Editor Insights: Why Your Story Has to EARN Its Ending

Part 1 of the 'Evaluate Your Work Like an Editor' Series with Steve Chang

steve chang

and

The Forever Workshop

Nov 05, 2025

Hello, Forever Workshoppers! Welcome to the How to Evaluate Your Work Like an Editor series.

In these interactive weekly lessons, we’ll explore what editors wish writers knew about revision and craft. So come play along and get behind-the-Submittable insights that will transform your work.

By the end of November, you’ll have a brand new perspective on editing, as well as a range of practical tools and techniques to help level up your writing.

A Brief Introduction

Hi, I’m Steve Chang, co-founder of writers community Lit Match Collective and fiction editor at Okay Donkey. And when I put on my editor hat — yes, it’s got a tiny propeller — I don’t read like a reader. Nor like a writer.

I do something much weirder.

Of course I evaluate work holistically, organically, gluten-freely, etc. but I also treat texts like information delivery systems—sequences of potential stimuli to slot in or out, all crafted to elicit specific responses at specific story junctures.

I am a very fun and normal person.

In this four-part series of chats, I’ll be sharing pre- and post-revision versions of pieces published at Okay Donkey. I’ll talk through how I read and think about fiction, Q&A with the writers, and share some juicy craft tips. (Are you nerds for craft? #Same) I’ll signpost questions and instructions so you can roleplay as editors too. Kind of like Dungeons & Dragons. But cool 😎

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Lesson 1: Why Your Story Has to EARN Its Ending
Lesson 2: Make Us Care About Your Characters
Lesson 3: What’s Your Narrator’s (Secret) Agenda?
Lesson 4: Drive Your Narrative with Cause & Effect

We ready for chat #1? Let’s go.

Today’s lesson is free to all subscribers. Paid subs will get a new lesson from Steve every Wednesday in November.

Read Like an Editor: Crafting a Narrative Journey

In our first installment of Reading Like an Editor, we’ll be looking at pre- and post-revision versions of Rob Roensch’s Best Small Fictions winner 1000 (don’t read it yet), a tiny epic that transports readers to a Norse-y world of villagers, “women beautiful as snakes” and “men with marks on their faces and long-staffed axes.”

It’s dope.

I’ll talk to Rob about how we revised for publication and touch on:

2 types of fiction: Snow Globes vs Pinball Machines
How actionable goals can convert Situation into Story
And when and why you’d want to convert

First, check out the pre-revision draft below and roleplay as an editor. Wherever you see thought bubble 💭 questions, take a minute to consider your own responses to the story. (No need to write anything down, but feel free to bring your ideas to the comments at the end of the lesson.)

💭 As you’re reading, ask yourself: Does this feel more like a Snow Globe or a Pinball Machine?

(We haven’t defined those terms yet but give it a shot.)

1000 by Rob Roensch

I have been as tall as I will ever be for one whole year. I will never be as tall as my father. My father is dead, but everything else is the same. The night before he died, he talked in his sleep, which he did not do. The words he spoke were nonsense. Or they were in a different language, from another world.
Spring—the flooded riverbank and the mud, the return of leaf and light—is no surprise and for the first time barely a relief. It means the return of life; it proves the strength of the circle that cages us.
If not for my twisted leg, it would not be impossible to cross the river, and then, somehow, the Far River, and then simply continue, into the other world.
My father would not tell me the stories of the lakes on the far slopes of the mountains beyond the Far River, the men with marks on their faces and long-staffed-axes, the women beautiful as snakes, all banished from this valley, by God. The lakes and the mountains I know are real; the men with marks on their faces and long-staffed-axes and the women beautiful as snakes are only as real as the monsters that haunted my dreams when I was a child.
Prayer used to be my mother’s voice singing in the dark.
I was told, with the threat of a fist to the temple, never to attempt to cross the river until I was as tall as my father. When I tried to cross the river, I was swept up by the hands of current and smashed my face into the crag of a river boulder, which I then embraced, because it saved my one life. Later my father saw the blood on my face and made good on his warning. Before my eye healed, the mule in my blindspot kicked my knee and twisted my leg.
The mother of my sons no longer tries not to take up my space at night. In our first summer, touching her was seeing lightning through closed eyes.
The cry of our son who lived and the cry of our son who died is the same cry.
There is only one world. Black smoke, torn grass, a handful of cold water. Fog, starlight. The only path is to work and later try to sleep.
The men with marks on their faces and long-staffed axes appear all at once, across the river in the morning, massed like too many birds in a tree. They aim to murder all of us. But if monsters are real, then so is God.

💭 What do we think? Snow Globe or Pinball Machine?

I loved the mythic vibe here. This world of barbarians and villagers. The cycles of nature, disappointment, and death. This is a fallen world, far from Eden and God. And yet there’s a hint of renewed faith — or resolve at least — in our narrator’s final thought: “But if monsters are real, then so is God.”

It’s beautiful. But I wondered: has it been earned?

💭 What do we think? What’s intriguing about this rough draft? What does it want to do or be? What adjustments should we recommend to shape it?

