12. Writing with focus
Developing an editor’s eye
When you write your piece completely, is it done? Most people think ‘yes’.
It’s actually just your first draft. The key to writing improvement isn’t just the writing, but reviewing and making changes.
By changes, I don’t mean proof-reading, by changes, I mean real changes that:
- Enhance the understandability of your piece.
- Give your piece a laser-like focus.
- Reduce the distraction in your piece.
At this point in your writing improvement journey, you’re going to start to make decisions about your writing and one of the major decisions that you’re going to make is whether something is relevant or irrelevant.
Quite simply, if it’s relevant – keep it. If it’s irrelevant, cut it out. If you don’t cut it out, you are keeping confusion and distraction. In essence, the act of cutting out something that is irrelevant improves your piece. Easy right?
Relevant and irrelevant
To help you decide what is relevant and what is not, go through this checklist.
Relevant
- Crucial part of the story. That means, the story would not be the same without it. There are few things that are relevant.
Irrelevant
- Already expressed or described previously. No need to repeat in different words for description and content.
- Not a central character.
- Names and ages.
- Brand names.
- Side-activities or actions e.g. eating breakfast, jumping into the car, driving to school etc…
- Description of items that are not important to the story – distracts and puts emphasis on these areas.
Deciding what is relevant and what is irrelevant is very much an application – so let’s apply this to an essay which has great structure, but can be enhanced by removing irrelevant words.
Examples
Watch video to see worked example/s for the essay:
In her imagination, Mary was a twinkling star that flew all around the galaxy. She would often travel with other stars to many other places she wanted to call home. As she flew, the planets around her always swirled as she wondered about which planet she would check out next.
All the planets seemed to be interesting, but Mary picked favourites. She loved Jupiter, because of its magnetic force being so strong. It also rotated the fastest and was the biggest planet in the solar system. She loved Pluto because it was the biggest known dwarf planet to date. People said that 1/3 of the planet was made of water, but she didn’t believe it.
She thought about her life. Ugh… School test tomorrow, and of course it was the house athletes’ day! She tried to put it off her mind, but she struggled to find the certain little amount of calm she had left to do so. So she focused on Pluto: Roman god of health and underworld. Nope, she wasn’t looking for that. Dwarf planet discovered on February 18th, 1930 by the Lowell Observatory. Yes! Focus, focus and more focus.
A bothersome sound of a bell came.
“Dad! I’m trying to get some sleep you know?”
“It’s school time honey!” He replied with a grin on his face. “Don’t forget that there’s a test today! Best of luck and do well, I think you’ll enjoy it! It’s all about twinkling stars!”
Mary put on a glad smile on and got out of bed.
Key Rules to remember
- A completed essay is only a first draft.
- Deciding what to emphasise is an important skill to actively develop. You need to actively assess whether something is important to the story or not by going through a series of questions. This helps you develop your editor’s eye.
- Elimination in itself can be an act of improving an essay.
- More doesn’t mean better. It is tempting to include more for the reader as a good intention but sometimes, this creates more confusion and distraction.
Practice time!
Now, it's your turn to practice.
The questions in this checkpoint are provided to help you develop your writing skills.
To do your practice questions, click on the below to download your question paper. You can print it out or work from the electronic version. We do recommend that you write your answers by hand in a notebook or on paper.
NW-CP12-Questions.pdfOnce you have completed your questions, review the suggested solutions. You can download (and print if you wish) the PDF suggested solutions and/or watch the suggested solutions video (all below).
Once you're done with reviewing the practice question suggested solutions, move on to the next checkpoint.
