Top editing tips! (HOW DEPRESSING)

Two years ago I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. The novel was awful. It still makes me cringe to this day. But , and this is important, it very much cleared my system and I think all of my writing afterwards is remarkably better and more "me" than anything I've written before that.

Repeat after me: 'I am allowed to write crap'. Because you are! Especially during Nanowrimo.

Yes, you will write crap, but you will also write brilliant stuff. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point during this month you will write something that makes you think 'Wow, can't believe I wrote this!'

Nanowrimo isn't about writing a book you can send straight to the publishers. It's about writing a rough draft, in some cases very rough. And if it's crap and you can't even bare to think of doing any editing come Dec. 1st, then you can leave it. But don't stop writing just because of a bad start.

Oh, and another Big Tip: Do NOT read back. Write down some notes at the end of every session so you know roughly where you are in your story, and then start writing again without reading ANY of your work.

Best of luck!

Hi

Good advice from Eveline there.

My problem, up until this year, was what to do with the 'thing' when it's finished at the end of the month? Yes, much of the writing is poor, and in my case, 'baggy' (too much concentration on wordcount spreadsheets and not on literary excellence), which means the finished 'novel' would need to be edited down. But then, it becomes too short to do anything with.

The last time I did this (in 2005), I wrote two 25k novellas, with the intention of self-publishing for local consumption (as it was based in a seaside town, I thought there might be a market). Haven't quite got round to doing it yet.

As others have said, treat it as a first draft, to see if the story works, to see if you need to add bits of story to make it novel-length, or cut bits out on order to get the story told.

This year, because I have the time, I'm aiming for 100k in the month, hoping that it will be a more straighforward edit down to around 80k - 85k, which would make it a reasonable novel.

And no, don't read back, and don't over-criticise your own work. It's a bit of fun, it's a challenge, and it may lead to something good. I know of one real person who has secured a publishing deal based on something they wrote for NaNo, so it can happen.

Gerald

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Essex Writers Support group

DON'T READ BACK until it's finished. In fact, don't even read it in December!
I find that I need to take a step back from my work, so leaving it a while, so I feel less attached to it (and probably can't remember even writing it!), works wonders.

In fact, March is NaNoEdMo, so you can start editing then, or use that to finish the edit. The aim there is to spend 50 hours editing your novel :D

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NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

HAHA, that's a great video! I actually really liked the sculpting analogy. In those terms, expecting to write a polished novel with the first draft is like expecting to dig a finished statue out of the ground, in place of clay. It's never going to happen, and no-one in their right minds would expect it to, either. x3 (Unless you were at an archaeological dig. But then it would be someone else's finished statue).

I never knew about the existence of NaNoEdMo, either xD I thought December was Editing Month? But regardless, I'd love to take a whack at that as well, because the idea of trying to edit my first novel all on my own is Very Daunting Indeed. Doing it with lots of tips and support sounds like a much safer idea. <3

I think I'm going to do the first edit of my novel almost immediately after the end of November. It's going to be a wholesale rewrite of certain characters' parts, and sections are going to be cut and others rewritten to put a bit more writing into it. rather than typing.

Once I've got the pace right throughout, and the major flaws fixed, then I'll leave it for a couple of months, so I can come back to it fresh.

Gerald

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Essex Writers Support group

I like to take step back from a story before I edit it. If I don't remember writing it I can be more critical :D
I find it easier to step back if I let some time pass, and December and January are hectic (including loads of birthdays!)

NaNoEdMo here I come :)

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NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

I don't actually mind re-reading bits of my novel that I'm actually pleased with, which so far is only Chapter 1. xD I've re-read that a few times, usually at the start of a writing session to get me back in the mood. I don't think I will want to read back to chapters 2 and 3, because they are complete rubbish. The first half of chapter 3 is pointless and probably inaccurate description (WHY did I have to make it a Victorian house? x_x), and the second is a big infodump about all the different gangs in town (basically me getting my thoughts in order, making it up as I go along) disguised as a conversation. A LONG conversation. x3 I was seriously running out of different speech tags by the end of that. And yet I actually found chapter 3 the easiest to write, because it was just... well, boring nonsense. The interesting bits are the hardest to write. Although chapter 2 was rubbish and yet that was also hard to write because I'm no good at action and I've never really seen a riot in a marketplace to be able to describe it. xD

Anyway, I think that I will have to start a 'To Fix' list where I make notes on things as I go along that I'll need to fix in the edit... which will hopefully quell the urge to fix them right now. If I've written them down at least I won't forget. At the moment the main two things that I will need to go back and improve are research - as in actually do some, haha - and characterisation. Most of my characters, as I'm writing, are pretty formless and I have a feeling that my characterisations are inconsistent as a result. I just kind of write what it 'feels' like they should be saying, how they should be acting, but I'm not really working from a definite personality so much as just a vague idea of what that person is like. What I'm hoping is that when I do read back, finally, when the whole thing is finished, I'll discover things about the characters that I hadn't realised were there, and from that I can build an actual characterisation. That would be great :D I wouldn't mind a sucky first draft if I could get things like that out of it.

Yes, that's a definite. I've got a list too. And it's getting bigger every day :(

This is another key area for me too. When I did the two, linked 25k novellas a couple of years ago, I'd already written 2 longer pieces featuring the same character. As a result, I 'knew' him pretty well, and knew how he'd react in different situations and what he'd say. His character came through strong and clear all the time. This year, my characterisation is paper-thin, and my supporting characters wander around like automatons (and not very good ones at that), reacting to what the main character's doing and saying. I'm also changing the gender of one of my children - I thought two girls would be good to write, but I think a younger boy and older girl would provide more conflict and interest.

Gerald

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Essex Writers Support group

I take the view - as I did that last time I did this - that what I'm doing with this draft is just exploring all the different possibilities for the story, and running through various ideas to see if they work. And because I'm writing SF, there's also a lot of world-building going on, most of which is tending to come in giant infodumps as I think of it.

But, I'm finding that the process is really helping me to understand the story and the people in it a lot better than when they were just in my head, or my notes. By writing things out, however crudely, I can see what works and what doesn't - when you're writing a conversation and you find that the next logical line for one of your characters is 'whoever came up with that idea was a bit stupid', you realise that you've got a bit of a problem with the plot, but finding the workaround - and not being able to go back and start again - is a very useful exercise.

I strongly doubt I'll do any actual editing on this draft once it's finished. I'll look over bits of it to remind me of what was good and what wasn't, but the second draft will start from scratch on a blank sheet, just picking up all the lessons I've learnt from this one.

One of my favourite NaNoWriMo phrases is 'permission to suck' - sometimes you have to allow yourself to write something really bad, really cheesy, or just full of idiot plot so you can see why it doesn't work in detail and learn the lessons.

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