Orbis Writings

I just edited my first short story and things are looking good.  I did four edits in all.  It finally reads very smoothly and ready to ship.

This is what I ended up editing at each edit stage.

First Edit — In this edit I removed any obvious extra text that didn’t add anything to the story.  This included narrative that told the reader what to think when I really want to let the reader to their own thinking.  I attempted to just provide hints and let the reader draw their own conclusions. I also cleaned up the tenses, fixed spelling mistakes, checked for consistency, etc.

Second Edit — I removed more extra fluff.  During the first edit there were some parts that hung in the back of my mind that bothered me a little, I removed some of those items.  I removed some sentences that didn’t do anything in order tighten the story.

Third Edit — At this stage I merged and tightened some sentences.  Attempted to say in one sentence what I had written in three in order to smooth out and make the reading more compact, but still sending as much information to the reader as possible without making it so obvious.

I also reordered some sentences.  i noticed that there are sentenses that are very dynamic and so placing those at the beginning of the paragraph set the readers mind in the right state to continue with the narrative.

I also rewrote the first sentence by reorganizing words, compacting the sentence to provide more bang for the buck.

Fourth Stage — At this stage is when the story is very tight and smooth.  This is where I discovered some missing bits to the story.  Also discovered som final paragraphs that really bugged me that I needed to rewrite; about 2 or 3 of them.

I also nitpicked some specific words here and there, my instead of the, the instead of a, stuff like that.

I think the final product is very good, and ready to send out to the Reader’s Digest 77th Annual Contest.

Update: I’m going through my story and adding some more to it.  This would be my 5th edit.