Tender & Tempting Tales wishes it could make every romance writer’s dreams come true, alas, we’re unable to publish every submission we receive. There are many possible reasons a story is rejected. While we can’t say one of these reasons below is why your story wasn’t chosen, we can say these are the most common reasons why we say no to a story:
1) The story is fine, but not as great as other submissions. With limited space, we take stories that:
- Best fit the theme
- Show creativity or a unique take on the category, theme, or tropes
- Show high quality of writing
How to fix: Have your story critiqued or beta read by readers you can trust to give you feedback on how to improve the story content, as well as quality of writing.
2) Poor quality submission.
This includes problems with the premise of your story and/or poor execution of your premise. We’ll also reject stories that have excessive typos and grammar errors, weak writing, wordiness, and disorganization. Don’t submit anything without revising to fix errors, removing weak words, and checking for clarity and flow.
How to fix: Have your story critiqued or beta read, and have it edited.
3) Failure to follow directions.
There’s a reason why we ask writers to submit their stories the way we do. Deadlines, formatting, themes…make sure you write, format, and submit your story based on our guidelines, to insure your story gets full consideration.
How to fix: Read the submission guidelines. Check them again before you submit to make sure you’ve written a story that fits our request and is formatted correctly.
4. You used AI to generate your prose.
While AI is much improved at this time, our editors are fairly savvy at ferreting out prose that is written by AI. Note that you can use AI for editing or other assisted tasks.
How to fix: Don’t use AI to generate your writing.
5. Not meeting the T&TT Code of Conduct
