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This thread is for sharing tips about editing and rewriting or handy things we discovered in the process of doing that ourselves.
I shall kick it off because I recently discovered something crucial (with @Daeus’s help 😉 ). I’m going through the first major edit/rewrite I’ve ever done, so perhaps this is old news to some of you more experienced writers on here. If so, forgive me. 😉
What I have to say is this: do not— repeat— DO NOT hesitate to cut old materiel if it’s not relevant anymore.
Why? Well, I didn’t really think about this before, but when Daeus pointed out that I had a lot of really slow, heavy, covering-the-same-stuff-multiple-times kind of stuff happening, I tried to step back and take a look at the big picture. And I realized what I was doing wrong. I was trying to keep old material that I loved but that was no longer necessary to the flow of the reworked story. DON’T DO THIS. Much as you loved all that awesomeness in the first draft, grit your teeth, shut your eyes, and delete it if it’s not helping. Otherwise you have weak, heavy places dragging at your plot and a lot of dead, mechanical prose. Awesomeness is only awesomeness if it’s firmly attached to the core of the story and thus absolutely necessary.Only one thing? Oh, dear. 😉
I’ve done a lot of rewriting and it’s a super enlightening process. I’ll have to think about this a bit and come back.
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Ha. Anything, of course. 😉 No limit.
Yes. Besides reading, there’s almost nothing that can better prepare someone for writing than rewriting. Which may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s true.
@kate-flournoy Actually, I would say there is no better way to learn writing, period.
Now I’ll have to be gone for just a moment because guess what I’m doing? Yep, rewriting.
By the way, you might want to give some more detailed examples of your lesson for people who aren’t familiar with your book.
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@Daeus good idea. Okay people— so near the beginning of the book I had it so one character would be teaching another to sword-fight. I spent quite a bit of time developing their relationship prior to that— one character is so stubborn he wouldn’t have let the other character teach him if they hadn’t known each other for quite some time. So they were traveling together and I had a lot of stuff building up to the teaching, and what was to come of the teaching towards the end of the book, and how it was to play into the climax, and how the relationship these two characters developed over that time would be crucial to achieving the story goal… and then I decided to cut the whole sword-fight thing and let their relationship develop more gradually over the course of the story. Mostly because it was really stupid for a nineteen-year-old guy not to know how to sword-fight in a medieval setting. 😛 😉
So I cut it. Only thing was, a lot of the buildup I had done for that was really good material. I loved it— I didn’t want to chuck it, so I sort of squeezed it and gave it a facelift and wiggled it in between chunks of new stuff. Only problem was, it was now empty. Building up to nothing. Completely unnecessary. The internal weave of the story had changed, and now I had several threads where I was supposed to have only one. Distracting. Especially as none of those extra threads were ever gonna go anywhere. They were just there because I liked them.Ok people, this is like my topic, so I might just say a thing or two.
As I already mentioned, rewriting is, in my opinion, the most educational thing a writer can do. Forcing yourself to fix major problems teaches yourself so much about how you actually write and how it should look in contrast. Here are some of my biggest lessons.
POV matters. There’s a big difference between omnipotent where everything is from the author’s point of view and first and third person where everything is from the point of view of a single character at a time. Each side has its ups and downs and it’s well worth a conscious thought over what type of POV would be best for your work before writing it. I still have to do some thinking about it, but some pointers for picking a POV would be that omnipotent would probably be better for more of a broad universal theme, whereas a first or third person might be better for a very personal theme. Also, action-heavy plots may do better with a deep POV since that can help provide characterization that might otherwise be hard to get. Also, if you’re very good at things like symbolism, wit, satire, masterful descriptions and subtlety, omnipotent may provide you more opportunities. Finally, if you feel like you have a good plot, but your story just isn’t coming out right, changing the POV could really help because (surprise!) it gives you a fresh view on things.
Another thing I’ve learned is how important a setting can be. I mean location as well as mood and what other characters are present or affecting the scene, how they are affecting the scene, why, and what they want out of the scene. For instance, I was working through my second rewrite on a book a couple days ago and I came to a scene where I started out with a small info dump. I wanted to get rid of this, but I also wanted to see if there was any way I could improve the setting my character was entering. I thought about it and concluded I could do much better giving my information through a conversation between my character and another guy. I then thought very carefully about what type of “other guy” I wanted. I thought about what tone I wanted for the scene. Desperate seemed like the right term, so I thought of what type of guy would give a desperate feel to the scene. I concluded I would have my “other guy” by a deathly sick soldier who is fighting with two other soldiers to be allowed to join in their battle and who is falling into hysteria. It worked a lot better than what I had.
Then another thing I learned is that you need character interaction regularly. Just general events aren’t very interesting.
I’ve also learned a gazillion other things, but I can’t exactly post a book on here, so hopefully this is enough for y’all to chew on for the moment.
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Don’t be afraid to cut and delete and take out scenes completely. *sighs* It’s so hard sometimes. I’ve had to cut scenes I love, and there’s probably more I’ll need to cut. But if it’s not moving along the story in some way, cut it. And there’s no need to picture it as a complete loss, because not only will the story be tighter, but you’re just getting material for bonus back material or a special webpage for anyone who has read the book where they can go look at all the deleted scenes, alternate endings, etc.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
One thing though, Hope—I’ve never really got this.
Why include old scenes as special material, if they are in fact old? Because if you deleted them from the book, they most likely didn’t happen, and why show your fan something that could’ve happened if it didn’t? Chances are they may like the deleted way better, and then it’ll leave them sorry you didn’t keep it that way.
And it’s worse with alternate endings, cuz if it’s an alternate ending it obviously didn’t happen that way in the real book, so why say it could have? Why not leave the reader happy with how it is????
@emma-flournoy Yes, you have a point there too. I’m not saying one should include everything. But I’ve seen it done in more than one book…one was an alternate beginning and the other included bits of a character who’d been taken out. In both cases, I agreed it was better the way the author had written it, but at the same time it was fun to see how they’d changed it. But especially with the scenes which could have happened, but had to be clipped for time’s sake…those are fun to go back and read and spend a little more time with favorite characters. 😉
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
@hope have you ever read Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine? She does that with her book.
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I’ve found it helps ease the pain of cutting a scene if, instead of deleting it, you cut the portion and paste it in another document. That way you don’t have to keep the portion in your book, but you always have it in case you need it.
@bluejay no, I’ve not ready Ella Enchanted, though I’ve seen the movie. *smirks*
@Gabrielle Oh yes, always. Actually, what I tend to do when I’m making drastic changes, is copy the document and archive a copy of it ‘as is’ then go ahead and edit to my heart’s content because I know I can always go back to something and get it if I need it.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
But especially with the scenes which could have happened, but had to be clipped for time’s sake…those are fun to go back and read and spend a little more time with favorite characters.
Oh, that kind would be nice. 🙂
It’s just too bad not everyone wants a giant book; then you wouldn’t have to cut scenes for time’s sake. 🙁
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