What parameter do you use to analyze how good is your story ?
What questions need to be asked before saying whwter a story is good enough or not ?
I have a lot of objective parameters that my story must fulfil before it is good enough.
First off, I must read it in a very droll, dreary voice, pausing at the appropriate moments that I have created with my punctuation, italics, bolding, coloring wording choices, etc. If I cannot feel the correct character of the POV in the pacing of the story, if the flow does not match the flow I want the reader to perceive, then I must fix that up. Breaking up or joining sentences with punctuation and eliminating or adding sentences to create the right speech pattern.
Second off, I skim what my story like a really exhausted reader that just wants the bare gist of the story right in the morning. Oftentimes, I will need to add more detail for the exhausted reader, otherwise they'll have to go back, and for the average reader who just in general misses parts, I need to cover certain aspects that they would otherwise miss. Helps me catch when I am jumping subject too awkwardly between paragraphs as well, like accidentally jumping from description of a forge made of molten flesh to Crusader father's foreboding lecture that the MC will become a trashy Magma junkie back to forge made of molten flesh. That's a kind of awkward, non-cohesive structure, since I don't even have anything to make it obvious to the reader that the MC is jumping around in thought. I'm instead just jerking around the reader on a tight leash to where I want to go, rather than where it is easiest for the reader to read.
Third off, I copy and paste the story to various writing websites. The different writing windows of each website and the differing fonts/paragraph spacings/overall formatting helps mix it up and make the story more fresh to edit.
Fourth off, it just needs to pass the fifty grammar checks (how do people keep finding grammar mistakes?!?!?! GAAAAAAHHH!!!).
Fifth off, the dialogue needs to sound like it can occur outside of my pages, and not make you think that it's two children play-acting their favorite power fantasy (which is a trap I fall into one too many times).
Sixth off, I check my descriptions, putting my imagination to work as I am reading it for the first time. What does every word evoke to me? Ignore the story itself. As far as I'm concerned, these words exist in a vacuum. When I string one word after the other, what image does it make? If it's not what I want my reader to think, then I need to go to the thesaurus in my brain and replace the words or even paragraph to make the reader think exactly what I'm thinking. I don't always succeed. In fact, I would not be surprised if I rarely succeed. But it
is one of the biggest draws of being a writer for me. Can I make the reader think what I'm thinking?
