Editing and Redrafting Your Writing

Junior Cycle English · Grammar & Language

Nobody writes a great piece in one go. The good news is that your first attempt does not have to be your last. The work happens after you put the first words down, when you go back and make them better.

Writing is rewriting

Here is a secret that takes the pressure off. The writers you admire did not get it right first time. They wrote a rough version, then they fixed it. Then they fixed it again.

Your English course asks you to treat writing as a process, not a single dash to the finish. You plan. You draft. You redraft. You edit. Each stage has a job. When you skip straight from “I wrote something” to “I am done”, you hand up work that is far below what you are able to do.

So slow down at the end. The first version gets your ideas onto the page. The later versions make those ideas worth reading.

Redrafting versus editing

People often use these two words to mean the same thing. They do not. Knowing the difference will make you faster and sharper.

Redrafting is about the big things: content and structure. You ask whether your points are clear, whether they sit in the best order, and whether your word choices are strong enough. You might move a paragraph, cut a dull opening, or swap a weak word for a vivid one.

Editing is about the surface: spelling, punctuation, grammar. You are not changing what you say. You are catching the small errors that trip a reader up and make neat work look careless.

Do them in that order. Sort out what you are saying first. Then tidy how you have said it. There is no point perfecting the spelling of a sentence you are about to delete.

A quick edit checklist

When you finish a piece, run it through these six questions. They take a couple of minutes and they catch most of what costs you marks.

• Does it make sense? Read each sentence and check it actually says what you meant.
• Spelling. Look hard at the words you always get wrong.
• Punctuation. Full stops in the right places. Capital letters at the start of sentences and for names.
• Repetition. Have you used the same word three times in two lines? Vary it.
• Paragraphs. A new idea should mean a new paragraph. One huge block is hard to read.
• Did I answer the question? Go back to the task. Have you done what was asked, or drifted off it?

The read-aloud trick

This is the single best tool you have, and it costs nothing. Read your work aloud. If you are in an exam hall, read it slowly in your head as if you were saying it out loud, mouthing the words.

Your ear hears what your eye skims past. A clumsy sentence sounds clumsy. A missing word leaves a gap you can hear. A sentence that runs on for four lines runs out of breath. When you stumble while reading, that is the exact spot a marker will stumble too. Stop there and fix it.

The last five minutes

In an exam you will not have time for a full redraft. That is fine. You need a plan for the highest-value fixes, and you carry them out fast.

Spend your last five minutes on these, in order:

• Sense. Read it back. Fix any sentence that does not make sense or is missing a word.
• Obvious spelling. Correct the glaring mistakes, especially in your opening lines.
• Missing full stops. Break up any sentence that has run on too long.
• The final line. A weak last sentence is the last thing a marker reads. Make it land.

These four jobs lift a piece more than fiddling with one fancy word ever will.

A worked fix

Watch what a few minutes of editing does. Here is a rushed first attempt.

“The man was walking down the road and he was sad and he was thinking about stuff and it was raining and he didnt have a coat and he felt bad.”

It is one breathless sentence, glued together with “and”, with a missing apostrophe and the vague word “stuff”. Now read the edited version.

He walked down the road in the rain. He had no coat. He was thinking about the argument, and he felt the cold settle into him along with the regret. Edited version of the sentence above

Same idea, far better writing. We broke it into clear sentences, cut the repeated “and”, swapped “stuff” for something specific, and fixed the apostrophe in “didnt”. Nothing fancy. Just careful.

The mistakes that cost marks

Three habits hand away marks you have already earned. Watch for all three.

• Leaving no time to check. You plan your timing so the piece ends exactly when the clock runs out, with not a second to read it back. Always keep five minutes spare.
• Only checking spelling. Spelling matters, but a perfectly spelled sentence that makes no sense still loses you marks. Check the sense first.
• Never reading the work back. If you hand up the first version untouched, you are handing up your rough draft. Read it. Every time.

Using This in the Exam

How to use it: Before you start writing, look at the clock and decide the time you will stop, leaving yourself five minutes at the end. When you stop, do not start a new sentence. Read what you have, silently mouthing the words. Fix sense, then obvious spelling, then any run-on sentence, then sharpen the last line. Those five minutes are not wasted time. They are where you collect the marks your writing has already earned.

In short

Good writers fix their work. Redraft for the big things: meaning, order, word choice. Edit for the surface: spelling, punctuation, grammar. Run the six-question checklist, read your work aloud, and never hand up the first version untouched. Save five minutes at the end of every exam. That is where the marks are.