Editing and Reviewing Stories

"Big Name" authors, those who write stories for a living, have Editors who read their stories and offer suggestions about how to improve them prior to publication. Those of us who publish without expecting payment, do not have this luxury.

Some people belong to Writer's Groups where they can share their stories prior to publication and get feedback from friends.  Most of us either do not know of such a group locally or cannot avail ourselves for one reason or another.

I have been mulling over this problem for some months, wondering if there was anything website related that could be done to help.  I've considered creating a place on my personal website where authors could share stories and get feedback from other authors prior to publication.  I even considered adding such a feature to StoryStar.  The advantage of doing it on my site is that I do the development work there and I would have to pay someone else like I do when I have another developer modify StoryStar. There is also the consideration that multiple copies of a story would fill up the database faster, but this is not much of a problem.

I will admit that there is a piece of me that wants my stories to be My Stories, warts and all.  They show where I was as a writer at the time I wrote them. I know that I still have a ways to go before I am even what I think of as an "acceptable" writer. There are several weaknesses that I struggle to overcome. Among other bad habits, I tend to rush a story to being published before I have polished it enough. 

So, the idea of having someone else review my work and offer suggestions is not a totally awful thing. I want my work to be mine, but probably every story published in print went through several passes of being edited and revised.  This gets us back to cost.  If I'm making zero from publishing my stories, am I willing to pay someone else for this service, or would a zero cost but less thorough method be acceptable?

The other day, I think that I may have come upon the solution, at least for me.

I have been learning how to use AI for work.  Let me add right here that I am completely against having AI write my stories.  I want them to be my ideas and work.  But I got to thinking, what is the difference between having a human review my work or having AI review my work.

So, I have been working with Claude AI and decided to ask Claude to "Provide an editorial review of the following story."  I then pasted in the text of "M01 Temporary Solution to a Permanent Problem" which was my first story on StoryStar.  I was not looking for the AI to write or rewrite the story, but rather to give me style hints of things that I could have done differently.  Claude.AI provides this review for free.  Full disclosure, I was using the Desktop version of Claude AI but I don't see why the web version would be different.

The response was illuminating. I had expected it to complain that my style was a little wordy and that I tend to Tell rather than Show way too much.

I am going to include the complete AI Review here:

M01 Editorial Review

Editorial Review: Cyndi's Story

Overall Impression

This is a story with genuine heart and a compelling premise. The concept of a flawed, still-learning spiritual messenger — one who made the same mistake as the girl she's trying to save — is imaginative and emotionally resonant. It's more original than a standard guardian angel story, and that distinction is your strongest asset. The bones are good. What it needs now is structural tightening, prose polish, and some craft decisions that will elevate it from a rough draft to something publishable.

What Works Well

The Mirielle concept is the story's crown jewel. A messenger who jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge, who can't fully materialize because she spent her energy stopping an assault, who is essentially a trainee atoning for her own despair — this is fresh, theologically inventive, and emotionally satisfying. Lean into this harder.

The pacing of the fall sequence is genuinely effective. The detail about water feeling like ice at speed, the skirt bunching and trapping air, the mouth refusing to open — these are specific, visceral, and well-observed. This section is the strongest prose in the piece.

The emotional core is relatable. Cyndi's situation — assault, shame, feeling unloved — is unfortunately universal, and readers will connect with it.

Structural Issues

The epilogue kills the story's power. This is the most important note in this review. You spend the entire story building tension, mystery, and emotional stakes — and then the epilogue wraps everything in a tidy bow in a single paragraph, including the information that one of their children helps cure diabetes. This robs the reader of their own emotional resolution. A story about suicide, assault, and survival deserves an ending the reader feels, not one they're told. Consider ending on Kevin lifting her, or Mirielle's final whispered words. Let the reader sit with the hope rather than being handed a summary.

The Infidel subplot arrives too late and too abruptly. The revelation that a malevolent force actually pushed Cyndi's foot is a significant plot point, but it's dropped into the middle of an already information-heavy conversation while Cyndi is half-drowned in a river. It raises more questions than it answers and then disappears. Either develop it meaningfully or cut it entirely from this story — it could anchor a sequel.

The assault backstory is told, not shown. The paragraph explaining what happened with Billie in the car is delivered as a flashback summary. This is one of the most important plot points in the story and deserves to be dramatized, or at minimum given more emotional weight. The reader needs to feel what Cyndi experienced, not receive a report of it.

Character and Dialogue

Cyndi's voice needs more consistency. At the bridge she is numb, dissociated, and resolute — which is well-drawn. But once she's in the river, she becomes surprisingly chatty and curious for someone with a broken leg who nearly drowned. Her question "You are telling me that I get help from an angel and my angel is just a TRAINEE?" is a nice moment of dark humor, but it feels tonally jarring given the gravity of the scene. You can keep the humor — it's a good instinct — but ease into it more gradually.

