Do you wear a shirt?

Last week I discussed a writer's first impression: format. The writer's second impression is structure. I'm discussing this in context of authors trying to sell short fiction to paying markets.

Scenario 1:  I'm too sexy

This is Gabe. He remembered to wear pants to his job interview. He forgot his shirt, but his bod is smoking. Surely, McDonald's will hire him now.

"Well, Gabe, I have to admit you're off to a better start than our previous interview a year ago. I'm just curious, why didn't you wear a shirt?"

"I'm so sexy," he replied and flexed a muscle.

"That you are," the manger agreed. "However, insurance is expensive and we just can't afford a shirtless employee."

The minute you send your work out on submission, you're applying for a job. For McDonald's can't hiring a shirtless fry cook would get expensive fast. For a magazine, purchasing work from an author who can't edit gets expensive fast.
It's also a waste of time. How suitable is Sexy Gabe for the position of fry cook?

Writers who don't know enough about structure can't be counted on to follow the editors instructions and more than McDonald's can expect Shirtless Gabe to not burn himself. And Gabe is all caps CLUELESS. Do you want to be an caps CLUELESS writer?

Then open a grammar. Every excuse you give for not doing it, is one hundred well deserved rejections

Scenario 2: I got a vision

Meet Jill. Jill loves to heal people so she opened a clinic Marco. She didn't go to medical school.

"You can't perform surgery without a medical license."  The Moroccan judge said at her deportation hearing.

"I have a vision," Jill shouted. "I'm going to save you people from death, disease and disrepair. I can learn all that other stuff later." 

Every writer has a vision. But vision alone will never suffice. Just as a doctor must learn the anatomy of the human body, the writer must learn the anatomy of a sentence. And it doesn't always come down to surgery. A writer who knows their sentence anatomy can treat a sniffle before it becomes liver failure.

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Scenario 3: Great ideas

Meet Kim. She is smart and well educated. Unfortunately, the recession hit and now she's competing with 600 equally qualified applicants for six jobs. Desperate, she decided to throw caution to the wind.

"Uh, Kim?" The recruiter hesitated. "Er, um. I see you have  a PhD. in nano technology."

"That's me," she mumbled over the big lips. "I didn't wear my shirt because I wanted to get your attention...."

Kim continued speaking for the next ten minutes, explaining some of her ideas. They were just what the company was looking for except the recruiter tossed her resume in the trash.

"I can't do this." He said. "You're tits are so distracting  and I can't understand anything you're saying with those lips clenched in your teeth."


Just as Kim's chest distracted the recruiter, messy sentence structure will distract readers from your story. And that's best case scenario. Worst case scenario, readers will tar and feather you.

Ideas only matter when your audience is on the same page.

Publishable?
Salable?

What kind of fiction do you write?