First Page Revision (excerpts)

I have read and re-read The First Five Pages- A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman and it is a constant resource for me. I thought I would give a glimpse into how I revised bits of my first chapter after reading his first five pages. Okay, not literally. His Introduction doesn't start until page eleven. But the second chapter on Adjectives and Adverbs was especially helpful in tightening my prose.

Here is a picture of the old page marked up:

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And here is the same passage after revisions (it is preceded by another section now which is not shown here)

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This is by no means a final draft of the "first page", but it's a lot closer. Getting rid of extraneous words and replacing weak words with stronger ones (like extraneous! Nice.) makes for a much tighter manuscript.