Over the two years from when she first started keeping a diary, Anne Frank sharpened her natural skills- and made sure the updated version showcased that growth. In addition to the entries she edited for content, she revised others with sensory details and literary flourish. When revisiting the morning she fled to the Secret Annex with her father and mother, Anne added depth with details. In her original account of July 6, 1942, she didn’t mention seeing any other people during the 2-mile trek through Amsterdam. But in Version B, there were eyewitnesses. “The people on their way to work at that early hour gave us sympathetic looks; you could tell by their faces that they were sorry they couldn’t offer us some kind of transportation: the conspicuous yellow star spoke for itself.” In another entry about the March 1944 attack on the IJmuiden port, just outside Amsterdam, Anne wrote simply, “how the houses shake from the bombs.” But when she went back to edit, she amplified the anxiety of the moment with vivid imagery: “how the houses trembled like a wisp of grass in the wind.”
