I picked up a great piece of editing advice on the internet this week courtesy of short story writer, Dan Purdue.
Dan’s blog post on Editing is worth reading in full but I particularly liked the tip that Dan gives in the very last paragraph of his post. He tries to read his work as though it were written by someone he doesn’t like or by someone who’s won a competition in which he was unplaced. The aim is to tear the piece apart and show what a terrible writer this other person really is.
I’m not good at cutting out chunks of prose or ‘killing my darlings’ but I think Dan’s tip is definitely worth a try. I shall get myself into ‘nasty’ mode before I start editing next time.
Incidentally, Dan’s stories have won many competitions and feature in his collection Somewhere to Start From, which is available in all e-formats from Smashwords.
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