Fixing your own stiff draft: before and after
· 6 min read
A stiff draft is usually correct and hard to read. Nothing in it is wrong; the sentences just march. The good news is that stiffness comes from a short list of habits, and each has a repair you can do by hand in a few minutes. This article takes four of them in turn, with a before and after for each.
Every example below is invented for this article, and labelled. None of them is real output from a tool, and none comes from a real paper. They are here to show the move, which you then make on your own sentences.
1. Sentences that all run the same length
When every sentence has a subject, a verb and an object, in that order, at the same length, the paragraph has no rhythm. University writing centres teach the same fix: mix short and long sentences. The University of Nevada, Reno’s Writing and Speaking Center puts it as balancing the two (opens in a new tab), since a run of short sentences is choppy and a run of long ones is monotonous. Agnes Scott College’s handout adds varying how sentences open (opens in a new tab) and mixing simple, compound and complex forms.
Before. The library extended its hours in September. Students used the library more often in the evenings. The number of complaints about noise increased. Staff introduced a quiet floor in November. The number of complaints decreased after that.
After. The library extended its hours in September, and students came in more often in the evenings. So did the complaints about noise. In November, staff opened a quiet floor. The complaints fell.
What changed: two sentences joined, one opened with a time phrase instead of its subject, and the last one became short. The facts are the same; the paragraph now has a slow part and a quick part. To find your own version, write the word count of each sentence in the margin. If the numbers barely move, join two, split one, or move a phrase to the front.
2. Stock phrases that carry no information
“It is important to note that”, “in today’s fast-paced world”, “plays a crucial role”. These frames signal that something serious follows and then supply nothing. Delete the frame and see whether a claim is left. If one is, keep it. If nothing is, the sentence was padding. If there is a claim but no support, that is where your own material goes.
Before. In today’s fast-paced world, it is important to note that time management plays a crucial role in student success.
After. Time management affects how students do. In [your source], the students who [what your source actually found about planning their week] [what happened to their results].
The brackets are deliberate. No editing step, yours or a program’s, can supply the finding. That comes from your reading. For more of these habits, see why AI writing sounds robotic, which covers hedging and templates as well.
3. Actions buried inside nouns
A nominalisation is a verb turned into a noun: implementation for implement, reduction for reduce. They are useful, and academic prose is full of them. The trouble is the pile-up. The Skagit Valley College Writing Center’s handout on nominalisations (opens in a new tab) says overuse makes writing abstract, needs extra words to hold the sentence together, and hides the action from the reader. The federal plain-language guide (opens in a new tab) calls them hidden verbs and gives “we analyze data” as the better version of “we conduct an analysis of the data”.
Before. The implementation of the new policy resulted in a reduction of late submissions.
After. Late submissions fell once the new policy took effect.
Notice the judgement hidden in this edit. “Resulted in” claims that the policy caused the fall; “once it took effect” claims only that the fall came after. If you have evidence of cause, keep the stronger version. If you do not, the plainer sentence is also the more honest one. Fixing style sometimes forces you to decide what you actually know.
4. Passive voice used out of habit
Passive voice is not an error. The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center treats it as a stylistic choice (opens in a new tab): it lists three good reasons for it (to emphasise the thing acted on, when the actor is unknown, and when readers do not need to know who acted), and warns against using it as a crutch. The habit to break is the default, not the construction.
Before. The survey was completed by 200 students, and the results were analysed by the research team.
After. Two hundred students completed the survey, and the research team analysed the results.
Left alone. The samples were stored at minus twenty degrees. (Nobody needs to know who did the storing.)
The check is simple. For each passive sentence, ask who did it. If naming the actor makes the sentence stronger, rewrite it. If the actor is unknown or beside the point, leave it.
How highlighting helps you see what changed
You can make these edits by hand, and you should try. If you also run a paragraph through our rewriter, the highlighted words become a small lesson. The rewrite is shown with every changed word marked, and a line beneath it says how many words differ from your draft. The marks come from comparing your draft with the rewrite word by word, in order.
- Look at where the marks cluster. A dense patch usually means a sentence was rebuilt. A single mark can be a swapped word. That tells you which kind of edit you are looking at.
- For each patch, name the move. Was a sentence split, a noun turned back into a verb, an opener cut? If you can name it, you can do it yourself next time.
- Decide, edit by edit. Keep the ones that read better and put back the ones that do not. The marks show what changed; whether it is better is your call.
- Check the facts. A rewrite can also change a number or drop a qualifier, and the marks do not show a dropped sentence. Compare with your draft using this checklist.
The marks describe the difference between two texts and nothing more. They say nothing about whether the result is better, and we make no claim about how any reader, marker or program will judge it. If your course restricts AI tools, read the guide to course AI policies first. If it allows them, the rewriter on the home page takes a short sample without an account, and your original stays beside the result.
A routine for one paragraph
- Write each sentence’s length in the margin, then join or split until it varies.
- Delete every sentence opener that only announces the sentence.
- Circle the nouns ending in -tion, -ment and -ance, and turn the worst back into verbs.
- Underline each passive verb and ask who did it.
- Add one thing only you know: a number, a name, an example from your own work.
- Read it aloud and mark where you stumble.