The Ultimate Editing Checklist for Short Stories Before Submission

Most rejections are not the result of a bad idea. They come from a decent idea buried under a plot that starts a page too early, a character who never quite decides anything, or a typo in the first sentence that makes an editor suspect the rest has not been read. The story may well be fine. The version on the page is what gets judged.

So here is the pass worth making before you send anything out: structure first, then character, then dialogue, then the slow crawl through every line. Work in that order. Polishing commas in a scene you are about to cut is a wasted evening.

Plot: Does the Story Earn Its Ending?

Start where the trouble starts. Waking up, driving to work, the weather over the moors — cut them unless they are already doing work. Most stories improve when the first three paragraphs go.

Name the want. Can you say in one sentence what your protagonist is trying to get, keep or avoid? If that sentence needs three clauses and a semicolon, the story's engine is unclear.

Then find the turn: the moment the situation cannot return to how it was. If it arrives two-thirds of the way through, your story probably begins ten lines before it does. Move the opening forward and watch how much slack disappears.

Check the ending against the opening. Not the same image, necessarily, but a genuine answer to the question the first page asked. A story that poses a question and then simply stops is a sketch.

Three questions for the ending

• Has something changed for the protagonist — in circumstance, understanding, or both?
• Does the ending answer the question the opening raised, even obliquely?
• Does the final line land, or does it merely stop?

Character: Specific, Active, Consistent

A character needs a want, an obstacle, and at least one decision that alters the course of the story. Readers forgive a great deal, but they struggle to care about someone to whom things only happen.

Read through and mark every moment your protagonist chooses something. If there are fewer than two, that is usually the real problem — not the pacing, not the prose. Characters who only react are furniture with dialogue attached.

Then get specific. 'She was nervous' is a report; 'she folded the receipt into quarters and slid it into her coat pocket' is a person. One precise detail does more than three paragraphs of explanation, provided it reveals pressure, habit or contradiction.

Finally, check the supporting cast. Does each secondary character have a job — to block, to tempt, to mirror, to raise the stakes? If you can delete someone and nothing breaks, delete them or give them work. Four distinct people will always beat nine vague ones.

Dialogue: Read It Out Loud

Read every exchange aloud. Where you stumble, the reader will stumble. Where you get bored, they will have stopped reading.

Cut the pleasantries. Real conversation is full of hellos, goodbyes and how-are-yous; fiction is not. Start the scene two lines later than feels comfortable. You will rarely miss them.

Look for subtext. The most interesting line in a scene is often the one the character refuses to say. If a speech exists purely to deliver information, move the information into narration, or better, have someone act on it instead.

Cover the names and see if you can still tell who is speaking. If not, differentiate through rhythm and word choice: one character interrupts, one answers questions with questions, one goes flat and short when upset. Suggest accents through syntax and vocabulary rather than spelling them phonetically.

Be hard on your tags. 'Said' and 'asked' are invisible, which is what you want. 'She said angrily' usually means the line itself is not angry enough. Replace tags with small actions where you can: She set down the cup. 'I'm not going.'

Line Editing and Proofreading

Now go slowly. This pass is dull, and it is the one that gets a story accepted over a near-identical one.

• Hunt your crutch words. Search for 'just', 'really', 'very', 'suddenly', 'actually', 'began to' and 'started to'. Most can go without loss.
• Cut filter words. 'She saw the door open' becomes 'The door opened'. Give the sensation, not the reporting of it.
• Check every 'that'. It is frequently optional, and the sentence is faster without it.
• Watch your tenses. Past perfect ('had walked') is easy to overuse. Three 'hads' in a row and the reader loses track of time.
• Keep the point of view honest. In close third person, your character cannot know what the person across the table is thinking.
• Verify consistency. Names, eye colours, the time of day, the season, how many people are in the room. Readers notice; editors notice sooner.
• Check the small mechanics. Its and it's; your and you're; they're, their and there; commas around names in direct address; punctuation inside quotation marks only when it belongs to the spoken words.
• Choose a spelling register and keep it. Submitting to a British magazine means 'colour', 'realise', 'towards' — throughout, not intermittently.

The Last Twenty Minutes Before You Send It

1. Leave the story for at least a day, then read it on a different screen or on paper. Distance finds what familiarity hides.
2. Read the magazine's guidelines line by line, not diagonally: word count, theme, submission window, file format, whether simultaneous submissions are welcome.
3. Write a short cover letter. Two or three sentences will do — what you are sending, its word count, and thanks. Do not summarise the plot, and do not apologise for the work.
4. Check the file name and the attachment. Send the version you actually finished editing.
5. Log the date and the market somewhere sensible, so you know when a polite follow-up is reasonable.

None of this guarantees acceptance. A magazine can only take so many stories, and taste is not something you can edit your way past. What these checks do guarantee is that nothing in your submission distracts from the writing itself. A story with a clear turn, characters who choose, dialogue that earns its place and clean pages gives an editor nothing to trip over. That is the part you control. Do it, send the story out, and start the next one.

Photo: SamuelFJohanns / Pixabay