Remember word economy; when you've finished your piece, go back and edit ruthlessly. If it doesn't add to the story, the character, the reader's understanding, then turf it. Lose the excess baggage; travel light. A finely crafted short fic can have all the kick – in fact it can have even more – than a longer one because it's concentrated...Know the right starting point in your story; if you start too far ahead of yourself, you risk confusing the reader; start too early and you might just bore them...
This is especially crucial. Honestly, I wish I'd known this when I was posting my first story, a 30-chapter M*A*S*H story called Wedding Bells and Bomb Shells. At the time, I thought it was great. I still do for the most part, but when I re-read it a couple of weeks ago, I found so many things I would take out if I could post it all over again,especially in the first 6 or 7 chapters. The underlying plot is the wedding of Hawkeye and Margaret, but no specific wedding details (minus wedding planning) start until about midway through the story. Some of the non-wedding parts were fine, others weren't needed. Detail and wordiness, have always been two of my major downfalls and not just when it comes to writing fan fiction. My problem is I don't edit nearly as much as I should. Writing this blog has really helped me realize the importance of editing. While I think my writing is, not to brag, pretty good, it'd be great if I looked it over a few times before posting. I think I'm starting to get there but I have a ways to go yet, especially as I seriously begin to approach my next multi-chaptered story, set in the Scrubs universe. Random details and subplots can, on the whole, add to the story, but there is a fine line between this and detail for the sake of detail.
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