Ep. 30: The magic of story editing

I’ve talked about my fabulous writing group, “The Chapter Chasers,” in previous episodes. Many of the stories I feature or am submitting to various journals and competitions have been workshopped by the group. Our group is incredibly international, spanning the continents of North America, Europe and Asia, and with it is a diversity you would not be able to build had you tried intentionally. This writing group began in Gail Anderson’s Flash Fiction course at Oxford and continues 18 months later.

Today, I am happy to have Lisa Mathew on the podcast with me to talk about the editing process. If you’ve been listening to the last few episodes about BioWare, you might have noticed I keep mentioning all the people who it takes to put a creative work in front of you. In fact, this very podcast goes through multiple edits, different listens, and opinions before you ever get to hear it. The same is true when it comes to fiction. Your story is often only as good as the editor or editors who contribute to it.

Today, I will read a short story in its final form. In the show notes, I have a link to the story along with the edits that Lisa provided. You can immediately see the difference. But first, let me read you the story in the final edited form.

The story is called “Climbing.” You can see screens of the edits that Lisa made.

More about flash fiction:

Please support this podcast by subscribing!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca