100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

49) Your Story is Good Enough

I've already touched on this subject before in Section 29, but I think this is important enough to look at again from another angle. 

MarissatheMarvelous asked me the following question: How do you know whether a story is good enough?

The answer is complicated. It depends on where you are in your process (which is probably as unique as a fingerprint) and also on how you want to look at the question. 

I'll try and cover all the bases I've experienced in an attempt to help you guys out. 

So how does one know a story is good enough? 

First answer: 

You don't. 

This is where Section 29 becomes relevant. It's especially important to learn how to deal with your fears, doubts, and insecurities because they will always tell you that whatever you're working on isn't good enough. Once you accept this fact, it becomes easier to actually not even worry as much about whether what you're doing is of value. 

Your fears and insecurities might also be telling you that your idea isn't particularly creative, or worse, that it's cliche. In that case, it's a good idea to go to Section 27. It's a good go-to guide when it comes to evaluating ideas.

Overall, though, it's nearly impossible for you as a writer to objectively measure how good a story is. It's even less possible when you're trying to figure out whether your readers will like it. You really have no idea what readers will like. 

So the safer way to measure if your story is good enough comes down to the following: Does it intrigue you? Are you excited to write it? 

If yes, great! Give the story a try. Because until you've made some real progress in your story, you just won't know whether the story is good enough to keep writing. Which means that doubts, fears and insecurities about the strength of your story can creep in and cripple your writing. 

This isn't always your story's fault. (Although sometimes it is.) Sometimes, it's your doubting in your skills to write your story that brings your writing to a halt. 

Which brings me to the next, very important answer: 

If in doubt about whether your story's good enough, assume it is. 

This is probably going to send a few of you for a spin, but bear with me. Doubts are strange creatures. Most of the time, they focus on your own perceived inadequacies and they are mostly vague. 

As in: What if my story's not good enough? Vague. Or What if I'm not good enough at writing this story? Vague. 

More likely than not, there's nothing wrong with your writing that a few edits can't fix later. This means that yes, your story is good enough for right now. You like it, you're writing it, and there's no particular reason why you shouldn't finish it.

However, as soon as your doubts become specific, it's a good idea to pay attention to the niggle in the back of your mind. Specific doubts you should pay attention to include: Whether the plot really makes sense. Or... whether the character is strong enough to carry the plot. Or... Whether the plot is strong enough to keep people engaged and turning pages. (As measured by whether it would have kept you engaged if you weren't the writer.)

Those are major issues that do come up. And when any of these issues appear while I'm writing, I set the work aside as it is indeed not (yet) good enough for me to keep spending time on. I have some more things to figure out before I can try it again. 

I feel like I need to make a fine distinction here. No, I don't write to publish. I publish so that I can spend more time writing. I write for myself first, but I edit with potential readers in mind. This is where my judgement call on the quality of my writing comes in. I might love the concept, but if the execution doesn't excite me enough to think it will excite other readers later, I pick something else to work on. 

Which brings me to yet another aspect to answering whether a story is good enough: 

Your story is not good enough when you want to publish your rough draft. 

Actually, it's not your story in general that's the problem, but your reader won't be able to tell the difference. Most readers aren't writers. They have no concept of what goes into writing a good story because they've never tried to do it. So if you publish something that isn't up to standard, the reader will label your entire story as bad. 

If you want to go the traditional route, your undedited story won't be good enough for agents to take on. They're there to sell your book, not to edit it and not to convince some publisher to edit it. As such, you're going to have to edit your story in order for it to be good enough to catch someone's attention. 

Don't think that self-publishing makes this any easier. On the contrary, you're probably going to have to do even more to clean your story up to self publish. If you trade publish, you will have an editor, and you basically need to have a book good enough to impress two people. Maybe three (if your query needs to go through the agent's assistant first). 

With self publishing, you need to repeatedly impress hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. And this while there are many people out there trying so hard to convince readers that self-published books aren't good enough. 

However, there's yet another answer to the question of whether your story is good enough. 

You love your story to bits? 

Yes. 

Good. Have you done everything within your capabilities to make it the best version of the story possible? 

Yes.

Excellent. It's good enough. Send it out. Or publish it. 

You're done.

If you edit too much, you could edit the soul out of your story and that could mean it stops being good enough when it was good enough before your one last round of edits. 

One more answer... 

Your story is good enough because YOU decide it's good enough. 

If you've taken my previous bits of advice into account, and you're happy, it's good enough for you. Which is really what you were wondering. 

It does not, however, necessarily mean that all readers will love it. That's okay too. As long as you find some readers who love the story almost as much as you did.

The rest weren't part of your target audience. Don't worry about them. Don't try to please them. Because the only way to make sure that your book isn't good enough for anyone is by trying to make it good enough for everyone. 

Thanks for reading everyone!

Next time, I'll be posting the last section for Part 2. Don't be sad! I'll get started on Part 3 the week after that. 

Part 3 will focus more on techniques, although I probably will work in some "how to survive being a writer" in as well. The same way I worked some technique into Part 2. 

So as always, you're welcome to ask me anything related to this section, or anything about writing/editing. I do answer in the comments and if your question inspires a new section, I'll dedicate that section to you. 

Coming up in 100 Things: 

Editing in General (MarissatheMarvelous)

Part 3

Technique things

How to Make Writing Work for You (MarissatheMarvelous)

Dealing with Non-writers (MarissatheMarvelous)