The writer's checklist

A lot of my teaching this year is going to be about ideas but what happens when you have the bright idea and have produced your piece? How do you know it works? Here’s a checklist.

* Does it have a strong idea and does that idea work in the vehicle you have chosen?
* Does it have sense of people? Are the characters real?
* Does it have sense of place? Does the reader feel they are there?
* Is it boring?
* Does it have pace or are there areas when it is slow? Does it tell the story or just meander?
* Have you given the reader enough information? You can see the landscape, can they?
* Have you given the reader too much info? Do you need three pages describing that tree?
* Is it too long? Yes, the story was fine but could it have been told in less words? Would it lose anything if you cut out some words which are not doing anything?
These are the tough questions but they may be the questions which take it from a decent story to one that sings.
John Dean