The Saturday Evening Post
George Horace Lorimer, the editor-in-chief of The Saturday Evening Post, said quite frankly when asked to write briefly his attitude and point of view in the selecting of fiction for his magazine that neither he nor his staff were willing to regard the Post as a training school for young writers.
He went on to say that he and his associates felt that the circulation of the magazine, the fact that it bought more fiction than any other American periodical, paid well and quickly, and published without great delay, made it inevitable that most writers who entered the profession would in the course of events submit material to the Post. Should a story by an unknown writer please one of the staff readers it would then be submitted to him and to his immediate associates for acceptance or rejection. Should this same writer succeed equally with subsequent stories, the Post’s editors would then personally consult with this author as to the magazine’s immediate needs and help by suggestion and advice to make his or her material more available from the Post viewpoint.
In this connection it is interesting to note that while their list of writers includes many of the best-known names among American short story writers, the magazine has also accepted and published the stories of many writers who had had no previous audience and whose names were until the time of their appearance in the Post wholly unknown.
While it is perhaps impossible to state tersely what the Post wants, and while Mr. Lorimer may hesitate to speak didactically as to what is and what is not a good short story, the earnest student can easily discern certain of the Post requirements by a study of the magazine. That the stories are inclined to run to a certain more or less definite length; that the majority are American in both setting and characters; that they conform to a certain standard of writing and method of treatment is at once apparent, and certain errors of judgment in submission may easily be avoided.
The Saturday Evening Post,
Curtis Publishing Co.,
Independence Square,
Philadelphia, Pa.