Reviewing your own stories

and the price of ink these days! I couldn't agree more though this method is well worth doing. Also once you have printed your stuff out try reading it out loud you will be surprised how many times you think 'hhmm that could be better' because it doesn't flow quite right.

I read it Paul, and it seems well written - Im not too good with Sci Fi, as I tend to lose interest ( a hundred people will howl protest at me now) so perhaps someone else can make a more educated comment on it than me. The only thing that I would suggest is that you check the spellings and stuff. "Their" should've been "there" at a point early on. Im not nitpicking I hasten to add - I fall down with that myself - and the spell checker doesnt pick stuff up like that, does it? Anyway good luck, and l hope you get lots of readers Liana

Yeah your right I ran that story through my spell checker umpteen times andit seemed fine. Thanks for that I also look for that rogue their (here wordy wordy!). Thanks for your criticism as well! Personally I thought it was a bad plot which was badly written , but then people like you keep telling me it was good so thanks. I'm also receiving loads of e-mails about it and their all helping me plan my next story. Cheers!

Ahem... Well I just found something majorly wrong with my story I got Captain and Lieutenant the wrong way round DOH! Well I'll go and correct that now. What a fool I would have looked otherwise.

I find personally that my stuff works better when I print it out and attack it with a red pen - you can spot stuff in hard copy better than on screen. Also, if you only edit a para at a time, you don't get caught up in the rhythm of the piece (very tempting to just get caught in the flow and think nothing is worth changing) And, as Fitzgerald said, in writing, you must be prepared to kill your darlings. (Please note, I don't always edit my work in this manner, but when I do, it works better. It is hard to do, because you have to get rid of stuff that you really liked but that just doesn't work)

thankyou andrew that is a very true statement. I already ry and do that as much as I can (but with a pencil), but I find it takes up alot of my time (I have a very short attention span). But I will try and do so more thankyou! I also hate deleting things I love as well.

Agree with Andrew. Attacking (hard copy) stuff with a red pen is painful but effective, in my case anyway. I seem to spot lots of errors that I would otherwise have missed on screen and sometimes print the thing out up to 10 times (by which time I'm pretty sick of it, I can tell you!). Tends to take up an awful lot of paper tho'...

Get someone else to read your stuff but don't say it is yours. You can ask for unbias reviews after. Also, editing on paper is much better than screen as it can be done anywhere. I've written over 40 short stories now and usually cut them from 4500 words down to about 3000. Read through your story about 50 times! Anything that starts to grate, kill it. jer

Thanks

start a thread about yourself.

not getting bored poking fun at others yet?