Here is an explanation of an old post showing unedited and edited parts of a story my cousin wrote for her seventh grade English class.
The first paragraph was a pretty bad "tell." It was simple enough to fix.
The second paragraph felt a little too abrupt, so I put the dialogue tag at the beginning and beefed it up.
I combined the third and fourth paragraphs. They needed a style boost, so I went with a more character-driven approach.
The last two paragraphs were bare bones. I could have left them, but decided to add some words to the dialogue for realism and change/omit the tags.
I'm not quite sure why I decided to add an extra paragraph at the end. I suppose it gives the story a nicer sense of finality and builds upon Wiggles' character.
All in all, my edits made the story better, in my opinion.
Nice work, Patrick. I think it's good that you're practicing editing on somebody else's work.
ReplyDeleteThanks. The edits were actually made a while ago, although I'm noting further edits in these explanations. I've editing some writer friends' work.
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