WILL inevitably wander off to investigate a noise they heard in the next room and then you waste 2,000 words herding them back again.”

Nicholas Wolf concurs, adding that “a short story really only gives you enough room for one or two compelling scenes, maybe three to four tops, so you have to force yourself to think ‘smaller’ than the grand, epic Space Marine tale you’ve been crafting in your head for the last decade. There simply isn’t enough room.”

It’s not just scenes you’re going to need to be careful with, but characters too. As Reid says, “in short fiction I find that generally there’s room for about four characters (maybe three!) who actually matter to the plot – you might manage more, but I like to keep the focus really tight.”

So maybe you’re thinking about your three or four scenes and characters, but you’re not quite sure what’s going to work. Some of the advice from Part 1 is relevant here, even though it was intended to be about writing pitches – it’s worth revisiting the ‘Know your story’ section at least.

But Reid has some more helpful advice here on a similar note: “I find it helpful to pare the core concept down as cleanly as you can – see if you can describe it in a single sentence (‘when an alien organism gets loose on their spaceship, a crew of deep-space truckers must fight for their lives’, or ‘an ordinary waitress must flee when an evil robot from the future is sent to kill her before she can conceive her future son’).”

I love this! Great suggestion (and something I could see helping when writing reviews, too.)

We’ve talked quite a lot about being careful not to try and cram too much into your story, but at this point it’s also worth mentioning a counterpoint: that as Rob Young says, “you can fit more into a short story than you think, so make sure that you’ve got enough plot for the word count.”

The last thing you want is a short where not enough happens.

Either way, whether you’re trying to work out what to include or what not to include, there are plenty of Black Library short stories out there to draw inspiration from.

“A good place to start,” says Reid, “is to look at short stories you’ve really enjoyed and deconstruct them – what are the plot elements that keep you interested, what makes the characters compelling, where did you find yourself unable to put the book down?”

Young agrees. “Reading other shorts is invaluable for getting your head around the difference in pacing between a short and a novel, so invest some time in research if you can. “

Anthologies like this are a great bet if you’re looking for short story inspiration

Once you’ve given it some thought and settled on what you want your story to be about, there are also some technical aspects worth considering, and Reid offers some fantastic suggestions on these.

“Work out who your point-of-view character is going to be – whose eyes are we seeing this story through? A heroic Space Marine? A loyal serf? An enemy? The events of the story could be the same, but depending on who is telling us about it, the reader’s experience is going to be totally different.

“It’s also worth considering whether you’re going to tell it in first person (‘I fired my bolt-pistol…’) or third person (‘he ran screaming from the nurgling…’). Occasionally people do write in the second person (‘you lifted your blade and lunged for the heretic…) but it can read a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure story, and isn’t always a popular choice with readers!

“Another thing to decide is whether you’re going to tell the story in past tense (‘the Space Marine drew his sword and strode forward’) or present tense (‘the Space Marine draws his sword and strides forward’). Past tense is the classic choice and is almost invisible to the reader, while present tense can give the story a real sense of immediacy – there’s no right answer, but you do have to pick one and stick to it for the duration of the story.”

Consider what to include

I see two questions crop up a lot when people are talking about the BL open submissions windows: ‘should I write the whole story or just the 500-word sample?’, and ‘what should my sample contain (i.e. whether it should be all-action, or all-character, etc.)?’

I don’t think there’s necessarily a ‘right’ answer to either of these questions, but what do our authors have to say on them?

Another great 40k anthology, this time as part of French’s ongoing series The Horusian Wars

“Keep in mind your writing sample is not your story,” says Denny Flowers. “It is a demonstration of your talent, and the only means by which an editor can judge your writing. (The pitch is more about your plotting than actual writing). So, consider your brief. Have you been asked to show you can write action? Then make sure this extract shows it.”

Young suggests that “the writing sample should demonstrate your skill but also your writing style – moments of high tension are great for this, especially if they show your character’s personality coming through.”

“Try to include some dialogue, a little action, a little description,” recommends Cawkwell. “Be honest with your style. Don’t use language and prose that you wouldn’t use when generally writing because you’re setting yourself a goal that you may later struggle to maintain. YOU are the writer here, you’re not going to score points through the art of imitation.”

As for whether to just write the sample? Well it’s up to you, but as Flowers says “you don’t have to write the whole story at this point. Just pick a moment that best serves to highlight your skill and your ability to follow a brief. It might well not actually end up in the final story. Mine certainly didn’t when I submitted in 2018 (neither did the characters or the scenario come to that).”

Whether you write the whole thing or not is, of course, entirely up to you. But there’s another great piece of advice regarding your writing sample that several authors recommended.

Marc Collins suggests that you “don’t start at the beginning. Flesh out your story ideas and pick the best bit, the most evocative bit, the part which speaks to you and your story most of all. Think about what aspects of the setting you are most passionate about. Something that will sing when you write it.”

Reid agrees: “your 500 word sample doesn’t have to be the start of the story – I’d suggest picking the bit that lets you show off your writing skills as well as what makes the story unique and interesting. I always want to leave it on a cliffhanger!”

