Rewrite Someone Else's Short Story
Have you ever read a story that you felt could have been better? Many stories might strike you as having 'great potential' but lacking good writing. Noticing this can get your creative juices flowing. If you're looking to rewrite an existing short story just for fun, you can create a new-old story!
Steps
- Read the story. Read it twice or even three times if you feel that's necessary. Examine the plot, the theme and the writing of the story. This will help you know how you want the rewritten story to be.
- Identify the theme of the story. Figure out what is wrong with it. Do you feel it is impossible or awkward as written, or just old-fashioned and dated?
- Also look at why you think that this story is worth rewriting. Do you like the idea, or maybe the plot? Or do you think the writing is amazing but the plot not so good? This step is important as you will understand what to improve and what to keep.
- Take a look at the characters and see if you want to improve them. Do you feel that the perfection of the protagonist is going way too far, or are the dialogues hypocritical? Look at what you want to change.
- Always keep in mind the plot and the theme of the story, whether the original one or your new improved one. The characters should always fit in with the theme of the story, and the dialogues should never clash with the established mindset of the character in question.
- Get creative with the plot. If you like the writing but not the plot, you can simply write in a similar style and improve whatever you want to improve.
- This may be a little difficult, but if you have read many works of the author, imitating the style will become easier.
- If you feel that you cannot keep the writing and improve the story, just write it out how you like it and edit it afterwards to keep the style of the original author. Once you write out the story in simple language, making the words flow to your liking is not that difficult.
- Decide if you want to change the whole story or just parts of it. Do you think the ending should be not be a cliffhanger, or maybe the beginning is too long, or the details too tedious? This will reduce the time you spend on rewriting the story.
- Note what you want to change. This will keep your writing more organized.
- In the original story, highlight what you want to change, or keep. You can look over these while writing out the first draft of your improved story.
- Make an outline combining the good elements and the improved ones. This will create the base for your improved version.
- Write out the story in points. This will keep your outline clear and concise. You can elaborate it while writing the actual version.
- Make sure that you have figured out what parts to change. You do not want to be stuck while writing the story!
- Start writing. Once you have got your outline prepared, you can start on your first draft.
- Once you have finished writing it, read it all once to make sure it is exactly to your liking. If you feel some parts are still in need of improvisation, do that now.
- Complete the final version. Write it or type it out.
- Go over it to remove any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.
- Submit your work. If it is for an assignment, make sure that you include the original story's name and the author.
- Don't try to sell the story as your own. This is a very enjoyable personal project, and you can just store your version to read by yourself. This will keep you out of unintended trouble when it comes to plagiarism, and you can read the story without the feeling of dissatisfaction that you got when reading the original story!
