YOUR OPPORTUNITIES IN WRITING First complete survey in book form THE FREE LANCE WRITER'S What the Critics See in It The Independent: "It is doubtful if anyone has collected before so much useful information as is to be found in this volume arranged by the editor of THE WRITER. From Christmas greeting cards to the novel itself chapters run completely covering the field. each section being written by one whose conspicuous success in that line of endeavor makes his comments of really practical value." Cincinnati Times Star: "A book of great importance and inestimable value." Oakland Tribune: "It is a volume for the table of everyone who would earn money by pounding a typewriter or pushing a pen, for it is written by men and women who are of the craft and know its secrets." Seattle Post Intelligencer: "Of all books purposing to help the beginning writer-and one that can be of use to professional writers too THE FREE LANCE WRITER'S HANDBOOK is the best." 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THE WRITER'S DIRECTORY OF PERIODICALS THE fourth printing of this Directory—which is constantly being revised and enlarged began in THE WRITER for July, 1922. The information for it, showing the manuscript market and the manuscript requirements of the various publications listed, is gathered directly from the cditors of the periodicals. Great pains are taken to make the information accurate and the Directory complete. Before submitting manuscripts to any publication, it is advisable to secure a sample copy. (Continued from April WRITER) THRIFT MAGAZINE (M), 9 East 46th st., New York. J. C. Blash, editor. All material furnished by the staff. Not in the market for manuscripts. THRILLING TALES (M), 220 West 42d st., New York. $2.00; 20c. Horace J. Gardner, editor. Uses only short stories, of from 3,000 to 5,000 words, mystery and Western stories with thrilling action. Does not buy photographs, and pays from five to ten dollars a story. TIME (W), Penton Building, Cleveland, Ohio. $5.00; 15c. Henry R. Luce, editor. A weekly news-magazine, aiming to give complete accounts of the week's developments in politics, art, science, foreign news, sports, and books. Articles are written by a special staff of editors, and the magazine is not in the market for manuscripts of any kind. TODAY'S HOUSEWIFE (M), 18 East 18th st., New York. 50c; 10c. Anne M. Griffin, editor. Devoted to woman and the home. Uses no fiction, but features such departments as the Household, From One Housewife to Another, Beauty, Recipes, Mother and Child, and Money Making at Home. Uses general articles pertaining to the home, and a small amount of poetry. TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE (B-M), Street & Smith Corporation, 79 Seventh ave., New York. $3.00; 15c. George Briggs Jenkins, editor. Prints good stories of all kinds Western, sport, mystery, adventure, humor, detective, and combinations of these, as humorous Western, mystery stories with a sport element, humorous detective, etc. — preferably told in the third person, as long as they are clean, have life, and "get somewhere." Uses short stories, novels, novelettes, serials, poetry, and humorous verse. Sets length limit for short stories at from 1,500 to 8,000 words; for novels at from 25,000 to 35,000 words, for novelettes at from 10,000 to 15,000 words, and for serials at from 50,000 to 70,000 words. Does not buy photographs, and pays, at a minimum rate of one cent a word, on acceptance. TORCHBEARER (W), 810 Broadway, Nashville, Tenn. Edwin B. Chappell, Jr., editor. A magazine for girls of from ten to seven teen. Uses short stories, serials, general articles, handicraft material, and poetry. Fiction should treat of the wholesome, healthy, natural type of girl, with a preference for boarding-school, adventure, and mystery stories. Sets length limit for short stories at 3,000 words, and for serials at 40,000 words, buys photographs, and pays, at a minimum rate of from one-half cent to one cent a word, on acceptance. TOWN AND COUNTRY (S-M), The Stuyvesant Company, 119 West 40th st., New York. $7.50; 50c. H. J. Whigham, editor. An illustrated society journal, devoted to the fields of art, drama, amateur sports, society, country house, and country club life. TOWN TOPICS (W), 2 West 45th st., New York. $10; 25c. J. Mayer, editor. A society paper, using short stories, poems, humorous verse, and jokes, but no serials, novelettes, general articles, or plays. Everything must concern and interest society or the arts, and must be light and easily read. Sets length limit at from 500 to 1,500 words, buys photographs, and pays, at a minimum rate of one cent a word, the first of the month following publication. TRAINED NURSE AND HOSPITAL REVIEW (M), 468 Fourth ave., New York. 3.00; 35c. Meta R. Pennock, editor. Especially desires practical descriptions of new nursing methods or devices used in hospitals or homes; articles by doctors or nurses on etiology, or treatment, or case reports showing results of special therapy; articles of technical and semitechnical character giving community developments in nutrition, hospital management or publicity, and public welfare. Prints a fiction story in August and at Christmas, and, occasionally, suitable poetry. Sets length limit at from 2,800 to 3,500 words, buys photographs when authorizing the taking of them, or when using those taken or collected by the author, and pays, from one-half cent to two cents a word, on publication. Travel (M), Robert M. McBride Company, 9 West 16th st., New York. $4.00; 35c. Edward Hale Bierstadt, editor. Uses travel articles that are informative and interpretative, and not mere description. Sets length limit at 5,000 words, preferring 3,500, buys photographs only to go with text, at the rate of one dollar each, and pays, at a minimum rate of ten dollars a thousand words, on publication. CONTINUED ON INSIDE BACK COVER CAN AUTHORS' MONTHLY FORUM J Volume 39 BOSTON, May, 1927 Number 5 SPEAK Beginning the Story BY DEX VOLNEY PEAKING from the buying desk of an editorial office, I observe a good deal of trouble on the part of many fiction writers in opening out their stories. There are those who plunge in with something resembling the heavy splash of a new coal-barge being launched off the ways, while others cautiously and elaborately stalk their theme like a Mexican-Indian crawling around trying to find a satisfactory vantage-point from which to shoot an enemy in the