SQF revisited - Juked

Original post date: 2/1/2010.

• Editor's Note: Ryan Ridge is the current editor of Juked. However, the editorial philosophy remains the same. John W. Wang is now Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor for the  Potomac Review. The editorial philosophy stated here carries over to his current position.

Juked accepts stories of any length as long as they fit the magazine's editorial style. Any author wishing to submit a work to Juked should read a few issues before sending a story. A note on the web site states that longer stories have been preferred by the editors.


SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a story and why?

JW: I don’t think anyone goes into a story with a specific checklist of things they look for. Or maybe I should just speak for myself: I go into each story with as open a mind as I can. We publish a wide range of material.  Sometimes it’s more “experimental,” sometimes it’s more “traditional,” which I take to be mostly a categorization of form. I suppose the best thing a story can have going for it is a strong, compelling voice.  You look at all the rules being broken by various stories, and if they get away with what they’re doing, nearly all the time you can attribute it to voice. There’s a reason for that: a strong, compelling voice denotes sympathy and understanding for a major character, and if you have a complex and compelling character, we’re likely to follow and see where the story goes. That said, I do look for well-crafted sentences, something to suggest care was put into the actual writing. The language is our set of tools, after all, and it’s pretty apparent whether a writer has spent time working with it. I suppose related to both is the complexity of the writing, whether the sentences reveal nuance and aren’t just direct statements.

Read the complete interview here.