Meet the Teaching Artist: Michael Costaris on First Impressions, the Slush Pile, and Getting Published
by Writing Workshops Staff
3 hours ago
Michael Costaris is teaching Premise to Publish: Fiction Writing Seminar, a one-time online seminar at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
Michael Costaris knows exactly when he stops reading your story. As Fiction Editor at The Adroit Journal, he has spent years sifting through thousands of submissions, and he'll tell you plainly: most writers lose him before the end of the first paragraph. Not because the writing is bad, necessarily, but because the opening hasn't earned his attention.
That bluntness is what makes his upcoming Premise to Publish: Fiction Writing Seminar so valuable. This three-hour online seminar moves through three concentrated segments: how to distinguish a viable short story premise from a novel-length idea; the craft moves that get a story past the slush pile (precision in description, disciplined pacing, openings that hook); and the business of literary publishing, from identifying strategically valuable magazines to writing a cover letter that doesn't sabotage you.
Costaris, whose fiction has appeared in The Baffler, Maudlin House, X-R-A-Y, and Toronto Journal, is also a regular contributor to Becky Tuch's LitMag News and a certified teacher with fifteen years of classroom experience. He reads as an editor and writes as someone whose first publication was rejected 78 times before it found a home. Students will leave with a workshopped opening line, a logline-based story outline borrowed from screenwriting, a cover letter template, and a personalized list of magazines suited to their work. With readings from Joshua Ferris and Emma Cline on the syllabus, this seminar is built for beginning and intermediate fiction writers ready to stop guessing and start submitting with a plan.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Michael:
Meet the Teaching Artist: Michael Costaris
Writing Workshops: Hi, Michael. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Michael Costaris: My name is Michael Costaris. I'm currently working as Fiction Editor at the Adroit Journal. I'm a father of two young children and, mostly during naps, write fiction and my novel-in-progress. I began writing prose in a bizarre situation when a literary agent read a screenplay of mine and asked if I'd turn it into a novel. It never sold (and was awful), but I fell in love with the form.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Michael Costaris: Something I wish I had understood earlier in my writing life is that there is no single achievement that will make one feel like a success.
I have friends at every stage of the writing journey and each of us is in the same boat. Those without agents dream of landing one. Those with agents dream of selling their book. Those who've sold a book want a bestseller and so on. Writing can, if you let it, lead to endless disappointment, because this is a pursuit where every success is preceded by hundreds of rejections. My first publication, in The Baffler, was rejected 78 times, some from journals I'd never even heard of but sent to anyway. It is why, as a writer, it is so important to be honest about what you want and why you want it. If your goal is simply to get published, that's very achievable. There are thousands of journals out there, and many who will take a chance on new, sometimes even raw work. If your goal is to be published in The New Yorker, that's less achievable, but not impossible.
This class will address both aspects of the writing world. The first half will tackle the craft, exploring the countless mistakes writers make that weaken stories and lead to rejection. The second half will look at the business side. In these three hours we will look to sharpen your skills and, more importantly, define your goals and develop a strategy that will help you place your work in the journals that will make you happy.
"There comes a point in every submission cycle when, bleary-eyed after hundreds, often thousands, of stories, I abandon any sane order and begin flipping through the slush pile. Here I am reading the cover letter, title and the opening paragraph. My goal is simple. I want to be pulled in."
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Michael Costaris: Working as an editor helped me learn the importance of first impressions in writing. Specifically, the important combination of a cover letter and opening line.
There comes a point in every submission cycle when, bleary-eyed after hundreds, often thousands, of stories, I abandon any sane order and begin flipping through the slush pile. Here I am reading the cover letter, title, and the opening paragraph. My goal is simple. I want to be pulled in. When that happens, I'm ecstatic, because that is all I (and, I suspect, most editors) want: to feel a genuine desire to read the work we're obligated to read.
When a piece grabs me, I read from a position of gratitude. I assume it's a strong story and wait to be disproven. Contrarily, when I lose interest from a dull opening or bizarre cover letter, the story is immediately evaluated and working its way out of a hole.
