Editing: A Substitute Passion

Five months after first completing this story, I’ve looked at it again and edited it. I managed to reduced it by 368 words, with about 100 of these from the first paragraph. It is certainly shorter now (!) and I hope better. With some passages I struggled to decide whether they were better in or out, and it is possible that some of those babies may have been tossed out, but at least the bathwater has gone.

The two versions can be found here:

First draft

Second draft

 

14 October 2010

 

The following morning I looked again at the opening, and had to then rummage around in the gutter to find the two babies I'd thrown out the previous day. The opening paragraph has grown in length again, but then I read through the whole story and did a further round of editing, and compared to the 11 May draft, the final version is now 391 words shorter.

Final draft

A file showing the edits between drafts 1 and 3

 

16 October 2010