Creative Writing

Editing Advice

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If you read under the Shitty First Drafts Article and read my response you would know I was going into steps about the writing process:

 

1. Draft/Brainstorm

2. Edit/ Peer Edit

3. Revise

4. Publish

 

The Draft or Brainstorm: is the first step of the writing process. Where the writer can collect ideas and experiment with the direction the writing or essay will go in.

Editing: Is when the writer is completely done with the draft rather it’s a book, essay, poem etc. This is when the writer goes back and make punctuation and spelling corrections.

Peer Editing: ( usually done in a classroom or with peers) When  writers transfer their papers to a friend or peer that reads the writing and make corrections to the story.

Revise: When the writer is finished with editing they will recheck sentence structures and flow of comprehension. The Author is checking for run on sentences and overall flow of text.

Publish: When the Author is done correcting and prints out all pages of the story, essay, poem etc.

 

There are a couple of ways to Edit writing that you make:

 

Writing Process

Get a friend to edit and make corrections for you or you could look over it yourself.

Ask Yourself:

• What is the mood of this sentence or what I am trying to say? Am I excited or am I disappointed? Make sure punctuation shows throughout the mood of the text so the audience can understand what you are saying.  

• Are there misspelled words? Misspelled words can hinder the overall understanding  or theme of writing. Remember too much misspelled words can cause a distraction to the audience and cause them to lose interests

• Run on sentences: Ask yourself are things correctly punctuated? This is important because the audience will need to know when to pause and think then start to read again. Keep in mind: correct punctuation makes comprehension easier for the reader to relate or understand text.   

• Miss matched sequence: Ask yourself did I say the same word to many times? Did I repeat the same word or sentence back to back? Did I miss place the sentence within the text.

 

Mistake: I went to the store to buy a book bag. Yesterday I spent all my money on a book bag. It was fun

Correction: Yesterday, I went to the store and spent all my money on a book bag. It was fun.  

 

Rewrite:

 

Another way to edit work is to rewrite the whole draft. You can do this by yourself or with a peer ask yourself:

• Where do you want to see more?

• Where do you wanna do more?

• How do you feel about the situation in the story?

• Put yourself in your character's shoes?

Comment:

• Details

• Character Dialogue

 

If you are doing this on your own you could turn over the written draft and rewrite it over WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE OTHER STORY see if you like the second one you wrote better than the first one. Then edit which one you feel is better.