“Cherry-pick the 500 words that best show-off what you and your story have to offer (provided it makes sense on its own),” suggests Guymer, “and go with that. It’s what I did for my entry to the 2011 submission window and it worked out all right for me!”

Now write

Whether you’ve decided to write the whole thing and pick your favourite part, or just focus on the 500 word sample, now you need to actually write the damn thing. Knowing how to start a story, however, can be tricky. Some of the advice in this section is perhaps more relevant to writing a whole story, but our authors came up with loads of great suggestions for how to get started.

The various Inferno! anthologies are great places to look for recent BL short stories

“Probably the most consistent feedback I’ve gotten from my editors,” says Wolf, “is to start stories ‘in media res’, where the action is already happening rather than spending 30% of my words setting up a broad narrative arc that just isn’t going to be able to play out in the space provided.”

“Start late and leave early,” agrees Flowers. “A short story is a great excuse to focus on a moment in time. You could open with your protagonist reloading for the final time, his comrades dead already around him, the enemy about to launch their final attack. Or open with the battle-worn squad having finally reached their destination, the object of their quest nearly in sight. There’s no need to build the tension, you can start as hot as you like!”

Jonathan D. Beer hones in on the very beginning of the sample/story. “If I had to pick one thing to talk about,” he says, “it’d be the opening line. It’s your first impression with your reader, and the first point at which you can snare their interest in what’s to come.

“There are loads of lists of great opening lines, and no doubt you will have some that stick in your mind. Obviously, don’t let obsessing about your first line prevent you from getting the rest of the sample down on the page. But, if you have given yourself the time before the submissions window opens, I would recommend taking a step back once it is done and thinking about how well your opening line sets up what follows.”

It’s a point that Reid agrees with. “It’s good to hook your reader early with an exciting or intriguing first sentence, and I also like to have a big twist or escalation at the half-way point to sustain the reader’s interest.”

“There are lots of ways to engage a reader,” suggests Beer, “but I think one of the most effective is to get them asking questions. Why has the protagonist lost all hope? Why are these two characters arguing, and what set them at odds? What change in your character’s status quo does this story introduce, and what does it mean to them?

“These questions don’t necessarily need to drive the entire plot of your story, but it doesn’t hurt to be up front with the theme and conflict that will drive things for the next 5,000-10,000 words.

“If you’ll permit me a sneaky bit of self-promotion,” Beer continues [alright, just this once! – ToW], “the opening pages of my first short story for Black Library, Old Instincts (in the Warhammer Crime anthology Broken City), are largely unchanged from the writing sample I submitted back in 2019. It’s a little longer, and has benefited from an editorial eye, but otherwise it cleaves pretty close to that initial submission.”

If you’ve decided to write your whole story, and not just the 500-word sample, then what about the ending? Well, Flowers has a suggestion for you:

“Make it feel that the world continues after the story ends. Our surviving soldiers will face another war, or perhaps their failure to stop a ritual will beget Armageddon. You can cut away as the portal opens and the darkness swallows the world, or as our captain takes one last look at the fallen and wonders if it’s even worth it anymore.”

And as a final point in this section, it wouldn’t be an article on writing advice without at least one recommendation for further reading material on the art of writing itself. “There are lots of books on story structure out there,” suggests Reid, “but the ones I come back to time and time again are Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (which is actually about screenwriting, but the structure works really well for short fiction) and On Writing by Stephen King, which is a brilliant guide to both the writing life and how to continually improve your own skills.”

Review

However much you’ve chosen to write, probably the most important thing is to actually get it written. As Sarah Cawkwell recommends, “focus on getting the words down first. Don’t second-guess yourself. You can edit afterwards!”

Which brings us nicely onto reviewing and editing what you’ve written. I can say from experience that very few pieces of writing, of any sort (in my case mostly reviews and articles), are actually finished once you’ve got to the end. It’s always worth reviewing what you’ve written, and in some cases there will be plenty to do in order to get your writing as good as it can be, and/or to the point at which it fits the brief.

Reviewing your work and making edits isn’t always easy though, so what advice do our authors have for how to do this?

As Wolf says, “the typical length for a short story is somewhere between 5,000 – 10,000 words, and let me tell you something for free, that number vanishes fast. Nearly every first draft I’ve ever turned in has exceeded the requested word count, forcing me to go back through and make hard choices about sentences, paragraphs, or even whole scenes that end up being cut. A more sleek, streamlined narrative is almost always superior to a more overwrought one. In practice, this means being very intentional not only about what happens in your narrative, but how you tell it. “

Make sure you check out all the other writing-related articles on ToW too

One thing to consider when trying to streamline your writing is how much detail to include, and Wolf offers some good advice here. “Short stories are generally written for an audience that is already familiar with setting, background, lore, etc, so don’t need to get bogged down on those details unless it’s new information to an established fan of the series. Functionally, this allows you to spend your words describing a unique setting or a character’s driving motivation rather than reiterating background information on, say, how a Space Marine is made.”

That’s a great point. But what about your writing itself? How do you identify what does and doesn’t work in your actual prose?

