The Big Edit

[skip.knox]

I just finished Camp NaNoWriMo. *whew* I'm christening the month of August as MeNoWriMo.

So, now I have 40,000 words and a short novel. It has the beginning, middle and end, and I even know roughly where I'm going to fill in. The finished product will be more like 50,000 or 60,000. Write 30,000 more words and take out 20,000. Erg.

Because it was a full-out writing sprint, what I have now is a real mess, and I'm ready to make my first pass at editing. This is going to involve writing whole new chapters, rewriting others, changing characters around, and countless minor fixes.

My question to the Dearly Assembled is simple: how do you go about this step?

Here's what I'm doing. I'm scanning over the novel as it stands and I'm outlining it. I'm forcing myself to outline only what is actually written.

Then I'll sit down and write a second outline of what should be written, including new chapters, collapsing chapters, combining or eliminating characters, and so on. I won't bother making notes about grammar or such, or even note consistency errors. I'll do that on the fly and I plan a second editing pass to concentrate on those.

I see right off that Scrivener alone isn't up to this task, so I've got that outline as a three-column table in LibreOffice: chapter title, outline (just quick notes, really) as it stands, then a column for outline as it should be. I'll use that third column as a guide for the actual editing/rewrite.

I'll ask it again: how do you folks go about this initial edit, when the novel is really a mess, still very fluid, and you still have only a general idea of how the story is to go.

 

[Butterfly]

In such a case... my first step would be to draw up a timeline...

In excel, I'd have the days across the top, one week to each line and the characters to the left. In the boxes in between, I'd place the key events of the story, when that's done, cut and paste the text into a new file in chronological order. When that's done I'd work on the heavier stuff. The infilling and rewriting, character building and world building, and finally line editing.

 

[ThinkerX]

Make clean copies of the whole thing, as it stand now. Leave the original intact and unmodified.

Decide what must go. Delete the relevant sections from your copy. If need be, include 'kludge fixes' as bridges.

Write the new sections.

Rewrite the whole thing, with an eye towards better grammar and plugging up teeny-tiny plotholes.

Edit pass for grammar.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

I'm going to give some advice you're probably not going to like and almost certainly are not going to take.


You have a 40k word story. You say it's a "real mess", and you need to not only write 30k more words to fluff it out, you need to ALSO cull 20k words?

Toss it out and write another book.

(winces as things get thrown at me)

Thing is, your first draft should be a good story. It should be readable. Enjoyable. Right as is. Now, maybe after a beta read and an editing pass it will improve: but if the fundamental story is not there from the first draft, no amount of revision is going to add it in.

I've had that happen before. There is one cure, if you really love the story idea: rewrite it from scratch. Throw out the old copy and just write the story again. Ideally, wait a while first, so it's had more time to ferment in your head.

Revision is not about fixing "real messes". Revision is about picking out minor flaws and correcting errors.

As I said, you're probably not going to take this advice. And that's OK, I didn't when I was starting out, either.

 

[Penpilot]

Here's how I would start.

1 - if you didn't already do so, make a quick outline of the novel. What I mean by quick outline is a list of the scenes in order with the briefest of description, enough for you to know what the scene is and how it plays out.

2 - mentally step through the story, scene by scene. Play it out in your head. You'll realize what needs to be fixed, what needs to be added, etc.

3 - Make notes as you play it out.

4 - Edit your outline as per your notes.

5 - repeat this process with the outline until you're happy.

6 - Make the actual changes to your manuscript and repeat this process until you're satisfied.

Hope this helps.

 

[The Dark One]

In all honesty, I'd just about endorse Kevin's comments. Trying to polish something into shape which is already half useless (by your own account) is likely to take longer than starting afresh.

However, if you don't like his advice and/or feel there's just enough good stuff to persevere with, I'd do the following:

Give it a few weeks to reflect and then read it again. Work out what the real story spine ought to be, as simply as possible, and then write that down in point form. That's your plot. Use that spine to work out which scenes are perfect as is and which are useable with a bit of work, then ditch the rest. Be ruthless. If it's not part of the spine it has to go. Only amateurs and the unpublished try to hang onto bits that seem really well written but don't work as part of the spine.

