Editor Insights: After Dinner Conversation
Founder and Editor-in-Chief Kolby Granville on “short stories for long discussions”
When researching literary magazines for your work, it can be difficult to get a clear sense of what a publication is looking for, even if you take the time to read their latest issue. However, this is not the case for After Dinner Conversation, which is looking for a very particular type of story. I recently sat down with Kolby Granville, founder and editor-in-chief at After Dinner Conversation, to get more insight into what they are (and aren’t) looking for.
“Where Philosophy Meets Fiction”
“We have a very specific niche,” says Kolby. “We’re looking for a short scenario story that asks an ethical question, forces the reader to make a decision.”
Here are some examples of what an ethical question might be:
If everyone is cheating, and everyone knows everyone is cheating, is it still cheating? (think the Lance Armstrong doping scandal)
Can good ideas come from horrible sources/motivation? (think the Autobahn constructed by Hitler)
Under what situations, if any, is it okay to take your own life? (for instance, if a person is on the top floor of a burning building, and help might come, or they might live, but in horrible pain forever)
However, there are a couple common pitfalls to avoid. First, make sure the question isn’t too vague, such as “What is love?” Second, the answer to the question shouldn’t be clear cut — there should be a gray area. For instance, should you put down a sick dog that’s terminal and suffering? The right choice, though a difficult one, is pretty obvious: yes. There’s no gray area.
“There are questions sometimes where a person may or may not do the right thing, but we all know what they should do, and those aren’t stories that are particularly interesting to talk about,” says Kolby. “We’re looking for stories that encourage discussion, where two reasonable people can reasonably disagree about what the answer is or what should happen.”
To encourage that dialogue, After Dinner Conversation includes five discussion questions for the reader to consider after each story. Questions like, why did the characters make the choices they made? What’s the right choice in this situation?
What They’re Not Looking For:
Seven years in, Kolby and his editorial team have read a lot of stories, and because of this, there are certain types of stories they’re no longer looking for:
Anything involving going back in time to change the future
Anything juxtaposing the needs of the many versus the one (such as harvesting organs from one person to save five)
Medical right-to-die stories
Meeting God and asking questions
“There’s nothing wrong with these, we’ve just gotten so many of them,” says Kolby. “You’re treading a path so well-trodden, it’s really hard to come up with something new.”
Set Your Story Up for Success
When it comes to working with writers on revisions, Kolby says there is really only one thing they’re willing to work with writers on, and that’s changing where the story begins.
“In probably 20% of the stories we publish, the writer will sort of world-build while they’re writing it, and then once they’ve built the world, they’ll start the story. And that works for a novel — in fact, you should probably do that for a novel. But not for a short story. I understand you needed those four pages, because you’re creating everything, but I don’t need those four pages. And so, the one thing that I will do is I’ll say, ‘hey, we’ll publish this if this sentence is the first line of your story and you just cut everything before it,’ because that’s a really easy edit.”
So, how do you know where your story should begin? For After Dinner Conversation, Kolby recommends starting where your main character is about to make the first decision. Everything prior to that is just the writer warming up.
“Generally speaking, in the first 500 to 1,000 words, I should have a pretty good sense of what the problem of the story is going to be,” says Kolby. “I don’t have to know the answer yet, but if I’m three pages in, and I can’t figure out that it’s about whether or not to tell your wife you’re cheating on her, why were those three pages in there?”
Stick the Landing
In general, endings are one of the common places where a “yes” can turn into a “no” on a submission. Since After Dinner Conversation is focused on stories that encourage discussion, make sure you avoid a neat and tidy ending that leaves the reader with nothing to debate.
“The biggest mistake I see is people write themselves into a problem that doesn’t tie up nicely in a bow, so their solution is to try and make a reflexive, reflective hanging paragraph: and he looked at her, and thought, she looks just like my daughter, and he paused, and then looked at a tree as a leaf fell. And I’m just like okay, so clearly you wrote yourself into a position where that internal reaction has to be the end of the story as opposed to the thing that happens that ends your story.”
So, how do we avoid doing this?
“Usually, the solution to the end of the story is something has to come at the beginning of the story. You have to create a character flaw, or you have to create a problem, or you have to create a Chekhov’s gun sort-of-situation so that it pays off later.”
What the Editorial Process Looks Like
After Dinner Conversation is open year-round and gets about 200 submissions a month. Of those 200, about 40 make it to Kolby, and of those 40, ultimately 5 or 6 will get acceptance emails.
For each submission that comes in, there are two readers. Each one will score the submission on a scale of 0-3 for the following criteria:
The quality of the writing
About 70-80% of their submissions score a 2 or higher in this category.
Is this what we publish?
Only about 1/3 of stories score a 2 or higher in this category.
A 2 generally means ‘good enough,’ and a 3 means it’s great. If the two readers disagree, then the submission goes to a third reader to be the tiebreaker.
If the readers agree a piece doesn’t score well on those two criteria, then the writer gets a form rejection.
If at least two readers agree it’s pretty good (scoring a 2 or higher on both criteria), then it goes to Kolby to read.
Of the submissions Kolby reads, ~20% receive an acceptance letter. For those that don’t, he sends a personal rejection.
Tips for Submitting
No Cover Letter: Many writers will be happy to hear that After Dinner Conversation doesn’t want a cover letter. “The less we know about you, the better,” says Kolby. “The reason for that is I want to come in with fresh eyes.”
Length: Make the story as short as it can be and still convey the point. According to Kolby, that’s usually 2,500 to 4,000 words. However, they accept work between 1,500 and 7,000 words.
Formatting: Because they publish on ebooks, mobile, and desktop, they avoid pieces with complicated formatting, which can become problematic when people read on different screen sizes.
Genre: When it comes to genre, After Dinner Conversation will publish anything as long as it asks important ethical/philosophical questions. So far, they haven’t published any westerns or erotica, but they absolutely would if the story was the right fit.
Final Thoughts
I know that as writers, we can get tired of being told to read a magazine before submitting. But in the case of After Dinner Conversation, it’s actually really important. The good news is you can get a free sample online.
“Once somebody gets tuned in to what we do, they can crank out stories for us all day long,” says Kolby. “Even though we only have a 3% acceptance rate, we have authors that have been published with us 2 and 3 times now. The reason for that is they’ve read us so much, they can crank stories out all day. We’d love to publish 80% of what gets submitted to us because we’re getting the kinds of things that we want.”
👋 Hi there, and thanks for reading! I’m Janelle Drumwright, a writer, teacher at The Writers Studio, and former editor and reader at Carve Magazine and The Masters Review. I help writers strengthen and submit their work through critique, lit mag recommendations, and sending out submissions on their behalf. Interested in working together? Visit janellewrites.com for more info.
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