Don’t Be Afraid to Edit Your Stories AFTER Publishing Them!
Have you discovered the secret to writing better stories on Medium?
Anyone who has already had a chance to read what I recently shared about formatting your stories, will know where I’m coming from with the following information.
But just in case you missed the very candid points that I brought out, about putting more effort into your formatting, you can read:
Whether you read that story first, or you visit it when you’re done with this one, I encourage everyone to make sure they’ve seen it.
So, in harmony with putting more effort into the way you present stories to your readers, I’ve cited 5 important steps.
Most of the time, if you’re lucky, you may not even need the fifth step, but it’s still important that you realize you have the option.
In fact, it’s such an important bit of information to remember, that I decided to write this story and remind everyone.
My dear writers, new and old; please don’t forget or be afraid to edit your stories, even after they’ve already been published.
I’ll gladly explain my view on this in a moment, but first allow me to highlight those first four tips I mentioned.
This is my own process when writing and publishing…
Increase your chances of getting more reads
Hopefully, everyone reading this story, is serious about doing what it takes, to increase their chances of getting more reads for their stories.
Well, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the following suggestions are guaranteed to help you do just that. So please, do yourself a favor, and take them to heart.
In fact:
Great! So here are the tips that can help your stories gain more readers, IF you remember to use them:
- Make sure to do a regular job of proofreading your stories.
Never take for granted that you typed everything perfectly.
2. Read your story OUT LOUD before you publish it, to make sure it sounds okay.
This is a great way to determine which sentences are too long, and also, to decide where to break up paragraphs.
3. Take a glance at the page after you publish the story, and NOTICE what things immediately stand out.
This is where you can tell if the feng shui (or balance) of the page is off. Consider how it looks to readers.
4. Read over your story again, to yourself, just like a reader will, and pay attention to what you actually wrote, and NOT what you meant to write.
It may sound crazy, but I find that when I read over the story after it’s published, I FEEL like a reader, and it’s much easier to catch your typos and errors this way.
And that brings me to the final point…
Final Thoughts
5 At the risk of being redundant, Medium writers should not be afraid to edit their stories after hitting the publish button.
Don’t worry about making edits, not immediately after, and not sometime later.
I once read a story and got the impression that some writers are fearful of touching their stories, once they’ve been published.
Could that be the reason that so many stories are published, warts and all?
If it is, I suggest that writers who find themselves doing this, reconsider the practice. Whatever the logic or reasoning for doing this, I personally think it must be flawed.
I’ve published close to one thousand stories on this platform, and no less than half of them were edited after publishing.
Lightening didn’t strike, and the Medium gods didn’t appear to punish me in any way, so I say go for it.
If you publish a story and later see the need to correct, delete, or revise something in it, don’t be afraid to edit it.
I suspect your readers will thank you for it.
Thanks for reading…
