How To Edit A Short Story: 5 Common Mistakes To Avoid

Editing is one of the most critical steps in the writing process.

It is about making sure your story flows and makes sense for your audience. It’s about identifying and fixing problems so readers understand what’s happening on the page.

All sorts of stuff can go wrong with a story, from plot holes to lousy characterization, and it’s hard to know where to start editing your work.

With all the energy and time that goes into writing, you want your short story to be as perfect as possible.

There’s no such thing as an editor-proof piece of paper. But there are ways to minimize your chances of making common mistakes when editing a short story.

If you want to pass the burden of editing, you can also search for fiction editors to help you out. But if you’re going to try editing on your own, listed below are five common editing mistakes and how not to make them:

5 Common Editing Mistakes

Here are five tips to remember when writing or editing your story.

Over-editing

Editing is a process, not an event. It takes time and effort to polish your work into something great, so try to do only some of it at once.

You don’t need to edit every single word in your manuscript; this will only make your writing sound unnatural and forced.

You might think a sentence needs to be changed but realize that changing it will affect you two paragraphs later, meaning you have to change things again.

It’s easy to get stuck in an editing loop like this, especially if you’re working on multiple projects simultaneously. The best thing to do is stop editing and write something else.

Instead, focus on one or two areas at a time. For example, the plot or dialogue, and ensure each chapter is polished before moving on to the next.

This will ensure that you don’t make any mistakes due to exhaustion and give you more time for rereading and polishing later on down the line.

Not knowing your story’s focus.

Your story should have one central idea or theme, and everything should work toward that idea. If you need clarification on that theme, it’s time to go back and reread the story until you can identify it.

Think of it this way, if you don’t know where your story is going, how do you know what scenes are necessary? It’s like driving in the dark without headlights; unless you know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter how fast or far you go.

It’s easy to get distracted by all the details in a short story, such as characters, settings, and plot twists. These details need to support your main idea to ensure your work is clear to readers.

Thus it’s important to remember that every sentence should work towards something; every sentence needs to move the story forward.

This means that you need to know precisely what the purpose of each scene is before you start writing it, and every stage should serve a purpose.

Inconsistent point of view

A story told from multiple perspectives can be challenging to write, but it’s also exciting because it enables you to see different aspects of the story from different angles.

However, this can quickly become confusing if you don’t keep track of whose perspective you are writing from and why.

So if you are writing in the first person, it’s important to remember that you’re telling your story from their perspective.

But if you switch from first person to third or back and forth between characters, it will be difficult for the reader to follow along and may cause your story to lose its focus.

Thus, to make things easier on your part, the best option is to use one character as your viewpoint character and stick with them throughout the story.

If you want to include other characters’ voices, use italics or quotation marks, so readers know who’s speaking at any given time.

Lack of clarity in your storytelling

Readers want to understand what’s going on and what is happening in the story. They will get frustrated and confused if you give them too much information or too little.

If they need clarification at any point along the way, they may stop reading altogether or, worse yet, skip over parts that do matter.

This is especially true when writing flash fiction, where it must be apparent from the first line what the story is about and where it will go next. You don’t have time for subtext or subtlety here; there must be no ambiguity.

Not having a firm grasp on the elements of fiction in general.

Fiction is not just about telling a story; it’s about creating a world where readers lose themselves. But, many writers still need to understand how to write in a way that will engage readers.

They need to learn how to create characters that seem real and relatable, set up scenes so that they’re dramatically compelling, or use dialogue to further the plot.

This is one of the main reasons they end up with dull and predictable stories.

Writing fiction means knowing what makes up that world and how it works. For example, you need to know the difference between setting and plot, how character development functions, and how to establish conflict.

In addition, you also have to think about the point of view, theme, tone, and voice.

A lack of understanding about these elements will show through in your work and can ruin the entire story.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, editing is a necessary step in the writing process that every author must go through.

As a writer, you need to figure out how to start editing your work. And if you begin to edit it, how should you do so?

As with all editing, the most important thing is to keep an open mind. It’s easy to get attached to our work and not see its flaws, especially in short stories where we often write about personal experiences.

So go over this article to help you write and edit your short story.