The writing group to which I belong, the Hunter Story Creators presented a session at the 2016 Newcastle Writers Festival.  The session was titled ‘How to Make Your Writing Pop’.  My part of the presentation offered an approach to self-editing your work.  My writing mentor, Karen Whitelaw cites someone who calls self-editing, Brushing Away the Sand. My approach to brushing away the sand includes eight (8) steps that I personally include in the self-editing process. I’m happy to share them in the hope that you may find them helpful.

I go through my story and look for the following:

1.  Changes in tense.  It is easy to unwittingly change tense in a short story.  For instance, you may be writing in present tense: She lifts the lid off the saucepan and stirs the soup.  Bill comes into the kitchen and asks, ‘What’s for dinner?’  She wiped her sweaty brown and…