Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:02:56 -0800

Hey guys, first time posting in this forum, this section at least. I usually don't have a novel to edit that I think is worth the trouble. But I have only gotten around to editing one novel, and it wasn't my best (did it like 2 years ago now, and my dad wont let me touch it anymore. Because he is going through the final edits of the grammar). The approach I had, was I made a summary, then outlined the chapters. Then completely rewrote the story. This is sooooooo daunting when it comes to some of my works. I read other people who just tweak and rewrite scenes, but I just -- don't understand how I guess? My method takes me a long time, and usually I have that time. Now I have 3 novels finished (since November) that I want to start working on. Editing and polishing. And making them pretty. But that's a /lot/ of story to rewrite, and I just am afraid. My first drafts are usually a mess, basically, I discover the characters and what the story "could be" at least that's how I put it. By the end I know about what the story line is, and know the characters pretty well. But then I take a break for a couple months and look through it again, and then end up either tossing it (had to do that with one of my novels from last year, just too much crazy in one novel that made no sense) or putting it back away and thinking to myself this is hard and I don't know what to do. I'd rather go and write another first draft. All in all, does my method seem odd? And does anyone have an suggestions on how to go about editing in less of a "rewrite the whole thing chapter by chapter" to more of what I hear people doing, that doesn't sound nearly as ... drastic?

Re: Is my approach strange?

Leonara Declamara — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:11:02 -0800

Does it matter? Your method may be strange to others, but that doesn't make it less valid, or useful. Trying to force yourself to do things the way Other People do won't result in better work. I'm a rewriter, myself. I have often rewritten a piece from scratch, especially if I have enough distance to do so. It's resulted in some pretty good works. :) Sometimes, drastic is exactly what you need. I think it's a perfectly awesome technique, myself.

Re: Is my approach strange?

Jaina — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:14:47 -0800

That is actually exactly how I work things. And it is daunting and huge, but my rough drafts are so exploratory and have so many dead ends and aborted chapters that there's really no other way. My current WIP (well - the one I'm most focused on at the moment, anyway!) is in the outlining stage, and I've hit a brick wall because I'm having to completely re-think the ending. One of the endings I had started was fantastic, and then I ran out of ideas, scrapped it, and went another (boring) direction. So now I'm trying to figure out how to use the good ending while still having, you know, an ending. So don't feel strange - you're not alone! It's a long, hard road, but I fully believe that my work is stronger for doing it this way. And I know yours is, too.

Re: Is my approach strange?

MrDithers — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:04:14 -0800

Everyone has a different way of working, and the worst thing you can do is to try to convince yourself that your way is wrong and someone else's is right. I think of Tolkien writing LOtR, he started, came to a standstill, then went back to the beginning and wrote further, kind of like the tide coming in until the story was done. Then there's C.S. Lewis, writing key scenes first then filling in the rest later. I find whenever I try to do something the way someone else does it, I block myself, whereas when I write and edit the way that comes naturally, I can't keep up with all the cool new stuff I discover about the world I'm creating. The only thing you should feel strange about is being able to say that you actually finished a novel, and that's a good strange. Just remember to have fun. It sounds like you're more of a Stephen King type writer (no, I'm not a fan of his, I just happen to like his book On Writing). You make your first draft straight from the hip, then edit with gusto to make everything make sense.

Re: Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:05:39 -0800

Thank you guys, I haven't had anything to rewrite or edit in a long time, (early '10 actually). And I'm just finding it daunting to do the method I had done, which was the outline and rewrite all the chapters. But it is easier, for me at least, I just need to figure out how to break it down so it doesn't seem quite as daunting and make me want to run away from it. Usually my novels are really about figuring out the characters for the first 30k then the plot starts kicking in and coming together. Usually I like the last 10-20k but I have to fix everything else, because I cannot deal with the random scenes that make absolutely no sense to the plot what-so-ever. Thanks for making me feel better about my method guys, I have a few writer friends, but none of them edit like I do, it seems. It's nice to know my method isn't just abstract that no one does nor understands. :)

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Re: Is my approach strange?

kei8 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:37:08 -0800

Hey Angel, no I don't think your approach is strange at all! It sounds a lot like the way I'm writing. (I kinda wish I didn't work this way, because this is going to take FOREVER. But if it's what my story needs, then it's what it needs.) I just went through my WIP and took out all the bits I planned to replace...in the end the "scrap" document was longer than the "draft 2" document (still full of holes). I've been rewriting like crazy this week and I'm up to 8K I think, and probably 1K is stuff from the original draft. This is SOO daunting, I feel like I'm moving so slowly and I'm not even sure whether this second draft is an improvement on the first. But I'm trying to keep reminding myself that this section I'm working on now is the one that needs the most work; later I'll get into parts that are in better shape and will go much faster.