Mirielle is your most interesting character and she carries the story. Her mix of guilt, warmth, and mild snappishness feels authentic. However, her dialogue becomes lecture-heavy in the river scene, with large blocks of exposition delivered in an unlikely setting. Some of this world-building could be parceled out more naturally across the narrative.

Kevin is a plot device rather than a character. He exists to rescue Cyndi, which is fine for a short story, but the line "He had always thought that she was cute and out of his league" feels like it belongs in the epilogue summary rather than the tense rescue scene. Save his character development for later in the story if you expand this.

Prose and Line-Level Notes

The opening sentence is overworked. It tries to do too much at once — whispered, insistent, compulsive, barely audible, yet coming from within her head — and the reader loses their footing. A strong opening should pull the reader in cleanly. Consider something more direct that trusts the strangeness of the situation to carry its own weight.

Capitalization for emphasis — using IF and WHEN in capitals — is a beginner's technique. The same effect can be achieved through sentence construction and rhythm without resorting to typographic shortcuts.

The word "Infidel" is a real-world loaded religious and political term. Using it for your antagonist spiritual force will pull some readers out of the story entirely due to its associations. Consider coining an entirely original term for these entities, which would also reinforce the originality of your mythology.

Point of view wavers. The story is predominantly in close third-person from Cyndi's perspective, but occasionally drifts into Mirielle's thoughts and even briefly into an omniscient narrator voice. Pick a lane and stay in it. The moment "Mirielle thought, 'Thank God!'" is a POV break that undercuts the intimacy you've built with Cyndi.

Spelling inconsistency: Mirielle's name is spelled Mireille in several places. Pick one spelling and use it throughout.

Sensitivity Note

This story deals with suicide, sexual assault, and mental health crisis. These are handled with evident compassion and care, which is to your credit. If you intend to submit this for publication, be aware that some outlets will require particular sensitivity in how suicidal ideation is depicted. The story's message — that a permanent solution to a temporary problem is a tragedy — is sound and humane.

Summary Scorecard

Element

Assessment

Premise & Originality

Strong

Emotional Core

Strong

Prose Quality

Developing

Dialogue

Uneven

Structure

Needs work

Pacing

Good in action scenes, uneven in dialogue

Ending

Significantly weakens the story

Recommended Next Steps

1. Cut or radically rewrite the epilogue. End the story on an image, not a summary.
2. Do a POV audit — every sentence should be anchored in Cyndi's experience.
3. Revise the opening sentence to be cleaner and more arresting.
4. Show the Billie scene rather than explaining it in retrospect.
5. Read the river conversation aloud — if it sounds unlikely for someone half-drowned, trim it.

This story has genuine potential and a premise worth developing. With focused revision it could be something quite moving.

===End of AI Review Text

Lots of detailed comments. It did not try to write my story for me, but it did offer suggestions about how I could improve it, much like a human editor.

Ir did not like some of the things that I thought were good.  Overall, though, I think that it did a good job of pointing out weaknesses that I needed to work on.  I am going to review my other stories too and see if, as I suspect, I have gotten worse, or have made progress.

Author’s Note: I could not resist putting in an Author’s note which the AI almost universally hated in my stories. I have now read the reviews of all of my Messenger stories and it is as I expected in some ways.

I definitely have received recurring suggestions to change some things. It was not my wordy style but there were definitely complaints about telling rather than showing, and some others that I will try to learn from. The most interesting, to me, was that I still have problems with my proof reading, even after reading several times and my routine to listen to the story being read to me several times.  If nothing else, the AI seems adept at catching these annoying errors.

While waiting to publish this story I decided to try out other AI systems. ChatGPT offered similar advice and always offered to make the changes for me. This is a source of temptation that I definitely want to avoid. ChatGPT seemed to have smaller free usage limits before imposing longer waits because I was reviewing many stories.

 Gemini offered good advice and always suggested an idea for the next story in the series. Interesting. Gemini seemed to give more compact advice and had the largest usage limits.

Surprising to me was that CoPilot did a credible job of providing detailed reviews and did not seem to have any usage limits. It also offered to give me ideas for future story lines, which I let it do.  I have not decided yet how I feel about that, but I'm leaning towards that it is Okay as long as I write the story.  Having the AI suggest story plots is not that much different from responding to a Prompt to write a story about a specific topic. 

Another obvious dilemma , at least for me, relates to the underlying topic of this entire article.  Should I get AI reviews before I publish and modify my story as a result, or just examine the reviews after the fact, as I just did, to learn to do better next time.  Paid authors get reviews, modify, then publish, but it is still tough for me to consider doing this. It would seem more like OUR story than MY story.

I would be happy to hear from others if they believe that this use of AI in the context of writing/editing is a good or bad thing.