In exercise one, I learned that I need to work more on punctuation. Then I also realised, compared to the author and text, my sentences seemed to have a lack of character building and also related to that, descriptions of character relationships.

In the second exercise, I edited the first sentence of one of my manuscripts:

• I am unsure if I am pleased with it; however, I tried to be more concise but also include more information about my character.

Original: Mr Louis Toadent at seventeen was handsome and much to others dismay his true love was life, but he wasn’t in love with life in the way people wanted him to be, in fact, Louis was anything but what people wanted him to be.

Edited: Louis Toadent at seventeen was handsome, independent, and much to others’ dismay, had discovered his true love was life; in fact, he was anything but what people wanted him to be.

And in the third exercise, I edited a short story I had lying around, which had been one of my strange ideas, and handed it in to a novella/ short story competition.