Tips on Revising:

Look back and for each scene, detail, or bit of information or dialogue, ask yourself if it serves the central purpose of the story. If a scene doesn't add anything important for that goal, even if you absolutely love it, cut it out. There's no law saying you can't use that scene for something else, and you don't want irrelevant baggage hanging around junking up your story. Possibly split the story in two if you've got a lot of parts that don't quite relate to one another.

Make a list of all the details you gave about each character, location, etc. You may be able to picture these things in perfect clarity, but that doesn't mean the reader can. It's hard to push away all the knowledge you have just by virtue of being the author and see what someone reading the story for the first time would see, so a list might help you realize how much or little you've actually given.

Look at your transitions. When you change scene, do you give the reader time to adjust, or do you skip to something else without much preamble?

Look at your showing vs. telling. Sometimes it's difficult to understand what those terms mean as applied to your actual story even if you know them in principle. Do you just come out and say "My character is (adjective)" or do we get to see the character do/say things that let us know what manner of a person he/she is? It's like the difference between actually knowing a person and just being told about them. For example, if I told you my character (or a real person for that matter) was brave, you might believe me, but it's not interesting to hear and you wouldn't feel it with much conviction. It would also be easy to forget. If I go into a story about the time she stood up to someone in power and didn't back down, you would feel like you know on a deeper level how brave she is, and it would be much more interesting to hear/read. This also applies to events, relationships, etc. For example, it's very dull to read "They have a good relationship and love each other very much," but it's very interesting to read about the time one of them made some amazing sacrifice for the other.

Remember that under no circumstances are you obligated to change everything you are told to change or keep everything you are told to keep. You are the writer, you make the choices. If you have to defend your choices, you probably need to make the reasons more clear in the story, but that doesn't necessarily mean doing away with them entirely.

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