How To Write A Good Book

Revise the story using a variety of tricks.

  There are many different ways to revise a story, and it all depends on what the first draft of your story looks like and how much work you may have left to do. Many stories can take ten or more drafts to get right, so don't get discouraged if you feel like you have to change everything in your story. As you revise your work, here are some things to think about:

1. The need for a change in point-of-view. You may have thought your story worked best in the first person, but on a second read, you may see that the third person would have been better for the story you wanted to tell.

2. Cutting down on the wordiness. A good rule of thumb is to cut 250 words from the story (provided that it's at least ten pages long) after you're convinced you're done. You'd be surprised by how much unnecessary verbiage you may find.

3. Cut down on the confusion. Ask yourself if you would completely understand what was going on if you didn't write the story yourself. Maybe the concepts of the story were crystal-clear to you, but your readers could be utterly confused.

4. Make sure you include feelings, sounds, etc. Feelings make a story alive. After all, what's a story without feelings?

5. Do more research if necessary. If you're writing a story set in the West Village in New York City in the 60s and find that you don't actually know as much as you thought you did about this time period, it'll be time to hit the books to learn enough to write a convincing story about this era.

6. Be persistent. When you get frustrated, remind yourself that no first draft of a story is ever very good -- but that if you write a second, third, and even a fourth draft, that you have the potential to write an amazing story.