Then write all the rest afresh. That's the first draft of something that probably works as a story.

 

[BWFoster78]

I'm going to give some advice you're probably not going to like and almost certainly are not going to take.


You have a 40k word story. You say it's a "real mess", and you need to not only write 30k more words to fluff it out, you need to ALSO cull 20k words?

Toss it out and write another book.

(winces as things get thrown at me)

Thing is, your first draft should be a good story. It should be readable. Enjoyable. Right as is. Now, maybe after a beta read and an editing pass it will improve: but if the fundamental story is not there from the first draft, no amount of revision is going to add it in.

I've had that happen before. There is one cure, if you really love the story idea: rewrite it from scratch. Throw out the old copy and just write the story again. Ideally, wait a while first, so it's had more time to ferment in your head.

Revision is not about fixing "real messes". Revision is about picking out minor flaws and correcting errors.

As I said, you're probably not going to take this advice. And that's OK, I didn't when I was starting out, either.

I think this advice presumes that the author is professional level.

If you're still working on your craft, the only way you get to a good finished product is learn and revise, learn and revise. For me, anyway...

My first novel is taking a lot more revisions than I hope future novels will take.

 

[Jabrosky]

I'm going to give some advice you're probably not going to like and almost certainly are not going to take.


You have a 40k word story. You say it's a "real mess", and you need to not only write 30k more words to fluff it out, you need to ALSO cull 20k words?

Toss it out and write another book.

(winces as things get thrown at me)

Thing is, your first draft should be a good story. It should be readable. Enjoyable. Right as is. Now, maybe after a beta read and an editing pass it will improve: but if the fundamental story is not there from the first draft, no amount of revision is going to add it in.

I've had that happen before. There is one cure, if you really love the story idea: rewrite it from scratch. Throw out the old copy and just write the story again. Ideally, wait a while first, so it's had more time to ferment in your head.

Revision is not about fixing "real messes". Revision is about picking out minor flaws and correcting errors.

As I said, you're probably not going to take this advice. And that's OK, I didn't when I was starting out, either.

I have mixed feelings about this advice. I can definitely relate to the experience of having written something that later felt too fundamentally flawed to salvage, but then rewriting whole scenes from scratch can be painful unless you alter the scene enough so that it isn't really the same scene all over again.

I'm in a similar position as the OP except that I've made far less progress. I have two chapters and 2,800 words written for my OP, but already I'm seeing fundamental problems in the plot and wonder if a total rewrite is in order for me.

 

[BWFoster78]

I have mixed feelings about this advice. I can definitely relate to the experience of having written something that later felt too fundamentally flawed to salvage, but then rewriting whole scenes from scratch can be painful unless you alter the scene enough so that it isn't really the same scene all over again.

I'm in a similar position as the OP except that I've made far less progress. I have two chapters and 2,800 words written for my OP, but already I'm seeing fundamental problems in the plot and wonder if a total rewrite is in order for me.

I think Kevin and The Dark One are in a different place professionally than the rest of us. They've both written books and had some degree of success with them. For them, it's not worth it to waste time on a story that won't bear fruit.

For us, there's value in learning how to write. There's no way (for me at least) to pick up everything at once. I think that, by my second draft, I had a fairly engaging story as far as tension and technique went. It was also flat emotionally. Realizing the problem, I spent a lot of time working on how to get more inside my character's head. The fourth draft is now much closer to where I want it to be.

Quitting after the first draft would have gotten me nowhere on my quest to become a writer. Figuring out my problems and fixing them means that I won't repeat the same mistakes in future novels.

I would recommend to you, Jabrosky, that you evaluate whether the story or the learning process is more important. Having to fix your problems should teach you not to make the same ones later. That may or may not be time well spent.

 

[Devor]

I think it might be worth editing a couple of chapters, posting it on the showcase and incorporating some feedback, and developing a sample of your writing which you, personally, are happy with. But I'm otherwise with Kevin and The Dark One.

Move on. Write something.

