These are excellent guidelines for critiquing your own and others' work - some could equally apply to a short story.

http://critiquemymanuscript.com/checklist-for-critiquing-a-novel/

Thank you for posting this.

It's exactly what I need right now with my WIP

ooh, can't get in - how frustrating!

Thanks Jem

I saw these posted by Colin in another section and they are helpful.

I'm sticking it up as my checklist for future reference.

Ah, I'm in.

Good list, Jem, thanks for that. Although I'd take issue with this:

Is there only one POV character in each scene

because that's quite ridiculously prescriptive.

Also, as ever, all the stuff about pacing assumes what goes wrong is always that it's not pacey enough.

It's true that beginners often do take longer to tell things than someone with a more developed technique would, but I've seen plenty and plenty of MS where everything else - interest, nuance, character, comprehensibility - is sacrificed, in the delusion that "pace"="speed of events wizzing by". It doesn't.

That's the trouble with lists isn't it? They do have a tendency to be prescriptive. Must say I only skimmed them.

Someone posted on FB the other day - "There are three rules for writing - unfortunately no one knows what they are."

I'm glad you say this about pace Emma.

I sometimes instinctively feel that I go too fast but then I've been told that pace is what publishers want, perhaps they mean thrillers and chick lit.

Clarity and comprehension don't get discussed enough and also how to achieve it without being bluntly bald.

Might there be a post on your blog?

Might there be a post on your blog?

Stranger things have happened!

Although that's the point at which it becomes impossible to make any general points which are useful: it's all in the detail of how an individual text and writer do it, and also what tradition (for want of a better word) they're writing in: one reader's pacy and exciting is another reader's impoverished and dreary...

Thanks, Jem, that is very useful.

I counted 62 bullet points. So, if you can genuinely say you've ticked all 62, why not be a runaway success?

(Maybe point 63 could ask: Have you included the X-factor?)

I straight away skim-read then copied and pasted into a Word doc for future reference, but am wondering, because the first section asks about 'your' story/protagonise, and later ('Settings & locales'to 'the author' whether it is for one's own or someone else's novel its aimed at.
And so many points received that gritted-teeth 'If I knew that (or could see it) I'd'v'e changed it.' response.
But you only need one or two points which tick a box to make such lists useful, so long as you have the confidence to disregard the rest.
Thanks for posting Jem.

<Added>

Don't know what the emoticon is doing after 'locales' - laughing at my punctuation perchance. That'll learn me.

This is dead handy. Thanks, Jem!