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Fiction? Strikes me more as nonfiction. Doesn't work as a story, the ending is known close to the beginning, and the factual presentation of the death strengthens that feeling.

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As a writer, I feel it is important to try and capture a sense of reallity even in my fiction -- it adds believability. In literary fiction especially, events should feel real. Shouldn't they?

If fiction sounds like it actually happened, shouldn't that be a good thing?

Brush it off. I almost never get useful advice from magazine editors when they take the time to send comments. They typically are trying to sum up their feelings too concisely and they also seem to have these weird biases that come through in their advice.

I've got a short story that I have now sent to a dozen markets. (I'm going to try one more...lucky 13....before retiring it.) I've received personal respones on the story from most of those editors, and each one said something different, in some cases wildly different. Some made little sense and made me wonder if they read the story.

On another story, I received the comment that it wasn't speculative in nature...which made me wonder when clairvoyance became fact rather than fancy.

Brush it off, I say again. Send it somewhere else. No, a story can't be too real. Won't say that there's not something else wrong with the story, maybe even something the editor was trying and failing to convey, but his (her?) comment comes across as a bit silly.

As to the surprise ending...I could soooo join you in that arnat. Since when did every single story have to have a surprise twist ending? Sure, I enjoy those too, but I also enjoy fulfilling stories that make me enjoy the ride even if I know the ending. I'm sick of stories I can't read twice because the whole point was ending shock value!

P.S. I'd be willing to scan through the story if you want.

I've been trying to ignore the comment for about a week now, but it still irks me.

I wonder if he/she (not sure which, the comments were annonymous), meant that the story had too much summary, but I just don't know.

Everybody else I've ever heard of wants fiction to feel realistic!

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My guess however would be that wbriggs is right, and the editor didn't so much want a twist or surprise ending, as one that they found less predictable. The more stories you read, the easier it becomes to figure out from their beginnings what their endings will be. That makes it more important that the journey to the ending be as interesting as possible, but evidently this editor didn't find it so. That, as they say, is life.