How do I edit this?

James, thanks for showing an interest in my story. Thanks for pointing out sentences that didn’t flow so well. I will review these, and see if I can make improvements.

I understand your curiosity about the situation with re-establishing the friendship. It’s not easy for me to respond to this. It’s very difficult to re-establish a friendship between two people who have not seen each other for many, many years, and who live geographically in different countries. Maybe I need to to explain that better in the story.

Thanks for reading and commenting. Your opinions are very helpful.

Katie 🙂

Thanks Elise, I don’t know why I wrote old fashionedly. I think I must have picked it up in colloquial speech. The spell check hates it, but I struggled to think up a suitable alternative.

I’m glad I made you re-think second person narratives. I was thinking very much in terms of song lyrics, which are more often written this way, than any other form of narrative-based art.

Thanks so much for taking time to read and comment.

Katie 🙂

Thanks Brian, I’m glad my story caught your interest. You mentioned a couple of paragraphs that you had to re-read. Thanks for bringing these to my attention. Obviously, anything that throws you out of the story isn’t good. I shall review these, and see if I can improve the transition.

Thanks so much for reading, and providing me with your opinion.

Katie 🙂

Thanks for reading, Ruthanne. If you think of anything, I’ll gladly listen to what you have to say 🙂

Judith,

Thanks for taking an interest in my story.

The business with the school is bizarre, I agree, yet it is a true story. The school I was attending when I was 16, closed in 1991, 23 years ago, before the internet age, but most definitely not in a third world country.

It’s bizarre to think that a school wouldn’t tell their pupils until the last day of the summer term that they would be closing with immediate notice, but that’s what they did. Even the teachers didn’t know they would be out of a job, until the day before the end of term, and parents didn’t know until the end of the final school day.

There are worse things that happen in the world, much, much worse things, of course, and the girls I studied with weren’t without opportunities of attending other schools. However, teenage girls are renowned for being emotional, and I wasn’t looking forward to looking for a new school to attend during my eight week summer holiday, which would be dependent on the exam results I received two weeks before the start of the new school year.

In a way, I was lucky, as there were girls who were half-way through two year exam courses, a very disruptive time to change schools, as they would then have to sit their exams with different examination boards. I hope my explanation makes sense. With the benefit of hindsight, and the passing of time, these things never seem quite so bad, but at the time the sense of devastation and shock were very real.

Katie X

James Shmidt,

Thanks for your feedback. Your tips on editing out description are very useful, and I will apply them to my work in progress, ‘Eva’s Story’.

Katie 🙂

Thanks for reading, Suzie.
It’s great to have your feedback. I now feel very motivated to hone my writing skills further.
Katie 🙂

James,
Thanks so much for your feedback. I feel that, with practice, I’m getting closer to understanding my writing strengths. I t also helps me to understand better the nature of the genre I should be writing in. I’m not always good at picking out the weaker phrases, but thanks to your feedback I feel motivated to edit my writing.
Katie 🙂

Sunny, I’m glad you enjoyed my story. I’ll keep working on those editing skills. Thanks so much for your feedback 🙂

Thanks, Ann. I’m glad it worked for you. 🙂