Content is KING

Content. What is it? I hear a lot about content these days. I've been reading two submissions these last few days that claimed in the queries to have a lot of content. As I started reading I was expecting to feed on a lot of good information, a lot of good sentences, a lot of interesting scenes. I was expecting to eat up the content. I was expecting a good meal of facts, fascinating charaters, unique settings. I wanted to meet someone who interested me, that piqued my curiousity, that invited me to know them. I wanted to taste their meat and potatoes on my tongue. I wanted to smell their fragrance in my nose. I wanted to hear their breathing close to my ear. I wanted intimacy as I read.

What I've gotten so far is an arms-length transaction. I'm feeling like I'm in a courtroom listening to a legal corporate proceeding. No character is showing me their scars. No scene is making me wish I was there. There is no conflict that makes me want to help.

I'm reading Nelson DeMille's, Night Fall and I want to be on that beach in the opening scene. I feel the humidity of the ocean, see the night sky, and understand the anger and tension between the man and the woman. This scene goes on for quite some time. It could easily be too long. But I'm okay with the borderline boring length because I'm eating up the content, I'm involved, I'm intimate with the man and woman, I'm seeing the beach clearly, feeling the bumps in the road they shouldn't be driving on and, even though I know the story-line already, I keep reading because DeMille has invited me right in to the middle of the most revealing parts of the lives of the characters. He's taken me by the hand and lead me step by step in to the essence of the beach, the ocean shore, the night sky. He's provided me with a great meal of content.

If you can serve a meal of content that is so delicious I (the ideal reader, as per Stephen King) will stuff myself silly...keep reading when I should be going to the soccer game, ignore the ringing phone...you will get published and be read widely.

If you provide content that I can't feel, touch, smell, taste, lick, smear, dive in to, snort, rub up against, I'll send it back saying thanks for thinking of Savage Press, but it doesn't meet our needs at this time.