Editors From The Sun, Ploughshares & Okay Donkey on What Makes Them Keep Reading

A one-shot workshop on pacing, voice, and turning good openings into great work

Derek Askey, Rachel Dillon, steve chang, and The Forever Workshop

Mar 11, 2026

∙ Paid

Hey friends,

Welcome to another round of Tell Us Something We Don’t Know — where we source a panel of literary experts and ask them questions about whatever the heck. Today, the heck is pacing and our instructors are experienced editors from three top-tier literary magazines:

The Experts:

Derek Askey — senior editor at The Sun
Rachel Dillon — award-winning poet, teacher, and managing editor of Ploughshares
Steve Chang — co-founder of Lit Match Collective and fiction editor at Okay Donkey

The Takeaways:

Effective pacing techniques to keep moving your story forward
How to draw out your unique voice through detail and observation
Common pacing issues editors see in submissions and how to fix them!
How important is a strong opening or a killer ending? And what about all that stuff in the middle?

By the end of this workshop, you’ll know how to capture the attention of editors, develop your stories with depth and nuance, and keep readers hanging on every word.

Let’s Begin at the Beginning…

Opening lines, exposition, pacing, and living up to the promise of your premise

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A guest post by

Rachel Dillon

Rachel Dillon's poetry appears in The Slowdown, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. A former high school English teacher in NYC public schools, she is Managing Editor of Ploughshares. (rachelmdillon.com)