As an editor at a lit mag, I've read a lot of short story submissions. Among the ones that don’t make it, each has the spark of something good. Maybe it’s an evocative image or a deft line of dialogue. Maybe it’s a fun voice or a great first line. It’s frustrating when these stories don’t work. Not frustrating because I’m jaded or judgmental. Frustrating because I want them to succeed. I’ve seen that spark.

 

So why don’t they work? A lot of reasons. Sometimes they get bogged down in unnecessary description. Sometimes the characters’ motivations are ambiguous. Sometimes the setting is unclear or absent altogether. Point is, a lot of elements have to fall into place to make something work. In fact, it’s kind of a miracle that good stories ever get written. But there’s good news. Almost every flaw in your piece can be fixed (almost automatically) if you do just one thing: be the reader.

 

You’ve probably heard variations of this advice. Read your piece aloud. That’s a good one. Reading aloud will let you pick up on pacing and clarity issues. But mostly, it’ll force you to become the reader for a while.

 

Being the reader is more than just the act of reading. It means you stop being the writer. When you’re the reader, you don’t know anything other than what’s on the page. To achieve this effect, you may need to set your piece aside for a couple weeks or months. Sometimes it takes a while to forget.

 

When you fully become the reader, the writer is just some jackass you’ve never met. This allows you to be the least sympathetic reader possible. Once you’ve become that hard-to-please, impatient, cynical reader, you’ll be clear-eyed about what’s really on the page, not just what you thought was there. You’ll move from should be to is.

 

As you go through, pay attention to everything you trip on and everything you love. It’s helpful to know the former, and it’s encouraging to know the latter. Do not rewrite anything while you’re the reader. But do take mental notes. You’ll want your feedback to the writer to be accurate. They’re depending on you.

 

Pay attention to the pace. Do we really need to watch a character wake up, brush their teeth, and so on? (That’s just shoe leather.) Or maybe it goes too fast. Are you blasting past stuff we need to sit with for another sentence or two? Will you, as the reader, miss that the story is set in a Chuck E. Cheese, so you’ll feel perplexed and somehow betrayed when a child “sinks into the multicolored sea of plastic spheres” at the end?

 

Pay attention to the phrasing. Is it dull? Confusing? Overwrought? Have you, at any point, said “multicolored sea of plastic spheres”? Maybe you should kill that darling. Or at least exile or reform it. Maybe, in the end, you can just do better than “multicolored sea of plastic spheres.”

 

(By the way, you don’t have to slaughter every darling just because it’s a darling. Maybe it’s a darling because it’s good. Ask the reader version of you. They’ll know.)

 

Most of all, pay attention to what each thing is doing. Does it develop a character or advance the story? Does it repeat something you’ve already said? Is it even relevant? (Do we really need to know your character drives a maroon Ford Bronco?) Whatever it is, decide whether it needs to join the other darlings in the East River. Or maybe just set it aside for something else. (Why are you so obsessed with murdering darlings, by the way? Frankly, it’s a little concerning.)

 

Being the reader is an act of empathy. If you’re confused and bored, the actual reader will be confused and bored. Armed with this perspective, you’ll intuitively uphold all those best practices you’ve heard about—creating tension, escalating stakes, showing not explaining, yadda, yadda, and yadda. It’ll become second nature. You’ll do unto the reader as you would have the reader do unto you (you know, if they were the writer).

 

Once you’ve given yourself some notes, be willing to do whatever’s necessary to make reader you happy. It may take a while. And it may require some hard choices—jettisoning huge chunks of text, recasting that first line, rewriting the final paragraph fifty times. I do all of this on a nearly daily basis.

 

But it’s all worth it. Be the writer, then the reader. Toggle between personas if you must. Either way, keep at it. You’ll both be glad you did.