The Perils of Revision

I don't want to derail the first draft thread with this, since it pertains to revisions generally and not simply to whether a first draft is any good.

An anecdote - a couple of years ago I reviewed a story for a guy in the writing group I was in at the time. It was an offbeat, strange fantasy, and it needed work, but it was also charmingly funny and I liked the characters. I saw the revised version about six months later. Many of the problems had been fixed, and the writing tightened. However, though the story was still humorous, it wasn't as funny as it had been in the initial draft. Also, I didn't give a fig about the characters anymore. The guy had revised the life out of it.

One thing to keep in mind from the start is that 'tight' writing is a style, and like any other style it is a preference and not an absolute requirement for good writing. I read a lot of tight writing, because I like thrillers and police/detective stories, and if you want to see how lean, tight writing can be done well I can recommend some names in that genre. In fantasy, tight writing isn't nearly as prevalent. All you have to do is grab some books off the shelves at your local bookstore, both well-known works and lesser known works, and flip through them. You'll see dozens of places where the writing could be tightened.

Did the writer just say "Screw it, that's good enough?" Did the editor just say "Meh, this'll sell?" I doubt it. Sometimes, the way you say something is a lot more important than tightening the writing. Sometimes, your word choice and sentence structure is more effective than a tight sentence imparting the same information can be.

When you write that first draft, if you're anything like me you're a bit in the grip of your muse. You're writing organically, and you're using parts of your brain that don't care as much about the analytical aspects of writing. When you revise, on the other hand, you engage the analytical brain and start looking at the work as a series of words and sentences that can be improved or not, as the case may be.

When you revise, therefore, you're not only improving the writing (one hopes) but you're tinkering with what that emotive, organic brain has done. If you over-do the revision process, you can do a lot of harm to the work. I've seen writers in my writing groups on multiple occasions strip away an engaging voice and put increased distance between the reader and the characters solely as a result of revision.

I'm not saying you shouldn't revise, of course. It is necessary for most of us. But you have to be able to tell whether you're actually doing yourself more harm than good. If all you're thinking about it tightening your sentences, odds are you're going to hurt the emotional link to the characters and the narrative voice (if any). In fact, over-revising (or maybe more accurately, misguided revision) is one of the quickest ways I've seen of striping the life out of a story.

This is one reason I think some authors stick with what is more or less a first draft. Maybe they fix typos and tinker with a few things here and there, but they don't want to harm the imaginative product of their brain during that initial organic writing process.

Again, looking solely for 'tight' writing is a stylistic preference, and it's not even one that is widespread in fantasy writing, from what I can tell. It is a lot harder to create engaging character connections and emotions with that style, because when the words themselves are stripped to their bare bones you have to rely on other means to do it. It can be done - as I said, I've seen thriller/detective writers do it quite well. It is a mistake, however, to think that you have to do it that way.

When writing fiction, we're working with words. They have power and utility far beyond a bare-bone implementation of words on a page to convey information. They convey emotion, invoke memories, carry connotations, and so on. If all you're worried about is getting the leanest, tightest sentences on the page, you've robbed yourself of a lot of the power of the written word. That's fine, as a stylistic preference, but you have to be ready for the fact that if you're trying to create an emotional connection you've just made your job more difficult. It is a terrible mistake to assume that you have to write that way.

Next time you're in the fantasy section of your local bookstore, grab a dozen random fantasy books off the shelf. How many of them have lean, tight writing that follows all of the rules and sit generically on the page? Try it again, and this time limit yourself to epic fantasies. How many of those have it? Not many.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that tight, generic, no-nonsense sentences are the only way to write. And when you sit down to revise your work (and yes, a certain amount of tightening is bound to make your work better), don't just engage the analytic mind and treat every sentence in a vacuum, divorced from the larger work, so that all you care about is whether this sentence or that could be tighter. Keep in mind your vision of the broader work, as well as your narrative style, as well as the voice you're going for. Think about the emotions you want to invoke, and the bonds you want to create. Take full advantage of the fact that you're working in a written medium with multiple tools and approaches at your disposal.

If a twenty-word sentence that is evocative, and carries connotation or layers of meaning to the reader could be replaced with a tight, ten-word sentence that doesn't do those things, don't do it.

 

I think it is a mistake to assume any style represents the 'best' form for writing. It doesn't. Preferences grow and fade in popularity, but they're still ultimately preferences. Lean, tight writing may be in style at one point, and then preferences can change.

I like tight writing, particularly in thrillers and mysteries, where it works so well. If that's all that was out there in the fantasy genre, I wouldn't be happy. Luckily, it's not even the dominant form in fantasy.

EDIT: I should not, however, that I don't have a problem with people who espouse a preference for tight, lean writing. We like what we like, and that's fine. I don't like to see an impression created that everyone should want to write that way, or that you have to do so to make a 'good' story.

 

Yeah, I'm more like you. Or, rather, my revision process is designed to do whatever the work needs. In some places, that may be tightening. In others, it may be deciding that a portion that could be tightened is better off not being tightened. And then it includes all the other things you mentioned.

But achieving tight or lean writing is often held out as a sort of holy grail of the editing process, and I think that's a mistake.

 

Yes, I think that's right. I suppose as you said a person might be going for ambiguity, but at least in my own writing I want to clearly convey what I'm trying to convey, whether it be done in a lean style or in a more wordy manner.

 

No, I've never had that impression.

Nor do I think it is a wrong approach to writing. As I said, I read books written that way and if someone wants to adopt that style as their goal, more power to them. I don't like the impression that often gets created on writing sites that should be everyone's goal or that it is the only way to write.

 

Yes, I agree with the last couple of posts (and I know BWFoster talks a lot about tightening writing). Again, it's not tightening certain aspects of the writing per se that I think is problematic. There are places to tighten, eliminate word, cut down sentence length, and so on. But I don't think the goal should always be just focused on doing that. As I said above, you'll cut a lot of the life right out of the work. There are times where your style, or the mood or impression you want to create, calls for longer sentences, with more words (for example) that could have been restated in much shorter sentences, but would lose something in so doing.

 

Agreed. That's the only way to approach it, in my view. And I might even look at it differently from work to work, depending on what style or atmosphere I am trying to create.