Learn from them. Now, we'll briefly visit Cut, Color, and Carats. The Cut of a story is determined by its structure, much like how each person's skeleton determines how he or she looks. Stories are made up of separate scenes hooked up together with transitions, bones held together by cartilage and sinew. Words fill the scenes, giving them character, like pieces of flesh wrapped around bone.
Polished prose makes everything pretty like flawless skin over raw flesh.
A flaw in the gem, a crooked spine in a story, can ruin the demeanor of any story. Though a hunchback can have flawless skin, people will still notice the hump. A story's Color is determined by consistency of tone, word usage, symbolism, exotic settings, and engaging characters. By looking at a story's Clarity, Cut, Color, and Carats, we can determine whether it is of Quality or not. And we can through conscientious effort make sure that we are writing quality fiction when we want to.