Describe two strategies that can help you make better use of the revision stage of the writing process.

1. Understand It First

Before embarking on any editing, read your content first. If you start editing before going through it, you might have to go back and undo some of the revisions.

This can occur because you haven’t grasped the flow and style of your content yet, probably because you’re focused on looking for mistakes rather than understanding the content. Yes, you can actually miss the point of your own work—it’s easy to think you’ve said something you haven’t because you meant to say it, or to veer off in a direction that isn’t quite right for what you’re trying to accomplish.

Therefore, read the content first, then edit. Pretend that you’re a reader who’s never seen this piece before and look at it with fresh eyes.

Then and only then can you understand what needs to be done in your revision.

2. There’s a Difference between Editing and Proofreading

Editing is not about searching the text for typos and incorrectly placed punctuation marks. It’s all about strengthening the story, paragraphs, and sentences.

Editing is then followed by proofreading.

Even though it’s okay to do a little proofreading while editing, it’s important that you do a full revision focused on editing and then another one on proofreading.

3. Justify Yourself

Each statement, question, point, and word should have a reason for being in your content. If it does not have a reason to be there, simply get rid of it. If it does not add value to your writing, remove it.

Try this out sometime: take a piece of your writing and challenge yourself to slash 10% of the words. Just delete them.

Then go through and cut another 10%.

Then another 10%.

At the end of this exercise, you’ll have 30% fewer words—but you should have the same meaning. Your piece will be leaner, more concise, and more clearly effective.

Do this a few times with various short stories, articles, blog posts, or other writing and you’ll start to get a sense of where your crutch words pop in and how you can streamline your writing to be more effective from the start.

Explanation:

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