An Interview with Rob Roensch: Part 1

Steve: Rob, what was the genesis of this story? The original intent.
Rob: I definitely didn’t have an end in mind when I started. On one level, I wanted to write about the things I have been writing about always, and recently: faith, what it feels like to be alive in the world. But I was feeling stuck…. I wanted to get back to essentials. I wanted to write simple words that felt true and that had nothing to do with my experience. The name “Far River” floated into my imagination from somewhere. It was an exploration. A small effort to build a different real world in words.

Converting a Situation into a Story

Rob accomplished what he set out to do. He built a perfectly contained world in miniature. For me, this is Snow Globe fiction. A Snow Globe captures a moment, a vibe, an era. It’s a snapshot of how things are or were. Closer kin to lyric poetry than to narrative. A Snow Globe doesn’t require change, movement, growth, or disruption of status quo. It describes a status quo. A Situation. And, sometimes, it offers a peek beyond.

However, a Snow Globe is ultimately a static summary. Sometimes a Snow Globe arrives at revelation, release, or resolve by the end but that often involves the narrative doubling as Argument. Somebody convincing themselves or the reader that X is actually Y. In other words, a Snow Globe talks itself toward ‘epiphany’ via psychological or rhetorical turns. It creates an illusion of motion. (Not sure what I mean? Reread the draft above.)

But I suspected that 1000 wanted to do something else. The original draft felt like it wanted movement and plot, things banging around. So I wondered: what if we converted 1000 from a Snow Globe to a Pinball Machine?

After all, we have a narrator who needs to earn their final thought, who has more opportunity to do so through deeds, not rhetoric — in a Story, not a Situation.

So why not?

💭 Look at the draft again. What components can help generate plot? How can they be activated to push our narrator toward earning that ending?

This guy has daddy issues, a dead baby, and a twisted leg. His only hobby is sleeping? Bro. Dude is stuck. I’ve been there. It sucks. Of course he’s trapped in a Snow Globe. Literally and figuratively, he has nowhere to go.

…or does he?

Listen to him talk. In the white spaces, don’t we hear the longing for more? This man has spiritual needs. And reasons to act. So why don’t we push him toward an actionable goal? (Not sure what these terms mean? Catch up here.)

So I’m looking at that Far River as a boundary to cross. And doesn’t this narrator kiiiind of have to cross it? To free himself from the past and the limits of the present, the prohibitions of the Father. He has to cross over to discover something about the world and himself.

So why not make 1000 a mini Hero’s Journey? It’s already in the realm of the mythic. If we do so, the world becomes a place where things happen, not just a slideshow of descriptions. The narrator is freed from stuckness. His spiritual needs align for a moment with an actionable goal. And now we have a great Story.

Check out the published version of 1000 here.

💭 How does the published version differ from the draft? What has fallen away and what has emerged? What do these changes do for the piece?

An Interview with Rob Roensch: Part 2

Steve: Rob, how did the revision process work with or against your original vision? How do you feel about the changes made?
Rob: The original piece was to me something sealed inside itself, a photograph in words (the Snow Globe metaphor works well, I think). I do like prose that works in that way. Closer to poetry than story. One way I think about the difference between a poem and a story is that a poem exists once it is written down, an object of contemplation, but a story does not exist without a reader moving through it in time. Plot, the focus of this revision, is a way to open up the sealed-photograph, a way to give entry to a reader who will make a story come into existence through her presence.
I think it’s useful to think of an editor not as someone who tweaks sentences and refines characters, but as someone who can stand in the place of the reader and help find ways to make the story truly exist.
Steve: I agree. Editors should have vision. To see other possibilities. I want one who sees through my work more clearly than I can. The way you’d want a therapist who calls you on your bullshit then shows you other ways forward.
What was surprising, satisfying, or disappointing about this revision?
Rob: I’m surprised by how much more I like the piece now than I did when I first considered it complete. It’s good to be challenged.

Editorial Takeaways

The published version of 1000 has become a Pinball Machine. It offers things that the Snow Globe draft doesn’t. It has a decision point, a breaking of the status quo, a trial to overcome, and a climactic moment. We have an Arc now, a journey, and a big So What? I believe the narrator when he arrives at his final thought now. That ending has been earned.

Now you might be wondering: “Oh, so Pinball Machines are superior to Snow Globes?”

No, it’s not so simple. It’s okay to not care about plot. Our revisions should serve the work. Evaluate it first to figure out what it wants to do or be.

How do we do that?

Exercise: Spot-check Your WIP

If you’ve written a static Situation and wonder if it should be a Story that moves, here’s a quick and dirty checklist:

Does your character have spiritual needs or longings?
Does your character have both push and pull motivations to break the status quo?
Does your character have an opportunity or actionable goal through which to break it?
Does that goal or opportunity include an obstacle to overcome?
Would breaking the status quo address the character’s needs? As well as the promise of the premise?

If you keep answering yes, you might want to break that Snow Globe.

💬

So. What do we think? What would you have done differently with the original draft of 1000 and why?

Or have you discovered a Situation draft of your own that is desperate to become a Story?

Drop your takes in the comments or ask questions and chat. Be curious and kind. We’re here for thoughtful craft and community.

Looking forward to the discussion!