You submitted in Comic Sans.
You submitted in Franklin Gothic.
You submitted in single-space.
You submitted in size 8.
You submitted in size 16.
You said, I think you’ll find this interesting, I’m really proud of [this], or You’ll love this, in your cover letter.
You didn’t bother to write a cover letter.
You fail to exhibit a mastery of English Grammar.
You fail to exhibit a working knowledge of the English Language.
You use ampersands.
You use and/or three or four times.
You use too many…dot-dot-dots…
You say like, like way too many times.
Your self-congratulatory essay about being an Ivy Leaguer is very self-congratulatory.
Your feminist essay about your terrible ex-boyfriend is pretty feminist.
Half the story is narrated in French.
There are lots of clichés.
It is offensive.
It is offensive on multiple levels.
The first sentence takes up the entire first paragraph.
The first sentence takes up the entire first page.
The first page is all dialogue.
You say, she says, happily.
You say, she says, peevishly and inappropriately.
You say, she says, like a falcon floating on a warm weather wind.
You describe the misty landscape a lot.
You describe a glint in someone’s eye more than once.
You(r characters) are prejudice.
You(r characters) are misogynistic.
You(r characters) are phony.
The characters are animals.
The characters are plants and animals.
The characters are drunk the entire time.
The characters are named Bruce, Beverly, Bert, and Benny.
The characters are named Ping, Ling, Wing, Singh, and Geraldo.
Your characters have a habit of saying, “Cool-beans,” “Giddy-up,” “Right-e-o,” “Aw Jeez,” “For sure,” “You go, girl,” “YOLO,” or “LOL.”
Your southern-accented first-person narrator reckons everything.
Your characters are bored.
I’m bored.
The title is named after a movie.
The title is “Adventure to Nowhere”
The title is “Choas and Beautiful”
The title is “My Father’s Secret Garden”
The title is “A Bad Idea”
The title is “Politics: A Manifesto”
The character in the story is really You.
The character is really Me.
The character is really Us.
The character is a symbol of a man’s transcendence of gender identity. Actually, that was cool.
The character is a caricature.
You have multiple paragraphs that start: And then…
It ends: And then he died, suddenly.
It ends: And then he became someone different.
In the end it was all just a dream.
Jeremy Scheuer 