Short Story Writers Editing and Proofreading Services

A short story is judged on its last four lines by every reader who has ever finished one. The rest can be excellent and the ending will decide what they think they read. This is unfair and it is also how the form works — everything is held in suspension until the close tells the reader what it was for, which is why so many otherwise accomplished stories are returned by magazines with a note saying it did not quite land.

We work on what short story writers produce — individual stories and collections, competition entries and magazine submissions, flash fiction and very short forms, linked story collections and their ordering, collection manuscripts for presses, covering letters and biographical notes, workshop drafts and revisions, and the material that goes out to editors and judges. Our editors work on the last page.

The ending is where short fiction succeeds or is politely declined, and it fails in two opposite directions that both come from anxiety. Some stories explain themselves in the final paragraph, telling the reader what the preceding pages meant; others stop abruptly on an image, hoping ambiguity will read as depth. We work through stories so the ending turns rather than concludes, since the reader should understand something they were not told and could have worked out; so nothing in the last paragraph explains an earlier scene, because a story that interprets itself has decided the reader could not; so the closing image belongs to the story's own material rather than arriving from outside, given that a late symbol is visible as a symbol; so the final sentence is checked for length and rhythm against the ones before it, as endings usually want to be shorter and often are not; so the story is tested by reading the last page immediately after the first, which reveals whether the ending answers the beginning or a different story's beginning; and so any ambiguity is genuine ambiguity rather than an absence of decision, because readers can tell the difference immediately. Stories worked on this way get the response every writer wants, which is silence for a second afterwards.

Everything you send us stays confidential, including unpublished stories, collections and competition entries. We are editors rather than publishers or judges, and we offer no view on a story's merit or its chances. What we can do is find out whether the ending is doing what you think it is.