Quick questions on Drafting and refining the HSC English Extension 2 Major Work

The purpose of a first draft is to exist, not to be good. Students who try to perfect the opening before writing the rest often never finish, because they are editing nothing. Get a complete draft down, however rough, so you have a whole to work on. Only once the shape exists can you see what the composition actually needs, which is almost never what you imagined at the start.

Feedback from teachers and trusted readers is essential, but it must be used, not obeyed. A reader telling you something does not work is usually right; a reader telling you how to fix it is often wrong. Diagnose the problem the feedback points to, then solve it your way. The Major Work is yours, and a piece rewritten to satisfy every comment loses the coherence that made it worth doing.

The hardest editing skill is reading your own work as if you had not written it. After a draft, leave it for days so you return with fresh eyes. Read it aloud to catch what silent reading forgives. Better still, hear it read by someone else or, for scripts and performance forms, performed.

"I revised a lot" earns little; "a trusted reader's note that the middle section lost momentum led me to cut a subplot rather than add a scene, which better served my concept" is the kind of specific, dated evidence markers reward.

When describing feedback, state what problem the note pointed to and how you solved it your own way, distinguishing a reader's usually-reliable diagnosis from their often-unreliable suggested fix.

Naming "structural revision before line editing" as a deliberate principle, with a reason (not polishing what might be cut), reads as far more controlled than an answer that only lists edits in the order they happened to occur.