20 Aug 09 Learning To Edit

Learning to edit is one of the most important aspects of writing. As most people will tell you, good writing is in the editing. It’s not what you want to write, but how you write that makes the largest difference in how your readers will perceive you. By properly editing a piece you can ensure that you make your points, and maintain an entertaining as well as informative writing style. That’s the key in the end, you need to titillate as well as inform, if you want people to keep up with what you’re writing. The key to that always will be reworking your first drafts.

Good writing should be as concise and always to the point as possible. When you write too much fluff your readers tend to shut off their brains, or worse, get bored and stop reading altogether. You first edit should focus on how you can take what you’ve written, and formulate it into a shorter piece of work that tells the same story. Nobody wants to read over inflated paragraphs or multiple sentences that make the same point.

After that, learn your strengths and weaknesses. If you’re not very descriptive, make sure you spend extra editing time ensuring that your moments of description are fleshed out well enough. You can’t be too vague, but you also don’t want to over describe to make up for your weakness. Also learning the areas that you tend to need work on will allow you to target where you should go first when editing a piece.

Get as much feedback from third party sources as possible. Get a friend to read what you’ve written, or a coworker, or even a family member. Someone that will provide you with good honest criticism. We all need honest criticism so that we can grow as people, and writing is no different. In fact writing ability hinges on your ability to get effective criticism, and incorporate it into your style to become a better writer on the whole.

Finally, always give your piece a read through backwards. This is especially helpful for noticing little grammatical errors, or punctuation mistakes. By reading backwards your brain doesn’t concentrate on what the writing means, but just on the words and characters themselves. This affords you the opportunity to avoid being engaged in what your writing says, instead focusing on how you’ve written each individual portion.

Tags: Brains, Coworker, Family Member, First Drafts, Fluff, Focus, Good Writing, Hinges, Honest Criticism, Informative Writing, Paragraphs, Party Sources, People, Sentences, Strengths And Weaknesses, Target, Third Party, Writing Style

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26 Jun 09 Good Writing Is In The Editing

Good writing is about successfully conveying ideas and thoughts into words, so that you may help someone else understand your point of view through the writing medium. Good writing is also in the editing. Good writing is knowing how much to write, how you should structure a sentence, and also making sure that your writing flows free of grammatical errors. So what should you look for when you’re editing a piece you’ve just completed?

Well, always reread anything you’ve written a few times, to ensure that your sentences flow naturally, and to clear up any grammatical mistakes you may have made. Good policy also suggests reading your pieces aloud, as it’s a fantastic method to double check how your writing sounds on the whole. Reading aloud will give you the opportunity to make sure that everything flows properly, and that all sentences sound complete.

Another widely used, and remarkably effective tactic, is to read in reverse. This is helpful for weeding out those cursed grammatical errors that you may still miss despite completing two or three rereads. When you read your piece in reverse it eliminates the brain’s tendency to remember what you’ve written, which can cause you to skip over mistakes without even knowing that you have.

When restructuring a sentence never add more words to the sentence than were originally there, always cut the excess. The problem with most first drafts of any piece of writing, is that they are much longer than necessarily needed. Focus on condensing your concepts into as few sentences and paragraphs as possible, that way you can form a short concise work that will appeal to a broader audience.

These are just a few quick editing tips, there are many, many more concepts when you really get more in depth into what the editing process can do for a piece of writing. But follow those guidelines and you’ll find yourself well on your way to becoming a better, and more complete writer.

Tags: Audience, Brain, Check Writing, Concise Work, First Drafts, Good Writing, Grammatical Errors, Grammatical Mistakes, Opportunity, Paragraphs, Piece Of Writing, Point Of View, Sentences, Sounds, Tactic, Tendency, Weeding

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20 Aug 09 Learning To Edit

26 Jun 09 Good Writing Is In The Editing

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