“One of the tips I always give,” says Cawkwell, “is to read your pitch or story aloud. This helps you appreciate the flow of your own words and sentences.”

Collins’ recommendation is simply to “go over your work over and over. Any little flaw can scupper your chances. Be focused. Polish and perfect.”

Can you see a theme developing here?

“Check your work and check it again,” suggests Flowers. “Then get someone else to do it. Twice. Seriously, you need to remember there is some poor sod who has to read every submission. Anyone who has sifted applications knows that after a while your brain starts zooming in on flaws and errors. You don’t want a couple of silly mistakes to nudge you into the reject pile. Typos might not seem like a big deal, but they can give the impression you’re slapdash. If you are going to get rejected make sure it’s for your work, not your poor presentation.”

That’s a great point about asking someone else to look over your work, and something that Gary Kloster advises too. “My biggest recommendation would be to line up some readers. Having someone else look at your draft is incredibly useful, and not just because they might catch some of your typos – though that is handy. It’s valuable to know what worked for them, what didn’t, and if they had trouble understanding what was going on.

“When you’re picking out a writing sample, you want something that’s going to illustrate your strengths – whether that’s a great piece of dialogue, an amazing action scene, or some brilliant description. And it helps to have other people pick out those scenes, to tell you what caught their attention, because sometimes it’s not what you might have thought.”

Be persistent, and submit something

We’ve nearly reached the end of this article, and indeed the trio of articles bringing together advice and ideas from our nine Black Library authors. To finish off though, what final pieces of advice do the authors have?

Denny Flowers’ advice is “don’t obsess with gaming the system and trying to figure out the perfect formula for getting through the first stage. Whatever story you come up with there will probably be someone who does something similar. So don’t worry about it. Focus on a story you can do well and a Space Marine Chapter you know well. We all have strengths and weaknesses as writers, and to get your foot in the door you need to highlight the former and mitigate the latter. I think I work best on smaller scale moments, so I might be tempted by a duel or squad based infiltration. If you have a gift for describing sweeping engagements then do that.”

I really love this from Rob Young: “don’t be afraid to submit something. The worst Black Library can say is no thanks, but they could just as easily say yes. And, if they do say no, write it anyway.”

“Finally,” offers Jude Reid, “it’s important to say that like any skill, writing takes practice, and every published writer I know (including me) has had their work rejected dozens if not hundreds of times. Persistence is the key. Good luck, and keep writing.”

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So with that, we really have reached the end. I hope you’ve found this article useful, and can take lots of useful advice away from our authors’ recommendations about short stories and writing samples. Likewise, I hope this whole three-part series – including the previous two instalments about writing pitch summaries and what makes a great Space Marine story – has been interesting and helpful!

For one final time, let’s say an enormous thank you to all nine authors for taking the time to talk to me, and for sharing their advice and ideas with us all! Check out the bios below if you want to know more about any of these authors.

The three topics in these articles are obviously directly related to the 2023 open subs window, but I think the answers are going to be relevant under any circumstances really, so do refer back to them even if you’re looking at this after the window has closed. Similarly, the vast majority of the earlier ‘Writing for BL’ articles and interviews I’ve put together are still very much worth reading and thinking about, so make sure you check those out too. You can find all of them on the Writing Resources page.

About the authors

Jonathan D. Beer is a science fiction and alternative history writer, whose stories for Black Library have appeared in the anthologies Broken City and Sanction and Sin, and in the Warhammer Crime Week 2022.

Sarah Cawkwell is a freelance writer based in northeast England. Her work for Black Library include the Silver Skulls novels The Gildar Rift and Portents, and the Architect of Fate novella, Accursed Eternity. For Warhammer, she is best known for her stories featuring the daemon princess of Khorne, Valkia the Bloody.

Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Grim Repast is his first novel for Black Library. He is also the writer of the short stories Ghosts of Iron, Respite’s End, and Champions, All for Warhammer 40,000, and Cold Cases for Warhammer Crime. When not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

Denny Flowers is the author of the novels Fire Made Flesh and Outgunned, the novella Low Lives and several short stories. He lives in Kent with his wife and son, and has no proven connection with House Delaque.

David Guymer is a scientist and writer from England. His work includes many novels in the New York Times-bestselling Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes, notably Headtaker and Gotrek & Felix: Slayer, and the bestselling audio drama Realmslayer. He has also contributed to fantastical worlds in video games, tabletop RPGs, and board games.

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he has written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

Jude Reid lives in Glasgow with her husband and two daughters, and writes in the narrow gaps between full-time work as a surgeon, wrangling her kids and failing to tire out a border collie. In what little free time she has, she enjoys tabletop roleplaying, ITF Tae Kwon Do and inadvisably climbing big hills.

Nicholas Wolf is an author, artist and occasional musician. He’s written science fiction for several publications, and his work includes the Warhammer 40,000 short stories Reborn and Negavolt for Black Library. He lives and works in Arizona, with his family.

Rob Young is a copywriter and graphic designer from Lancashire. When he’s not reading or writing, you’ll find him working on his latest Warhammer project. The Roar of the Void is Rob’s first story for Black Library.

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