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Tips for Scrapping a Novel in the most efficient way possible?

C

Chessie

Guest
It's interesting to me this concept of "fighting for my story" no matter what it takes. I look at writing fiction from a larger perspective. A career is my goal here, so each individual story is just a step on the staircase. Lasting attachments to books just doesn't happen for me, although I do like some stories I write better than others. I'd like to have many books published with an audience that will sustain a relationship with me as an author. Each book helps me get that much closer to my overall goal. Not to say any other way is less or isn't. It just always fascinates me how other writers work.
 
It's interesting to me this concept of "fighting for my story" no matter what it takes. I look at writing fiction from a larger perspective. A career is my goal here, so each individual story is just a step on the staircase. Lasting attachments to books just doesn't happen for me, although I do like some stories I write better than others. I'd like to have many books published with an audience that will sustain a relationship with me as an author. Each book helps me get that much closer to my overall goal. Not to say any other way is less or isn't. It just always fascinates me how other writers work.

See, it fascinates me how you can do without that lasting attachment. I suppose my goal is a career too, I certainly would like one, but...I can't really see stories as steps on the staircase, or anything impersonal like that. My relationship with them is far too intense and personal for that. Sure, I love trying new things and I want to write many, many stories, but I love each one and want to see each one become the best it can be. Hmm.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
Of course my focus is to write the best book I can every single time. But it's unrealistic to expect each book to be successful. Maybe if you're Stephen King.
 
Of course my focus is to write the best book I can every single time. But it's unrealistic to expect each book to be successful. Maybe if you're Stephen King.

Depends on what you mean by successful. Commercially successful? Nah. Successful as in satisfying and enjoyable for me, and making me happy while watching it evolve and grow and improve...? I don't know. It's hard for me to think in terms of "success" because I write because I love it. Or because not writing is worse than writing. One of those.

I don't know how to explain it. Every book is like an adventure for me. It's not a project, it's a deeply involved experience that I can't forget and that will be a part of me forever. I love my characters and they don't just exist on the page, they exist as part of *me*. As do the stories themselves. It sounds really hokey but that's my experience of it.
 
Grateful for all the responses to this post. I recently received my first manuscript back from an editor and was overwhelmed by the work I still need to do. After hanging out in my cave for a week in tears, I came out ready to face the battle again. Your comments are encouraging and a good dose of magic that I dearly need! My issues are a tangling of the plot and subplot and, according to my editor, characters that are not as strong as they could be and occasionally unbelievable. After reading these posts, I am convinced that my story is more than salvageable. Once I dried my tears and thought about the editor’s evaluation, I could see the opportunities to revise and rewrite for a better story. Nothing about this has been wasted and is only a learning of the craft. As DragonoftheAerie says, the only thing that would be a waste (and I add, a tragedy) is to stop writing or lose faith and confidence. I love your statement, “But some of us (like me) develop a very lasting attachment to our stories and really want to see them succeed. We want to fight for them even if we screwed up spectacularly the first time.” I feel a real sense of responsibility to the characters and story that was given to me to tell. I have promised them I will do my best on their behalf and not quit until they see the light of Kindle world!! I am now feeling grateful for the editor’s thorough and helpful job on my novel and helping me learn more about the craft. She is the one who encouraged me to find a fantasy writers group, which led me here! Wow, what a blessing!
I'm glad to have indirectly brought a ray of sunshine into your day [emoji6]

Best of luck!

Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk
 
Depends on what you mean by successful. Commercially successful? Nah. Successful as in satisfying and enjoyable for me, and making me happy while watching it evolve and grow and improve...? I don't know. It's hard for me to think in terms of "success" because I write because I love it. Or because not writing is worse than writing. One of those.

I don't know how to explain it. Every book is like an adventure for me. It's not a project, it's a deeply involved experience that I can't forget and that will be a part of me forever. I love my characters and they don't just exist on the page, they exist as part of *me*. As do the stories themselves. It sounds really hokey but that's my experience of it.
I get you too. I'd like a career in this, but knowing how slim the possibilities are, I don't treat that as though it were my overarching objective. I first started writing to use storytelling as a means both express myself in ways that I had difficulty doing in real life and as a means to create something that I could truly call "mine". Primarily, it is an outlet for desires that I cannot express.

Sometimes though, it would be nice if I could separate myself from the story. No doubt it'd make the drafting process 10 times easier [emoji23]

Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk
 

Russ

Istar
I don't know how to explain it. Every book is like an adventure for me. It's not a project, it's a deeply involved experience that I can't forget and that will be a part of me forever. I love my characters and they don't just exist on the page, they exist as part of *me*. As do the stories themselves. It sounds really hokey but that's my experience of it.

That is kind of how I feel about some of my ex-girlfriends. But in all honesty I think I should have abandoned some of those a little sooner than I did.

