Writing Concisely with Style

'Break down' as a verb phrase is two words; delete the 'an' before 'honored' in the last line.

I find it difficult to believe that this was written by a high school student, even a talented one.

The register (as opposed to the content) of this essay does not reflect the character Billie projected, so it does not appear as if written by her in the 1950s.

Other than those, I have no comments to make.

love that song

Thank you...
I'm flattered that you can't believe this is written by a high school student, but I can assure you that this is entirely my own work. I would thoroughly appreciate some help in trimming the fat and editing this piece down to 300 words. I feel like a few of my sentences are run-ons but don't know how to condense them.

Please advise.

Re: Writing Concisely with Style


First, you could simply say "Racism has always been a part of my life." Second sentence, make it more emotional, less wordy. Then, just say "In 1939, I recorded Strange Fruit, a poem by Lewis Allen." You could also add "that changed my life."

I'm not going to completely rewrite this for you, you'll have to do that on your own. Billie would not have spoken the way you have written her story. Keep it simple. :wink: Aside from being a great singer, she was also at one point a prostitute, and a drug addict. You have to get into her head and not use phrases like "got the ball rolling in the right direction". You have to think like she would have, at the time, recording the song, and trim trim trim. What you are doing here is DESCRIBING the story, rather than TELLING us the story.