Slowing down on entry

This week I received a rejection for a story I'd submitted to a major SF magazine.  Nothing special in that, you might think.  But the email was signed by the senior editor, and I know from my conversations with other writers  that that means the top editor has read my story - or at least, the start of it.

So I've progressed from rejections by slush readers to rejections from the senior editor.  That's progress, but even better, he sometimes adds useful comments to his emails.  I've had comments that he's liked a spunky character, that my premise was intriguing, and the latest one, where he thought my story was rushed.

I'm in the middle of re-evaluating and re-writing a batch of older stories, so this was timely advice.  if I add it to comments I've had before I get a good steer to where I must rewrite.  Looking critically at stories I wrote several years ago, I can see that several of them do indeed seem rushed.  I've absorbed too well the advice that I must start a story slap-bang in the middle of the action.  But when I pull back and look at it with the eyes of a reader, I can see that some of the richness of setting, and some of the essential explanation of where the characters are, and why, has been omitted.  

In one story I'd started with a meeting between human and alien characters, deleting a whole earlier scene.  When I rewrote the story I added back the first scene.  It showed my heroine stepping off a shuttle onto the aliens' planet, their nervousness when they greeted her, and a description of the place, which was an archeeological dig.  All that information was important for the story, and needed to be in there.

I've now started rewriting a story about a ansible repair crew.  I've rushed this opening too, and have just written two completely new sections showing the repair ship approaching the beacon, explaining that it lies on the Human/Antaarii Border, and that the two species were shooting at each other the day before the repair crew arrived.  All vital data that I'd omitted from the original.

When I've finished that rewrite I'll tackle the story this editor just rejected.  I'll take it apart, stop and really think about each section.  And maybe this time I'll get the balance between necessary set-up and a brisk pace just right.