In the craft portion of the class, we will focus extensively on what makes a good opening at the prose level, specifically how mystery can be used to hook a reader. On the business side, we will examine the cover letter, a necessary aspect of submitting and one many writers get wrong. Students will leave with a workshopped opening line and a template for the ideal cover letter.
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Michael Costaris: "We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever" — Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop—one you were teaching or one you took as a student—where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Michael Costaris: In a previous workshop I ran we performed an exercise (which will be repeated in this class) where each student presented a logline for a story in progress.
A logline is a screenwriting term where a script is pitched in its simplest form, often a single sentence. The goal of the exercise is to dilute a story to its essence, to highlight its theme/purpose. In this exercise the loglines were then compared to the opening sentence of their story and many students were shocked to see how their openings had nothing to do with their loglines. A student writing a story about career dissatisfaction opened their story with a half-page description about an ex-boyfriend. Short fiction, as an art form, is about doing the absolute maximum with the bare minimum. This makes it essential that every element of a story — the character, voice, POV, word choice, tone, and mood— runs tightly along a thematic spine. This loglining exercise highlighted to many students how much waste was in their story, how they diverted away from their intention and lost their meaning.
Ready to sharpen your opening line and build a submission strategy that works? Learn from an editor who reads thousands of stories a year.
Enroll in Premise to Publish →Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept—a small, specific technique.
Michael Costaris: This is something I borrow from screenwriting, the concept of the opening image, a single shot that contains the entirety of the story within it. Think Parasite's opening shot of the family, submerged in a basement apartment, showing their physical place in the world. I've been trying to imbue my opening lines with a similar kind of weight — writing something which immediately grounds the work's theme, or character, or setting in a single sentence.
Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Michael Costaris: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte. This is a collection of stories where each subsequent entry became my new, all time favourite. The fact that Ahegao, which builds to a nearly ten-page description of the main character's pornographic fantasy, appeared in The Paris Review is proof that no story is too strange, no subject matter too taboo to succeed at the highest of levels.
"Don't sacrifice your vision, but make deliberate craft choices. Writing to maximize reader engagement. Write to be read."
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Michael Costaris: Many established writers, in interviews and even craft courses offer a notion that writers should follow instinct and ignore the reader in service of vision. Write what your heart tells you to write, and the readership will follow. I hate that advice. It could be true for the small tier of writers with guaranteed readership, people placing work through agents, relationships, or name recognition, but when you rely on the slush pile you need to earn attention. Many editors make their decisions within the first paragraph. Some even on the first line. Don't sacrifice your vision, but make deliberate craft choices. Write to maximize reader engagement. Write to be read.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Michael Costaris: …it isn't difficult to get your work published. There is a vast network of journals that have high acceptance rates. There are dozens of tools that help you find these journals and many of these have a strong dedicated readership and even come out in print. The writing world has never been more accessible than it is right now.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Michael Costaris: Kazuo Ishiguro. I was a teenager and snatched Never Let Me Go off my parent's bookshelf and never looked back. I love that he writes a version of the same novel each time without it ever becoming stale.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe—in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Michael Costaris: Everyone is different — it's my job to adapt.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Michael Costaris: I'm a licensed teacher with a specialty in Math and Science. I took my first English course in my third year of University and have never taken an MFA.
Join Michael in Premise to Publish
A math and science teacher who never took an MFA, now editing one of the country's most respected literary journals? That unusual path is exactly what makes Costaris's teaching so practical. He learned the craft not through institutional channels but through the slush pile: reading thousands of stories, accumulating 78 rejections, and paying close attention to what separates a story that gets read from one that doesn't. This seminar distills fifteen years of teaching and editorial insight into a single intensive session. If you're ready to move from premise to publication, this is where you start.
A workshopped opening line. A logline-based story outline. A cover letter template. A personalized magazine list. Three hours, four deliverables.
Save Your Seat in Premise to Publish →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
