An editing example: bad vs. good

Illustration by Billy Nunez

On the heels of the previous post on editing lessons, Howard Oberg asked me to provide "some examples of bad vs. good." In Howard's own words: "As a noob writer sometimes I don't even know crap writing if it hit me in the face." I asked Howard if he'd like to serve as a lab rabbit in this exercise. He agreed: "A chance to be humiliated before the masses. Sure, why not." We sealed the deal with coffee, and below you will find the opening to Howard's short story C...