1. Pick some other people's fics or short stories of your target length that you think flow well, and try to figure out what they do. How many scenes do they have? How is each scene contributing to the plot or emotional arc, and how long is it? There's no one right way to structure a story, so try to pick a variety of fics with different degrees of plot, over different spans of time, etc.
2. Outline your story. This can very detailed or not detailed at all. Just a list of scenes and what you want to happen in each counts as an outline, even if you only have four scenes! In general, I find my fics flow much better when I know what's going to happen in them. I personally don't tend to write out an outline, but that in-my-head outline is very important!
3. Editing for sure, possibly with the help of a beta who can point to the trouble spots and maybe make suggestions on what to fix. Someone else reading your fic is going to have a very different impression of what works and what doesn't than you, who are seeing it from the inside.
Re: dear coal advice column
2. Outline your story. This can very detailed or not detailed at all. Just a list of scenes and what you want to happen in each counts as an outline, even if you only have four scenes! In general, I find my fics flow much better when I know what's going to happen in them. I personally don't tend to write out an outline, but that in-my-head outline is very important!
3. Editing for sure, possibly with the help of a beta who can point to the trouble spots and maybe make suggestions on what to fix. Someone else reading your fic is going to have a very different impression of what works and what doesn't than you, who are seeing it from the inside.