Revising and editing a novel

[MFreako]

How do you go about doing it?

Do you edit each chapter after you finish it? Or do you wait until the whole thing is done, and then start from the beginning? Or do you do both?

I am currently in the finishing stages of the first chapter of a novel, and I find myself spending 3/4 of my writing time on editing what's already written instead of writing new material. It's driving me crazy, but I can't seem to stop.

It's strange, really, two days ago I've written close to 2000 words, and went to sleep immensely satisfied with the result. Woke up the next morning, took another look, only to find myself thinking "Man, this is total garbage."

That's it. Rant over. Any advice is welcome.

 

[Feo Takahari]

If you plan to change the trajectory of the work, you should rewrite as soon as you realize that (though if that happens a lot, you might need to outline more.) But if you intend to change the scene around, but still have basically the same things happen, you should probably keep going until you've reached the ending, then go back and edit step-by-step. That way, if you get frustrated and feel like you can't keep editing, you'll at least have the story complete. (It's much easier to put a completed story in a drawer, then take it out and edit it three months later, than it is to put it half-finished in a drawer, then try to finish it three months later.)

P.S. One useful compromise I've reached with myself is to write the planned edits at the very beginning of the first chapter they'll apply to. This is often much quicker than directly editing it, and if at a later time I think of more things to change, then when I've got the story finished, I can go back and change them all in one pass.

 

[MFreako]

Thanks, Feo, the planned edit approach seems like something I should try out.

Just to be clear, though, I feel that my story is tight. What I refer to as revising, is mostly prose and small details. (Can this sentence be tighter? Is this too much description? Is this too little description? etc.)

 

[The Dark One]

In reality, though - you'll probably edit as you go AND structurally as you finish drafts.

 

[Philip Overby]

Something that happened to me. Maybe someone else can learn from my mistakes:

1. I started the novel pantsing and then half-way through started doing pre-writing for different chapters. For me, this technique was really uneven and is causing me headaches now as I'm editing.

2. I very rarely edited any chapters after I finished them. I started to do so at one point and then towards the end I was just determined to finish the first draft so the later chapters are a lot rougher. I would actually say the beginning and end are the roughest parts.

So my tips to prevent this from happening to me (or anyone else that does the same thing) again:

1. Choose a method of writing and try to stick to it while you're writing. If you outline, pants, or do a mixture of both, consistency may help your writing coming out smoother. Jumping all over the place from outlining to not outlining really messed some things up for me.

2. If you edit as you go, try to do the same thing: be consistent. I wouldn't spend days editing one chapter while you're still writing the first draft. For me that's the death knell for any previous projects I've worked on. I became unsatisfied with what I was writing and began editing. Then, I lost interest and the novel went bye-bye.

Hopefully I'll get to where I need to be, but I think it's going to take a big overhaul to do so since I wasn't consistent when I started.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Finding yourself going back and editing those first few chapters over and over is a very common trait in beginning writers - even in many not-so-beginning writers. Unfortunately, this is an oubliette - so try to stop it. At least the over and over part.

Personally, we do a bit of both. We write hyper-detailed outlines, pretty much blocking out each scene movement-by-movement (and I mean that literally, like who physically moves where) because I am just that retentive, so we get that early draft out of the way in the outline stage. Then I tend to tweak as I write, adding to the second draft of the outline, then the first prose draft, then fiddle as I do each day's reviews to get back into the flow. (You'll notice I'm changing pronouns a bit here. I'm half of a writing partnership. While we do all development and editing together, we feel strongly that the work needs a cohesive voice, so that voice is mine.) By the time the work hits "The End" it's pretty smooth, but still not perfect, so now we go over everything with progressively finer-toothed combs, editing for everything from grammar to plot holes to amazing changing eye colors.

My advice - write chapter two. Let yourself play with it for no more than 1 day, then write chapter 3. You may find changes happening as your story develops. Let them happen. Either go back and make the changes (this is what I have to do - remember, seriously retentive) or make notes to do it later and move on. But get that first draft done!

 

[Ayaka Di'rutia]

What I do is I finish drafting the novel. After that, I do editing, which involves reading the manuscript (out loud, most the time) to catch grammatical and punctuation errors. I don't worry much about detail pertaining to character, story, etc. After I do the Edit, I revise, in which I go through the novel again, this time paying more attention to story details, such as description, discrepancies, etc.

Repeat process as needed until you are satisfied with your novel.

It can be hard to continue a novel if you concentrate too much on editing what you already have. I advise finishing your piece before you do editing on it. That way you can sculpt your idea all at once instead of a little bits at a time.

It helps to get education on grammar if you don't have a good knowledge of it.

 

[Chessie]

Yeah, I think that editing too much while still writing the first draft gets in the way of creativity, but that's just me. I usually write a scene to completion, read and revise it once, then go on to the next one. Its because I'm anal retentive and constantly have the impulse to check over what I just wrote. So I compromise with myself that way and I'm able to peacefully move on to what needs to be written next. The real editing comes after the first draft though, when the brain is fresh with new ideas. Its much easier to edit successfully after getting everything out the first time, I think.

 

[Weaver]

How do you go about doing it?

Do you edit each chapter after you finish it? Or do you wait until the whole thing is done, and then start from the beginning? Or do you do both?

I am currently in the finishing stages of the first chapter of a novel, and I find myself spending 3/4 of my writing time on editing what's already written instead of writing new material. It's driving me crazy, but I can't seem to stop.

It's strange, really, two days ago I've written close to 2000 words, and went to sleep immensely satisfied with the result. Woke up the next morning, took another look, only to find myself thinking "Man, this is total garbage."

