Analysis Of My Writing Weaknesses

Throughout this creative writing unit, I’ve grown as a writer. I have discovered writing weaknesses I have, and acknowledged some of my writing strengths. I also got to read and critique some of my peers papers which helped me grow and learn as a writer about what works well and what may not. A lesson I learned from my friends is that, when starting a narrative, make sure it starts as a story instead of an essay. By starting a narrative as a story, I mean that it should start in a scene or with a cool quote and not with a statement that directly or indirectly answers the prompt of the narrative. By doing this, the story sounds my fluid and natural in my opinion and more like a story, not an assignment. My first draft did not have
this problem; although, it did have a handful of other problems. By my third draft, however, I felt I corrected some of my weaknesses.

Starting with my first draft, I gained feedback from fellow classmates that helped me come to the realization of some of my writing flaws. In my first draft, I did a well job on my hook, which was dialogue that engaged the reader into a scene already taking place. I also had a good plot, using a childhood experience of going to Disney World to show a moment when I grew as person and saw life as beautiful; however, I left out certain details which would have made my story better. For example, when I was mentioning my stay at Disney World, I hardly gave any detail on my trip. As I made revisions to my first draft to resolve the critics I got on it, I felt my story became better. I talked more in depth on my hotel stay, and I went more in depth on my trips to the parks. Another critique with my story was that a could focus more on my plane trip back from Disney World, since it was a crucial part of the story, as opposed to spending a lot of time not focussing on it. So I also changed that in my second draft, and put more emphasis on my plane trip back from Disney, making it the main setting of my story. My first draft in my opinion was a good start but needed some work.

When I did my second draft, I did not have to make as much revisions to my story as I did to my first draft.
In my second draft my main strength was plot again, but another one of my strengths was that the story was well detailed, due to my revisions of going more in depth on my trip. My weakness then became my opening paragraph, which wasn’t as attention grabbing as my original draft since I altered the setting of the story. My story didn’t start with dialogue like my first draft because I started on the plane ride instead of the original setting where I was at home. So I changed my hook by adding a little more imagery. My original second draft hook was about my view on my plane that foreshadowed what would happen later in the story. To make this second hook better, I changed it to talk about what I saw on the plane, which was metaphoric of what would happen later in the story. My second draft was an improvement but still had flaws.

Then on my third and final draft, I had pretty much no flaws. The criticism I received was grammar errors, which were easy to fix. The readers of my third draft thought that the structure of my story was fine. They liked my hook, plot, and setting. All of my previous weaknesses, I had turned into strengths. My story flowed well and was interesting, due to it initially coming off as a trip to Disney World and not a time in my life of self-growth. The grammar problems I had, mainly were comma errors that took a couple minutes to
correct. By far my third draft was my best draft.

Throughout this entire writing project I did have a couple challenges. In my first draft, when I went to make revisions, I did have trouble with one thing, rewriting my story from a different setting. One of the critics was to rewrite the story from a different view. After hearing why I should write it from a different setting, I felt the story would flow better that way, so I decided to change it. When I went to change it, I had difficulty figuring out how to rewrite the story to make sense in the different setting. It took me several tries and some time, but I eventually written my story in a way that was satisfying to me. In my second draft, I had a hard time with my hook. I really liked my original hook, but I couldn’t find a way to make it sound right with my story that was almost completely different, due to a change in emphasis on a different setting. I had to think hard on a way that would sound right and it still wasn’t satisfactory. It wasn’t until my revisions on my second draft until I could finally come up with a hook I really liked. In my third draft, however, I didn’t have a hard time because all I had to fix was grammar issues. This assignment helped grow as a writer.
I learned that detail is important to a story, that the setting is crucial, and that the opening paragraph is important. I also got to refine the writing skills I had prior to the assignment. Skills I have and displayed are creativity, through my story plot and the ability of keeping the reader interested in my story, through my use of imagery and detail. In the future, I hope to turn the lessons I learned into major strengths, in my writing. I also hope to further the strengths I already have and to do better with my grammar and spelling in the first draft. I can’t wait for the next creative writing
assignment!