This book introduces readers to the author's brand of revising fiction - a process in which a story's words, structure, even its very meaning may change as it grows stronger.....Through every stage of the writing process the author provides strategies and criteria to help pinpoint the problems in your work and fix them.....He looks at 'sacred' first ideas, slow starts, out-of-sequence events, imprecise language, inflated imagery, weak sentence structure, insufficient dialogue, action and description. In addition to illustrating his points with examples from contemporary writers he traces the evolution of three of his own stories throught drafts to final versions.