That's it. Rant over. Any advice is welcome.

We (my twin and I) write the whole thing, or at least a large percentage of it, and THEN we go back and revise... except when we run into something in a later chapter that requires revision of earlier parts. It's difficult to determine if everything in the story hangs together as a whole if the whole isn't there yet.

Editing each chapter to perfection before moving on is, I think, a subtle form of procrastination, one that we can pretend to ourselves is actually Productive Work. Also, if you don't have the whole story, how will you know if chapter 1 is the right opening for what the story will ultimately be? Maybe you'll get halfway through and discover that, actually, the heroine should be introduced in a simpler, more ordinary-life scene rather than that fight where she kicks some bad guy's butt, and all the work you put into making the fight scene perfect... Wasted. (It all counts as practice in writing and revision, of course, but I'm not the kind of writer who likes 'writing prompts' and other exercises, because writing things that I know I won't use is discouraging.)

I remember hearing a (self)published author giving a talk at a convention years ago, and he said that the hardest thing for a writer to do is go back and rewrite. I asked him how to know when it's time to stop rewriting, and he looked at me like I was insane. (Well, yes, but how was he to know that?) Apparently there are writers who don't revise anything, ever, unless forced to do so, and there are writers who rewrite and rewrite forever because as long as we're working on the novel, we don't have to take the next step and send it out for people to look at and maybe not like...

When you write something and later don't like it, start over if you have to but don't completely discard the first stuff. You never know when you may discover that it doesn't work for that scene or that story but is ideal for something else.

And... Looking at writing that was great yesterday but total garbage today is normal.

(Sorry -- apparently I'm verbose today.)

 

[Penpilot]

I only edit lightly as I go. Mostly just editing grammar stuff. I wouldn't do it at all, but sometimes I like to read the previous chapter to get myself back into the story, and when I notice grammar stuff, I fix it. If it's major story stuff I make a note and continue as if I'd already made the correction.

There's a very practical reason why you shouldn't edit extensively as you go. During the first draft every piece of text is on the chopping block. Whether it gets chopped or not depends on how important it is to the story. But realistically you really won't know what's important and what isn't until you finish. So imagine spending hours and days polishing a piece of text only to realize later that it isn't important and needs to be chopped. You just wasted all that time. And because you spent so much time editing that bit of text, it becomes a darling and harder to chop.

Also when something is freshly written, it's really hard to judge objectively if it's good or bad. I find that stuff I wrote that initially thought was bad sometimes turns out to be really good when I look at it with fresh eyes, and vice versa. What I though was good is actually bad. So why take the risk of obliterating something that was good in the first place? Bad will always be bad, but you can ruin good if you're not careful.

I view editing as polishing with finer and finer grains of sandpaper. Worry about the big things first then work your way down to the small things. Otherwise you're polishing with rough grain sandpaper moving to fine grain then erasing a lot of that fine grain work if you go back to rougher grain. Which to me doesn't make sense and is a waste of time.

Now, this isn't to say that editing as you go won't work. I think there are people who like to work this way, but I'm not one of them. IMHO if you're just starting out and figuring out what works for you, see if finishing before editing works for you first. It's a more efficient way to work.

 

[C Hollis]

I only edit lightly as I go. Mostly just editing grammar stuff. I wouldn't do it at all, but sometimes I like to read the previous chapter to get myself back into the story, and when I notice grammar stuff, I fix it. If it's major story stuff I make a note and continue as if I'd already made the correction.

This is pretty much what I do. I don't have time to edit when I am in the middle of purging my brain of the tales I am being told by the characters in my head.
In a couple of days I will be done with the rough draft of this current manuscript. I let it ferment a bit, while I peck away at other projects, then I will begin the editing process.

I really don't think I would ever complete a story if I worked on editing before I was done.

 

[The Dark One]

It does, of course, depend on what you mean by editing. There are several types but the main three might be described as:

- structural
- polishing
- line editing.

Logically, they would happen in that order, but anyone who constantly reads back over their work (like me) during the generation of a draft is going to be doing all three.

I tend to number my versions (and keep them all) as I go. When I get to the end of a draft, I call it 1.1. If I give it a polish, I'll call it 1.2 (or rather, after a polishing period I'll decide it's different enough to be renumbered.)

At some point I will make a structural adjustment (deleting sections/characters, adding sections or rearranging sections), and start numbering 2.1 etc. The book I'm about to publish is at version 4.3. This means it's had several structural edits and many polishes.

Only now is it having a line edit (not by me), as it prepares to greet the world in August.

 

[C.J. Jessop]

How do you go about doing it?

Do you edit each chapter after you finish it? Or do you wait until the whole thing is done, and then start from the beginning? Or do you do both?

I am currently in the finishing stages of the first chapter of a novel, and I find myself spending 3/4 of my writing time on editing what's already written instead of writing new material. It's driving me crazy, but I can't seem to stop.

It's strange, really, two days ago I've written close to 2000 words, and went to sleep immensely satisfied with the result. Woke up the next morning, took another look, only to find myself thinking "Man, this is total garbage."

That's it. Rant over. Any advice is welcome.

I used to do that. Every time I sat down to write I would read through what I'd written the day before, and edit it on the fly. The most I ever wrote that way was about 40k. It was a polished 40k, but I also wrote myself into a corner because I had no outline to pull me back in.

I know outlines aren't for everyone, and I don't do anything in-depth, but I like to have a basic framework of the story in a sentence or two on each chapter. Once I had that in place, I wrote the first draft without editing anything. It was rough, and very sparse, but it got me past that whole writing/editing cycle. Of course, then the hard work starts.