Lukeman Exercise Part One | Suzanne Christensen

I took two paragraphs from a story I wrote.

Original
We called this house the white house due to the fact that the outside was painted white, but I always imagined that we lived in the Presidents white house, and not just some old run down two story home that looked like it would fall apart if the wind hit it just right.

Fixed
We called this house the white house. It was painted white. I always pretended we lived in the Presidents white house. Not some old crummy run down house that looked like it was going to fall over.

Original
It didn’t seem to retain heat very well either, the only thing we had to heat up the house what a wood stove in the middle of the house. I think there was a furnace but it didn’t seem to produce any heat and if it did the walls just sent it outside. My mom put insulation in all the windows and then plastic over the insulation. In an attempt to keep the heat from escaping my mom hung heavy blankets over the windows.

Fixed
It didn’t retain heat either. All we had was a wood stove in the middle of the house. There was a furnace but it produced little heat. My mom had to put insulation and plastic over all the windows.

I noticed that when I want someone to like what I have written I want it to be funny, which gives me a tendency to make my sentences and paragraphs kind of wordy. I noticed that I repeated myself a couple of times and put description that wasn’t necessarily needed to get the point across. It was interesting when taking the words out to make the sentences shorter because I think it also made them a little more meaningful and stronger. People were still able to get the point and maybe even more efficiently, than with all the extra stuff. Just like now. I am being wordy.