Who DARES to Improve?

Learning to step back and edit your writing is almost as important a skill as the writing itself. Being able to show your writer's craft and process can only benefit your grades overall because - like mathematicians - English assessors like to see your working.

Four Tips to CRAFTING Your Work

1. Use 2 different colours - black, blue or green are best. Initially write in one, then use the other for your revision and editing to show how your ideas are developing.
2. Double-space your prose - this allows room for editing in a neater way than trying to squeeze bits in or flick backwards and forwards.
3. Spend AT LEAST 1/4 of your time Planning AND Editing - both are equally important to show an assessor that you're crafting your response.
4. DO NOT USE White-Out/Tip-ex/Correction Strips. How can you show that you've crafted and edited your work if an assessor cannot see what you've changed?

There are a number of acronyms for reviewing and editing out there, I personally prefer DARES because it covers all the things you should be thinking about in a logical way.

D - Delete unnecessary words

A - Add more detail

R - Rearrange the order

E - Exchange for a better word

S - SPAG

This is my revised version of Task 111 with all the DARES changes marked and numbered. Original parts are in black, new additions in red and I have included explanations for my changes below. I hope that with this explanation and the completed work you can see the benefits of revision on the crafting of creative writing.

Winter Sunrise – REVISED

(1)A few bulbous (2)lilac clouds were massing in (3)strange shapes and colours bundles, like a tight bag of apples hanging in the sky. They had bright silver (4)lining the bottoms in contrast to indigo waves across the tops. (5)Behind them the sky was navy, almost black, fading to a bleached denim near the horizon, where (6)a faded gold glow touched buttermilk white touched wrapped the chimneys of distant houses. (7)Tiny crystal Glittering speckles swirled by, pausing lightly on rooftops, then (8)dancing away on the next gust (9)as the warmth of dawn fought against the chill of the winter night.

            Bare branches of the tree-lined street reached into the frigid air as if crying out for spring, (10)and fuchsia blossom and canopies of forest green. (11)Waving, spindly hands pleading for mercy from the winter sky. The implacable (12)sunrise sky answered with (13)more thicker clumps of white flakes and a (14)new lazy wind that found every (15)crack or crevice in the ancient trunks. It made the branches groan (16)and shudder, throwing off their clinging coats for now. They would soon be blanketed again.

            (17)Beneath the complaining branches the muddy grass was already frosted into spikes of minty ice, growing paler by the minute as the Snow began to gather and settle in fluffy billows that caught the growing light and seemed to smoulder (18)with burnt orange and lemon as the sun burst into the sky in (19)defiance of the cold (20)canary yellow, throwing beams of light onto the snow that split and refracted along the street. A joyous spectrum of opalescent lilac and pink and purple, turquoise and jade and gold.

 Revisions and Changes Explained

1. REARRANGE - Switching the first two sentences helps to add emphasis to the clouds and the storm, which are more interesting features than the sky. Also, removing 'A few' gives more strength to the 'massing' cloud, and emphasis to the assonance of 'bulbous' and 'bundles.'
2. DELETE - Removing 'lilac' means that the sentence flows  - for me in particular because I have problems with 'c' sounds and 'lilac cloud' catches my tongue. Some editing choices are subjective - personal - and a matter of opinion and preference.
3. ADD - 'Strange shapes and colours' is a very basic and uninspiring description, and needed to be expanded to describe the shape in a more interesting way - apples in a bag make an interesting simile.
4. SPAG - 'lining the bottoms in contrast to indigo waves across the tops' - this needed some finessing to make it clearer to read and grammatically correct.
5. SPAG - Making sure to relate each item to the others clarifies the language, otherwise the clouds are floating and unrelated to the sky.
6. EXCHANGE - Changing 'faded gold' to 'buttercream white' got rid of the repetition of fading/faded in that line, and also clarified the colour as a more washed-out shade that matched the bleached denim. Changing 'touched' to 'wrapped' shows that the beginning light of sunrise surrounds the rooftops, rather than touching a small area.
7. EXCHANGE - You cannot see the 'tiny crystal' flakes from a distance, they are more like points of light that shimmer in the light, 'glittering' is a more interesting and accurate choice.
8. ADD - The image of snow 'dancing away' demonstrates its lightness.
9. ADD - I needed to clarify what this piece was about, even though there is no physical action or narrative needed in this task. All actions described need to demonstrate some form of intent and the idea of sunrise fighting its way against the winter night creates a smaller narrative that helps this piece to be more compelling - 'as the warmth of dawn fought against the chill of the winter night.'
10. SPAG - Removing an 'and' to help the sentence flow a little better.
11. DELETE - 'Waving, spindly hands pleading for mercy from the winter sky.' - Although this is an interesting example of personification it is a repetition of the previous line and needed to be removed.
12. EXCHANGE - Changing 'sunrise' for 'sky' clarifies the theme that the sunrise if fighting against the winter night.
13. EXCHANGE - Changing 'more' for 'thicker clumps of' specifies the difference, I don't like to hang descriptions on 'more' or 'less' or 'some'.
14. EXCHANGE - A 'lazy' wind is more typical, indicating a chill wind that cuts through everything.
15. DELETE - 'Crack or crevice' is a cliché, and quite overused so I cut half of it... but could have changed it completely.
16. ADD - Having cut some of the personification of the trees above (11) I felt that I needed to expand more and build on the idea that they remained defiant in the face of the cold, although I didn't want the storm to seem weaker for it so I included a comment, 'They would soon be blanketed again,' which gives the narrator - and nature - power and control of the story.
17. DELETE - I really liked this sentence, but it was not a part of the flow of the piece; stormy sky, then dreaming trees, then the dawn hitting the snow. I could have moved it up into paragraph 2, but couldn't find a way of squeezing it in that would fit. Sometimes good bits need to be cut - but having only drawn a line through it means that the assessor can still see and appreciate it.
18. SPAG - Introducing better grammar.
19. ADD - The sun rising 'in defiance' of the cold continues the theme of a battle between elements of nature.
20. ADD - This final sentence reflects back on the task itself - to write using colour - and creates a compelling image of light 'joyously' bursting out despite the cold.

Some of these changes are relatively minor, adding or removing one or two words, whereas others really do change the direction of the piece. Comparing the original to this re-write demonstrates the benefits of really looking at revision and editing. If you have time at the end of a writing task, there is always something to add or improve, so why not DARE yourself?

On average, I aim for 5% LESS junk and 10% MORE detail.

Never be afraid to cut the bits that don't fit!