Find what the draft fails to say
Read for meaning first. Select a highlighted word if you want a closer look.
A student's review of an invented adventure story showed superficiality when it listed costumes and scenery but ignored the central conflict between the characters. Its closing advice to follow your dreams sounded trite because the familiar phrase added no fresh observation about the story. Another sentence was vacuous, praising the work as wonderfully wonderful without conveying a meaningful idea. The writing tutor asked the student to identify a specific choice in the story and explain its effect, giving the revision a question that the original draft had avoided.
The review's superficiality concerned its lack of depth, even though some descriptions were accurate and useful. A trite phrase could express a recognizable thought while losing force through overuse. The vacuous praise had a different problem: it offered almost no meaningful thought to evaluate in the first place. By distinguishing these weaknesses, the student could deepen the analysis, replace a worn expression with a precise observation, and remove empty approval rather than merely exchanging one impressive-sounding adjective for another.
Before you move on
Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.