Re: Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:26:35 -0800

Mine takes forever too, Takes me at least several weeks/maybe months just because of the sheer size of it. All I can think of is to make it less daunting to break it up into just doing a Chapter for a set amount of time. Like do a chapter ever two days rewritten up then move on. That way it doesn't seem like it's that a huge looming project that is horrible and makes you wanna run kind of thing. :P

Re: Is my approach strange?

kei8 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:51:32 -0800

Good idea! I need to break mine down into shorter chapters. I wrote the first draft with these epic huge chapters--and so after a week of hard-core revising I'm maybe halfway through chapter 1. I really am making progress...but it sure doesn't feel like it. But the chapters are all like 8,000 to 15,000 words so that is why lol. Good luck with yours!

Re: Is my approach strange?

Pickwick12 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:11:01 -0800

Wow, I'm very CS Lewis. I already know that I share a lot of personality traits with him, but I didn't realize I had a similar writing method. Thanks for the info.

Re: Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:21:15 -0800

Wow, those are long chapters! I thought my 3-5k chapters were long! Good luck with it, may it be easy :)

Re: Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:22:47 -0800

I haven't read much of Stephen King's stuff, even his book on Writing (may have to see if our library has it) but the way you described his sounds very much like the way I do it. That's kind of neat.

Re: Is my approach strange?

MrDithers — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:55:12 -0800

Chapter lengths really aren't important since, if you ever publish, those lengths are more mucked about by the editor than anything. One of the things I did to remove writing blocks was to destroy my chapter structure and just work in scenes, figuring out where which scenes go. I've moved a couple of scenes to totally different parts of the book. May I recommend using a piece of software that allows you to restructure and reorder your scenes any way you wish?. I started doing that with a free piece of software called yWriter5, and have since moved up to using Scrivener (awesome program by the way, and worth every penny spent on it, which isn't much when you consider what you can do with it). Both the aforementioned programs have great resources available for keeping all the events happening in your novel in order. However, there are a myriad of other programs out there that will help out depending on whether you have a PC or Mac.

Re: Is my approach strange?

Angelfowl — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:57:02 -0800

I took a break from my edit, and just now started back up in the last few days. I'm working on a chapter by chapter outline so I can start rewriting the entire novel. My problem is my brain works with chapters, "Oh this is how this one will end..." some how when I write, it comes out as -- prose, chapters, scenes, transitions, it comes out looking like a prose, some of the pacing is off. And usually a lot of rambling thoughts of the characters, but it looks like prose. I've been trying to not work in chapters with one of my first drafts I'm doing on the side, but I'm editing my NaNo from Nov. now, and just kind of -- having structuring problems. Honestly.

Re: Is my approach strange?

MrDithers — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:12:39 -0800

Work the way that's most comfortable to you. That's what I've learned to love with Scrivener, is that you can work in Chapters easily, or configure it to work in scenes, keep track of multiple plot threads (points of view, or whatever else you want to call them), outline and tweak your outline on the fly, interconnect and link all your notes, scrapped scenes, and other stuff all together, have all your notes for a particular scene on screen at once (I'm starting to have real fun having a scene I need to re-write up side-by-side with the original scrapped scene so I can just glance quickly between the two to see what exactly I want to keep and what I want to get rid of), I could go on and on but I think I'm going to stop here. The point is, the moment you find yourself fighting how you think, thinking that you're supposed to or you need to write some other way, that's when the book will stop dead in its tracks. Have fun. Oh, and Scrivener will allow you to write in Chapters or Chapters and scenes, or Acts, or whatever way you want to write. yWriter will ask you to break down your chapters into scenes, but you can get around that by just having a single scene per chapter. Anyway you go about it, these types of software will give you the flexibility you're looking for to help ease your editing process, with Scrivener (even though it's paid) giving you more flexibility. yWriter5 is free though, and that's something to think about (not to mention, yWriter has these cool reports that you can print out to help you outline while Scrivener seems to melt all that functionality into the user interface so it all depends on how you like to go about putting things together).