re-drafting / re-writing

[phoenixgrey]

Okay, so I'm not sure if I'm in the right place with this. But I was wondering if anyone has any advice, knows of any good places containing advice, etc, concerning editing. I can knock out a first draft quite easily - it's the part after that that I'm really struggling with. I'm just not very good at looking at my work, and knowing what's right and wrong with it, and then what to do about it even if I do see something that I don't think is quite right.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Terry Greer]

I can recommend 'The Writer's tale' by Russel T Davis.

It's really about scriptwriting rather than novels but the advice is still good and its eminently readable. Explaining how he works and why things changed from draft to draft.

The reason I liked it is because its not a 'how to' its a 'how I do it' which is far better in my view as we all work differently, but to get a good breakdown of someone else's process without the author laying it on you like its the way you should be working.

The best way I've found is to:

Finish the first draft.
Leave it for a few weeks (or longer) then read through with fresh eyes. If you do it too soon you'll be too close to it.

Ken Follet (Pillars of the earth) has a trick he uses (which might try next time) which is to print out the first draft then manually type the second draft in - rather than just edit it. He thinks this helps him keep stuff brief and to the point and helps eliminate bloat and make shim rethink things far more.

 

[deilaitha]

Ken Follet (Pillars of the earth) has a trick he uses (which might try next time) which is to print out the first draft then manually type the second draft in - rather than just edit it. He thinks this helps him keep stuff brief and to the point and helps eliminate bloat and make shim rethink things far more.

That sounds like a really cool idea.

 

[Penpilot]

Generally speaking, as mentioned above, leave it alone for a little while. For me, about a week works, but usually it's recommended that you leave it alone for around a month or more. The reason for this is to purge your mind of any sort of intimate familiarity with the story, so when you next see it, you're looking at it from the point of a reader not an author.

This should help you catch mistakes in plot and stuff because you don't have the story practically memorized any more, so your brain doesn't fill in the blanks. Another way to catch mistakes is to show it to another person, someone you trust that can be 100% brutally honest with you. This can be a difficult task. It's nice to have friends that support you no matter what, but you don't want someone that's afraid to say when something kind of sucks. You can always make something better, but only if you know there's something wrong. Friends that always say something is good can't help you in making a story better.

As for what to do once you spot the mistakes, that's a bit harder. Knowing what to do comes with experience, and to gain that experience you're going to have to just try stuff, take your bumps so to speak. Editing is the hardest part about writing, and it's where magic happens, where you process all the raw material from the first draft and turn it into something refined.

Don't worry about making a mistake in editing because you always have your first draft to fall back on if you do something that just messes up the story completely.

You didn't mention if this was a short story or novel. The following advice applies to editing a novel, but can be scaled down for a short story.

Do you have an outline? If not, reverse engineer one. You don't need anything complicated, just a list of Chapters and under each chapter a list of scenes within the chapter, with a brief description under each scene reminding you of what happens in it.

For example

-Chapter 1
|____Scene 1 - Bob gets drunk

|____Scene 2 - Bob pays the price.


The reason for having the outline is so you can literally scan over your whole novel in a glance. Once you have your outline, just mentally step through your story and think about what you think works and what doesn't. Take notes on what doesn't work and what changes you want to make. Now looking at the potential changes, think about the consequences of those changes. With your outline in front of you, just imagine those changes cascading through the story. What scenes will have to change? What elements will be affected? Hopefully, you'll have a big picture view of how things will change and it will help you decide which direction is the best for you.

This is the way I work, but everyone is different, and what works for me may not work for you. But hopefully you can get something out of this.

 

[skip.knox]

What Penpilot says, but I go a bit further. I extract each scene from the draft, but I also identify the conflict in the scene and the purpose of the scene (as in, how it furthers the plot). This helps me see which scenes are not pulling their weight, or are pulling in contradictory or redundant directions.

To put it another way, editing is about more than wordsmithing. It's about working the plot, the pacing, characterization, consistency, redundancy (did I already say that?), and so on. A later editing pass does the wordsmithing.

Because it's quite a different sort of task, I find I'm glad to get to the edit phase (well, as glad as I get), because it's quite different from writing.

 

[ThinkerX]

Let the first draft sit for awhile - as in weeks, or longer.

Work on other things.

Then read the first draft again, paying attention to inconsistencies and plot problems. After that gap, they will be a lot easier to spot. Get those patched up, and move on into the boring (for me) aspects of editing - grammar, word choice, that sort of thing.

I am continually going back and looking over manuscripts that are months or even years old, checking for plot and glaringly obvious grammar issues. (taking a little break from that right now)

 

[Caged Maiden]

I wrote an article about my editing process: Target Editing - A Time-Saving Strategy for Writers

 

[Butterfly]

I found these books hugely useful...

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print: Amazon.co.uk: Renni Browne: Books

The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction: 6 Steps to Writing and Publishing Your Bestseller! eBook: Philip Athans, R. A. Salvatore: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love eBook: Rachel Aaron: Amazon.co.uk: Books

The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference: Amazon.co.uk: Writers Digest: Books

As others have said, put it aside for a while, and I would suggest you use that time to learn something about editing. That first book taught me a lot of what to look out for. In fact, I'll be reading through it again before I start the next round of edits, just to refresh my mind of what is in it.

Then it will be...

Scene map, and list making of things that need changing.

Draft up a new Timeline

Restructure the narrative.

Rewrite parts, infilling, thread picking (of changes) while looking at the text as I go.

 

[Addison]

I have an editing process. But I've discovered that just one part of my process can be the entire process for you.

But I highly recommend that, after your first draft is DONE, you leave it alone for a while. You don't touch, look, give a dirty look to that story. If you have thoughts, post it notes. But when you come back to it after at least a week you do one of the following.

A.) Edit it beginning to end on the computer. Do not do this in a dark room unless you want glasses or eye surgery.

B.) Print it out, read, edit. This is where you can really let yourself have it. Write encouraging or belittling comments in the margins. Draw doodles of yourself going insane or your characters playing ball.

C.) Read it aloud. If you're self conscious either go outside, join your pet in their bed or lock yourself in the closet. If you're not self conscious, you can still do the above. The point isn't for others to hear and critique you. It's for you to hear your story with your own ears. Is the tone how you wanted it? Are the sentences structured how you want? With breaks in the right place?

No matter what method(s) you choose you won't have just one new draft then done. It's not possible...unless you're a leprechaun. Then you might and we'll be jealous.

Happy Writing!

 

[phoenixgrey]

Thanks for the advice Really useful. I'l certainly check out some of the books you all mentioned.

And, Addison, I can guarantee that I'm not a leprechaun

 

[wordwalker]

One key is, there's a difference between getting a fresh sense of whether the plot, characters, and pace are laid out right, versus saying "So I know this scene is the time to build Prison Grimness before the breakout, but does it do that one thing well?"

For the first, you do need distance and real determination to ask hard questions. Having a plan or structure is good, but that's only to be sure you open your mind far enough. Maybe the best tool for this is a good beta reader.

For the second, execution... again, a system's a good start but it shouldn't be the end. But reading aloud certainly helps.

 

[phoenixgrey]

Maybe the best tool for this is a good beta reader.

Any ideas, anyone, on where I would find a beta reader?

Again, thanks for the advice so far.