In Marketing, there's a concept called "Share of Voice," which I think applies just as well to psychology, but probably under a different name. In a nutshell, it's not simply a question of "is this right or wrong, how do I do this," but it's also a question of how much attention does it get compared to other things. Even if you're convinced the endless editing is helping you, it might not be. It might require such a large share of your attention that it's doing more harm than good by preventing you from getting better where it matters most - learning to write a nice first draft.

So I would say, take a look at your book. Toss it. But first see if you can pinpoint some kind of takeaway, or pull from it something you can find yourself satisfied with. Is there a chapter you're proud of? A concept you're in love with? Find some way to pull it out, say "I tried to write this book. It didn't turn out the way I wanted, but this piece is why it was worth. But now I need to move on."

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

Key thing to remember. You improve your editing and revising skills by editing and revising.

You improve your writing skills by writing.

Revision does not improve writing skills (much; it does help some).

One thing that CAN help, btw, even with a "messy" story is to get some qualified feedback on the work. Learn where some of your strong and weak areas are, so that next time you can work at improving those things.

But most of all, remember that we get better at writing by writing. NOT by revising.

 

[BWFoster78]

Key thing to remember. You improve your editing and revising skills by editing and revising.

You improve your writing skills by writing.

Revision does not improve writing skills (much; it does help some).

One thing that CAN help, btw, even with a "messy" story is to get some qualified feedback on the work. Learn where some of your strong and weak areas are, so that next time you can work at improving those things.

But most of all, remember that we get better at writing by writing. NOT by revising.

I couldn't disagree more.

Point 1: EB White - "The best writing is rewriting." There are tons of authors out there who advise that the first draft is complete crap that can only be made better by extensive revision. Maybe you can tell a lot about your story from the first draft, but that's not what works for all authors.

Point 2: At some point, you have to learn how to take a first draft to the finished stage. The only way to do that is to take a first draft to the finished stage. Each step is "writing."

Point 3: From a personal perspective, I learned a ton through the revision process.

 

[Feo Takahari]

On the one hand, revision is a learned step, improved through practice. If you repeatedly practice writing a first draft, but don't practice revision, you'll have to practice it eventually if you want to create a proper edited draft. On the other hand, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It really comes down to how salvageable your current story is.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

I'll see your EB White quote with one from Heinlein: "You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order".

Fact is, lots of people write in lots of different ways. Many writers revise a manuscript multiple times before sending it anywhere. JUST AS MANY writers never revise before having it seen by an editor. Neither path seems to have a greater likelihood of success than the other, so I'm certainly not going to call either path wrong.

But your revisions of a manuscript will improve your ability to revise a manuscript. They will only minimally improve your ability to write a good draft in the first place. I, for one, have no interest in improving my revision skills, since I do not revise works before sending them to an editor; I only revise after getting feedback from an outside source.

Also worth remembering that novelists are professional storytellers. Novelists lie for a living. So they often exaggerate the amount of time spent on the revision process - if indeed any is spent at all. Many writers simply write their books and then send them in to their publisher. They revise, like I do, after an editor has gone over the work.

 

[BWFoster78]

I can't imagine ever sending a rough draft to anyone, but to each his own.

I tend to learn from my mistakes. If I find myself revising a particular aspect, I tend to eliminate that mistake from future writing. Just my experience so far.

 

[skip.knox]

This is a diverse set of replies! No wonder there are so many books of writing advice.

I look forward to reading other comments on this thread, but I wanted to weigh in just to make a couple of comments and to say thanks so far.

I see a couple of key points where opinions diverge. When I said "mess" that could be interpreted in many different ways. Some interpreted it as being incomplete but salvageable while others interpreted that statement as "is beyond hope." The fact is, as a newbie, I don't have any reliable way to judge whether the thing is or is not beyond hope. I couldn't ask another to read it because it's simply too incomplete. Some of the missing bits are in my head and some are still in flux depending on certain plot choices I make. Perhaps some of the more experienced writers around here would say what I need to do is not so much revise as simply finish.

The second key point is this matter of revision. What does the word entail? I suspect some see it as grammar, continuity edits, and other what I would call "minor" edits. Others would say revision can mean rewriting half the work. Depending on how one views "revision" one may advise me in different directions.

