Checking your new story

How many times should you check a new story for typos, better ways of saying things, better words or expressions, etc. Do you worry about people who might not have English as a first language? I've checked my new short story over four times and I'm still changing things. Is that too much? How do you know when the time has come to leave it alone?

I read my completed stories as many as ten times to make sure the phraseology is as good as I can get. I tend not to correct whilst reading/checking but just highlight places where change is required. Then I can make all the changes in one go. I only stop when I can no longer see things that should be changed.

I certainly do consider non--mother-tongue English speakers when writing, but mostly Americans, with their idiosyncratic vocabulary. If I have characters speaking French or German I try to find a way of letting readers who speak neither language, understand what is being said, perhaps by a character explaining the meaning to another.

Geoffrey Stirling.

That's exactly my approach. I tend to write the first draft very quickly and roughly, then many editing passes are needed to make it readable. Word processing is so good for this. I'm not sure I'd be able to write at all if I had to go back to using pen and paper.

I don't see any need to make concessions for readers with English as a second language. They might quite enjoy being introduced to more obscure words or phrases, and it's easy enough to check meanings on the internet these days if it isn't obvious from the context.

I tend to go on 'tweaking' until I find myself changing things back to the way I had them before.

Leaving your story alone for a week or so before rereading helps to spot any flaws or typos your eye may have skipped over before.

There is no 'should' when it comes to these things. You have to do it the way it works best for you. Personally, if I tweak too much I become perfectionist to the point of sabotaging myself, start hating the story and delete it. I definitely have to be careful to not overdo the editing and can't let my story sit for too long. Leaving a final editing round for 'the next day' is helpful though, because then you can more easily spot mistakes you overlooked earlier.

I, too, highlight or otherwise mark a word or phrase I want to use a better expression for, to get back to it later. That way I won't have to disturb the writing flow with editing or looking up words (sometimes I can't readily think of the right English word).

What I really like to use is the Hemingway Editor. I tend to use too many adverbs and this is a great tool for me to pinpoint them and decide whether to remove them, tweak the sentence or decide it has its place. So I always run my finished stories through this editing tool first.


I don't. When I finish writing a story I format it in the way required for this site, do a last read to try to fix any remaining crazy typos, and then with trembling fingers I submit it. In between submitting and waiting for it to be loaded, I manage to successfully convince myself the story is terrible and everybody will hate it and there are probably embarrassing mistakes in there. And then once it's loaded, it only takes a single nice comment from a kind reader to make this whole sharing my writing thing worthwhile


Absolutely not! Maybe because I am one myself. I trust other non-native speakers are just as good at finding Google translate or a dictionary as I am.
That said, the first story I shared here has French characters and a few French words thrown in. I did wonder if that was too much, because I don't translate them in the story, but I figured if it would be a problem, Flopsy would tell me to take them out. I haven't gotten any complaints about the French words, though it could be the readers who didn't understand them simply chose to abandon my story.


This 100%

Based not only on here, but on work writing … there is no number of edits that removes all errors. I’ve had things published after professional editing and copy editing, when I did several rounds myself, then another after the editor, then a final one after the copy editor, and without fail witching five minutes of cracking open the fresh hardcopy … typo, or similar.

So do the best you can, with what you have to work with

In the days when I was actually writing stories I would constantly be making edits. The advice to leave it for a while and read with fresh eyes is good because you get wrapped up in the process and often miss things. Also there is the chance for an extra silly pun to come to mind which can then be forced into a script. We do like a silly pun or amusing character name.

Same as opb really, the spell checker will point out obvious typos but not less obvious ones e.g. using Brian instead of Brain.

Then you can check later for less obvious things like using a word twice in a paragraph, the timeline being awry, things which didn't get explained very well because they were in your head rather than on the screen, changing characters' names midway through, etc

Helped when I used to go to a writers' group and they would spot such things even if I didn't, though you need to be brave to submit spanko stories to a vanilla critique!

There is a skill, that I learned in professional writing, of reading something that you have written as though you are not the writer--putting yourself in the position of a reader who is unfamiliar with the subject matter. Would that person understand this?

It also involves reading it word by word, rather than sentence by sentence. Without that you will miss repeated words etc, because you are reading what you meant to write, not what you actually wrote.

There is, of course, still room to read it as a story. When you do that you will discover awkward phraseology because you "trip up" on it. As a general rule, if you have to go back and re-read that sentence or phrase, you wrote it awkwardly and it needs correction, like the girl in the story.

Geoffrey Stirling.

Here's what I have to do: Leave it for at least a month, maybe two or three.

Why? Because then the story is in my mind I mentally auto correct. I know how is supposed to read, and that's how I read it. That missing word? My mind puts it in when I read it. Something like "He were" becomes "He was", because I know how it is supposed to read.

I'm not alone with this. Stephen King does the same, leaving his manuscripts alone for 6 months before searching for typos. He can do this because he is normally working on several books at a time.

I hope this helps.