Helpline
Your writing problems solved with advice from Diana Cambridge
Email your queries to Diana (please include home-town details) at: diana@dianacambridge.co.uk or send them to: Helpline, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD. She will answer as many letters as she can on the page, but regrets that she cannot enter into individual correspondence. Publication of answers may take several months. Helpline cannot personally answer queries such as where to offer work, or comment on manuscripts, which you are asked not to send.
Q I submitted to a respected national short story magazine which gave me a critique of my piece.
I had written it in the third person, a technique they told me ‘used to be common in Victorian short tales (and worked well sometimes), but it is rarely used in modern short story writing and it is not a style you are likely to see in our magazine. I would therefore advise against it.’
I respect the critique, but it is not something I’ve heard of. Looking back, about 75% of my stories are in the third person and personally can’t see the harm in this. However I now see that the three that have been short-listed in WM competitions are in the first person as, I note, are the two winning entries published in November’s issue.