I was looking more for comments on how people go about a major revision. At least one or two suggested an approach close to what I'm actually doing: outline what you've got, then outline what you think you intend. I did like the one suggestion of sort of imagining oneself through the story. I made a try at that earlier today and discovered it takes a surprising amount of concentration. I didn't make it all the way through, but I did find places where the plot was pretty tight and places where it's badly frayed. I'll keep working that angle. So far, I have not heard of any significantly different approaches (other than the "write something else" advice), and that's okay. The comments made so far have been interesting in their own right.

FTR, I do think the story is worth a continued effort. My estimate of how many words to write and throw out were just WAGs, not intended to be taken seriously. It was more a statement that I'm prepared to expend that level of effort. Since I've never written a complete story of this length, I believe the task is worth undertaking for its own sake, even if the finished product never gets published.

Also FTR, I count "writing" as the *entire* process, from initial research notes right through to cover blurbs, and every edit in between. And I need practice with all of it.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I was looking more for comments on how people go about a major revision.

Sounds like you've got a lot of revision that needs done. Much like the actual writing, my advice is to break up the work into manageable chunks.

On the first pass through, maybe focus only on plot lines...deletion, addition, expounding, etc. Don't edit or revise anything else other than grammatical and spelling areas...focus.

On the second, change your focus, maybe dialogue....next characterization... Whatever, the point being to work on improving one inadequacy at a time. I don't know if this will work for your particular situation but its how I revise. I write in manageable chunks, I edit in chunks. I find my end product is far more detailed and engaging this way. Further, I can easily assess my progress, one step at a time. Granted, my initial drafts sound more complete than what you currently have.

Hope that helps.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Okay, so I'm not going to judge your roughness of your draft or anything. Let me just say that if this is something you want to begin learning how to edit on, there are a few steps that will make it easier:

1). Realize you aren't married to anything. If you need to change things, acknowledge that it's okay to do so, right?

2). Begin by organizing. Organize your notes (outlines, brainstorms or just doodles. Get them all together and see what you love and what you're feeling meh about. This will help you distinguish where you might begin with editing.

3). Figure out a process. Nothing is more frustrating than editing for years on something you're just making more of a mess of. i did it for almost three years before I developed a system for easily editing my work. I've now implemented the system on my current WIP (a nano 2011 that then was finished over Camp June2012 and finally edited Camp July 2013). If you don't have a system, and always start with chapter one, you'll not only make yourself into a raving, drooling lunatic in no time, but you won't have anything to show for your efforts.

Below is the link to my system in case it should prove helpful.

Target Editing | Mythic Scribes

I think the easiest thing to do is to re-read the book, taking some notes on inconsistencies, etc and then start with biggest-picture things like plots and character development. Then, go increasingly smaller until everything fits together neatly. After that, go back and be picky over wording, strengthen up dialogues, ETC.

This is really not for the faint of heart, but then, neither is writing in the first place, right?

I hope you can whip this weak manuscript into shape. They say you need to get a million words under your belt before your writing begins to look good. I'm inclined to agree with that whole-heartedly, but there's nothing wrong with using something weak to begin learning how to edit on. Editing is a necessary skill too and it's the harder of the two to learn, if you ask me.

Best wishes.

 

[ThinkerX]

Major revisions happen.

In a sense, about all that really survived the rewriting of 'Labyrinth' (where I ditched half the work at the outset as more distracting than useful) was the overall concept and the names. I ended up completely rewriting most of the scenes I did keep, and wrote a lot of new material to plug potholes.

I stuck with it because the basic concept was sound.

 

[The Dark One]

Good advice Devor (although not so different from my own advice, which is probably why I think it's good...)

In my early days I was obsessed with polishing sentences and paragraphs until they shone. It took me forever and achieved nothing. Readers (and publishers) aren't impressed with beautiful sentences...they're impressed by stories that flow and inspire their curiosity.

It wasn't until I realised that the spine of the story is the thing that needs to be generated and perfected that I started to make real progress. Just write it in point form! But get the story down, break it up into scenes, and then the whole thing writes itself.

It'll still evolve as you go, but once you know the basics of the story every change can only be an improvement.