There is a time to let things go. Knowing exactly when that is can be very hard to determine.
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
While part of me is sad that my original plot feels like a flat tire that needs changing and discarding, I'm very excited to be back on the road and have a stronger vehicle. So...like I said, it's whatever a person needs. There is no valid reason I should keep a convoluted and weak plot within which to frame my personal change story for my character, if a better, more active and exciting alternative exists. If I frame this story differently, the ratios go like this:


Original:

Personal change story and romance:50%
Background and beginning situation drama: 10%
Convoluted and dull dragon search: 40%

Proposed Rewrite:

Personal change and romance: 50%
Background and new gang war: 40%
Dragon searching thing: 10%

I'll hold off on delivering the information on the world-dependent plot (the dragon thing) until late in the book. And I know only the older members remember it, but this dragon plot introduction started as a 17-page prologue before I jumped into the MC's story. Then, it became a long and confusing first chapter. Then recently it changed into a broken series of scenes, bridged with an ongoing conversation between two secondary characters (ala The Lies of Locke Lamora's opening, where Chains and the Thiefmaker are bartering for Locke). But the biggest problem I was having is in determining how big to make the plot, how big to make the personal change and romance elements, and in where to introduce the discrete parts to the reader. I think that if we open with her playing cards, surrounded by the crime syndicate, working for her crime boss, and wary of the bard she'll eventually have the romance with...I'd like to keep that rolling as long as possible, open up some more secrets about the crime syndicate and their rivalries, and then let the romance get weird...and THEN after those things become full-blown conflicts, I can bring the dragon plot into it, because it was running in the background and clues were given periodically.

Yeah, I don't think rewriting means throwing everything out. If I never wrote the first horrible draft of this story, I wouldn't have parts to build back into something else. I think what I mean here, is that I bought a Lego Laketown from The Hobbit. I built it together, fully intending to give it to my kids, but I knew they'd just lose the pieces, starting with the gold ring, right? So I put it on my bathroom counter and it sat there for about two years (even through our move, because I didn't have a better place to put it). But recently, I decided it was a silly place to display it (because it wasn't easy to dust and it wasn't like I had a Hobbit-themed bathroom or anything). So, me and the kids took Laketown apart, I washed all the hairspray and lint off the pieces, and we started over. We built a creepy witch house for Halloween with it. I think the house was really cool.

My novel is Legos. It was a fine but uninspired Laketown because that was the manual it came with, I suppose. But now I'm making it really unique, deeper, more me, more energetic. It feels good. Deeply satisfying. But I haven't thrown away any of the Lego pieces, I'm just rearranging them. But not literally reusing the sentences that were weak in the first place. Just the concepts.

Like, for instance, the two characters share a kiss that's totally one a reader will remember. I don't want to change a thing, except dress the dialogue up so it feels natural. But just before the kiss, there's a scene with her dancing in the garden...and there's no point to it. Take that out and put in something active that means something. Deepens the commitment she has to whatever she's trying to work out at that point. Maybe deal a one-two punch, first with some disturbing news, and then with the crushing ramifications of the kiss.

Oh yes, this rewrite is just miles better than what I wrote in 2008...but it's been a lot of writing between then and now, and though none of that interim writing is of much higher quality than any of my other first drafts, I kept going and improving and learning and had some breakthroughs personally. That gave me some new tools I never had before, and I'm sort of clinging to them right now like I need them to breathe...because I do...because I'm not a great writer. But I'm a bit crazy, and it's all I really have, so I'm sort of embracing the crazy. And I love my story, but I'm certain many people will absolutely hate it and call it trash.

So, really, each writer in the world has to decide what their limits are, what their goals are, what makes them fulfilled, what makes them proud. And no writing is time wasted. You must make your own opportunities to grow.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
Depends on what you mean by successful. Commercially successful? Nah. Successful as in satisfying and enjoyable for me, and making me happy while watching it evolve and grow and improve...? I don't know. It's hard for me to think in terms of "success" because I write because I love it. Or because not writing is worse than writing. One of those.


I don't know how to explain it. Every book is like an adventure for me. It's not a project, it's a deeply involved experience that I can't forget and that will be a part of me forever. I love my characters and they don't just exist on the page, they exist as part of *me*. As do the stories themselves. It sounds really hokey but that's my experience of it.

Do you have a question for me about my approach?

It may not seem artsy or feel good because my focus and goals are different than yours, therefore requiring me to also work in a way that supports those goals. This doesn't mean that I don't love writing. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't be wanting to do it the rest of my life or get up at 6am daily, 7 days a week, to create material. If I didn't love it, then I wouldn't want to sell my books to an audience for them to hopefully enjoy.

But my work is not me. It comes from me, but it does not define me. Rather, my experiences and tastes create it, which is why I'm not so attached to each individual story. My focus is to work towards commercial success, which takes a disciplined and more business oriented mindset. It's completely different from what you're doing. It's not better. It's not worse. It simply means I have to work differently than others who don't have business as their focus for the time being.
 
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