Editing Your Work
What do you think of this method?
"I write a lot of technical and narrative documents at work, most 2 to 6 pages. I wanted to share an editing technique that a past mentor taught me that I think is useful and under-valued for these kinds of documents: counting.~Marc Brooker
Start off with a list of key points you want the document to communicate. In two pages, this probably should be between one and three. In six pages, maybe you can pull off four. In a twelve page research paper, maybe a couple more, but that's it.
Then rank your points in order of how important it is that the audience understand them. Think about how complex, controversial, or unfamiliar each point is. Look at this from the reader's perspective, not yours.
Next, go through your document sentence by sentence and count the words you dedicate to each point. Compare the two lists. Are you spending your word budget in approximate order of importance? Does it reflect the order of complexity?
If it's far off, and you've spent a lot of words saying something unimportant or easy to understand, then you've got a great place to start editing. If you've spent space on things that aren't your core points, that's an even better editing opportunity.
Next, look at the order of how you spend time on each point. Does that order reflect the order of importance? Does it tell a story that either leads with, or leads to, your most important points?
"Extracting the outline" in this way, you get to step back from your own writing, and make sure you haven't lost your core points in a sea of details. It's not the last word in editing, but I do it every time I write an important document I really need the audience to understand."
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