back. A good deal has been said and written about how a writer should begin a fiction story. It has been largely agreed that he should present as speedily and skilfully as possible a picture or a situation that will carry the reader understandingly into the current of the narrative. This is true as far as it goes; but it is not quite broad enough to be taken as a universal necessity in story beginnings. There is a more fundamental requirement to be held in mind in opening (and writing) a story; and this is simply to be strikingly interesting. Be graceful, debonair, talkative, speechless, grotesque, surly, hard-shooting and hard-riding - but be interesting. Within the field covered by any given fiction magazine there is almost no other unabatable demand. obvious as last week's bread; but it really is not as anybody knows who sees some of the thousands of stories that never get lifted out of their plain dress of typewriter-paper to be sent to a literary fest Cinderella-like in scintillating print. Many of the stories that come in, even from writers who have sold considerable amounts of material, are hopelessly and irretrievably dull - dull alike all the way through, but extra dull in their beginnings. They are like underpowered airplanes that never get off the ground. Notwithstanding the numerous warnings in fiction-writing books and magazines against the diffuse, weak, and laborious introduction, manuscripts constantly appear that impede the reader most inconsiderately. Here is the astonishing way one author, evidently a strong-lunged person, has of blowing out his cheeks and holding his breath over nothing of much importance: "On his first arrival in Peking, in an environment, that is to say, where at the time Chank Tso Lin. the Chinese Avenger, as the younger enlightened element of Chihli Province styled him-though the old and conservative foreign-bought or foreignsinged mandarins saw in him only a destroying and accursed image-breaker — had gloriously levelled all opposition and was in supreme control, where his venerated parents and their friends, who had lived Such a declaration may look as belated and by the Book of Three Thousand Rules of Politeness since the day they were born and represented the crystallized and lifeless thought of as many years which had now been submerged in a flood of (to them at least) virulent modernist theories and actions expressed in such an iconoclastic paper, say, as 'The Aroused China,' were deploring the rending and tearing away of all the old religious beliefs and idols, Hang Far Low, graduated in chemistry from the University of California and returned from over the Pacific after ten years' absence, found himself in a turmoil to which he could not adjust himself, in its opposing pull of new beliefs and the quaint expectation of the old mandarin, Hang Far Low, Sr., that he would continue to show respect and love for the ancient ways of his forefathers." This formidable passage unmistakably indicates that Hang Far Low, the younger, was in a peculiar mess of trouble and the author seems to be in one also. The material of this introduction may have possibilities; but the rhetoric has none. It looks as if it were the result of a strenuous but misdirected effort to develop a distinctive style. Readers of this day won't excavate through such a landslide of writing. By the time even a skilled editorial reader has concentrated sufficiently on such a barrier of words to wring forth their meaning, he is already glancing hopefully over the top of the page at the next manuscript on the bale-like pile in front of him- though he probably will though he probably will finish reading the intricate Chinese mystery in his hands, if only to satisfy his resolute curiosity as to what it's all about. Editors, fortunately for authors, usually have an ample share of human inquisitiveness. In rather rude and ungentle contrast to the brain-fagging picture of the environment of Hang Far Low, is this opening of a yarn taken at random from Action Stories: "The door marked 'sheriff' crashed open with a report like a pistol-shot. Whip Kennedy, long and gangling, plunged out as though he had been kicked." Critics of a certain type- many of them with unsold goo-and-dishwater stories of their own in their hip pockets - may turn up their noses in supercilious contempt of these western gun-devil yarns, but the tough and unchewable fact remains that somebody gets checks for writing them. While this bursting out of the occupant of the sheriff's office is not to be set up as a universal model of "How to open a fiction story," and while one would not expect to find such an introduction to anything in the Atlantic Monthly or the Golden Book, it does nevertheless get across in its splashing, crackling way. If not a thing of beauty, it is clear and vigorous; and even the editor of the Dial would have to admit that it has interest. The cardinal difficulty of these six-gunactioned story openings is that they really establish a level of interest too high to be held up consistently. Some of these yarns that open with a bang of cowboy artillery slump suddenly into the meandering silence of an uninhabited desert and never wake up again for a thousand words. It is better not to shoot too many men right in the opening sentence of even an action story preferably not over three. This, of course, makes a tame beginning; but there is less danger of shooting oneself out of ammunition in the middle of the second page. Violently strained action is not essential to interest in the story opening. A take-off with a speech by, or a comment upon one of the principal characters, artistically handled, is adequate; and although the opening of action is perhaps the best, it should not be keyed too tensely. Observe the graceful restraint in the following introduction of H. W. Dwight's "In the Pasha's Garden," in the December, 1926, Golden Book: "As the caïque glided up to the garden gate, the three boatmen rose from their sheepskins and caught hold of iron clamps set in the marble of the quay. Shaban, the grizzled gatekeeper, who was standing at the top of the water-steps with his hands folded respectfully in front of him, came salaaming down to help his master out." Innumerable warnings have been addressed to beginning writers of fiction against opening a story with a generality. In the face of such warnings, the beginner constantly sees stories opened in this way in some of |