How do you redraft?

[vintagefury]

Giving away the answers to your own riddles, eh? I wish the sphynx was more like you

[lin robinson]

And I always wanted to be more like the Sphynx. Especially if it's actually constructed by aliens and contains the secrets of all mankind. I think that would be SO cool.

[jackokent]

I've been re-drafting 2 for 10 years. My best advise would don't be like me... stop sometime and have the guts to do something with your work other than re-draft.

I do think it's good to have a break from them though. I found printing them out in a nice easy, bookish format and reading them like I would any other novel was realy useful.

I've often heard with first novels that authors waste what is sometimes thier best idea on thier worst writing as they are so inexperienced. When I'd finished my first novel therfore, I set it aside and forgot it for 2 years while I wrote another one. I then went back to the first to start re-drafting after gaining all that experience of writing the second.

[Kromaethius]

Very interesting topic and discussion here. I enjoyed this, and I also agree about the passive voice -- It is grammatically correct, especially in dialogue, and in the creative writing sense.

I used to watch out for passive sentences, passive voice, and found out through in the "test lab" of victimized readers that they did not enjoy the "corrected" version -- Besides who really speaks that way? I am referring to dialogue.

I have had a problem with present and past tense all my life -- Whoops getting off subject.

Corporate writing and the like have rules in writing such as this topic goes, and by no means, do I limit just the corperate environment...

Also I like the part about printing your draft and allowing the "ink" or data to dry and go back an re-read your work -- You will certainly find 90% or more of your mistakes and yes as you continue your craft, you cannot help to get better and more experienced at it -- If you don't something is amiss!

Of course we try to edit as best we can, also it is wonderful to have a fresh set of eyes look over your work after you are done. They will find more, especially the tough or "unclear" passages that may be crystal to you as you wrote it.

All this is good stuff what I have read here on this board so far. Keep up the good fight everyone!

[vintagefury]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

And I always wanted to be more like the Sphynx. Especially if it's actually constructed by aliens and contains the secrets of all mankind. I think that would be SO cool.

I like you.

[Interference]

First, grateful thanks to lin robinson for the word genera. Could it replace genre, perhaps? (I don't hate French, I just feel silly doing the pronunciation while chatting)

Second, my worthless addition to the valuable foregoing is that there are some howling, glaringly obvious, horrendous discontinuities that I've not even noticed sometimes till the third draft. Makes you worried what you might still be missing. Like numbers. If he's thirty, how can he be thirty-two years her senior? If she can reach the top of the window from the inside, how could she not reach it from the outside? If they're travelling 50 KPH, why can't the police car catch up with them? If she had a headaches two pages ago, why hasn't she taken an aspirin yet?

I made these up, but they're of a type that I never notice until I realise that (a) I made him a little younger in the second draft; (b) I imagined where the furniture was but forgot to tell the reader about chair by the window; (c) I changed from MPH to KPH without checking what the real difference was and (d) I had a headache when I wrote the first part and meditation and chemicals had cleared it before I went back to write the second.

When reading soon after writing, you remember things and often forget that you haven't actually committed some of those things to paper yet. But later, when you can turn a page and read something you don't remember writing, it can be a little easier to spot those omisions.

Originally Posted by jackokent

I've been re-drafting 2 for 10 years.

No, I'll keep my mouth shut. Besides ...

Originally Posted by jackokent

I found printing them out in a nice easy, bookish format and reading them like I would any other novel was realy useful.

... is truly valuable advice. Seeing the same text on the same screen in the same format, you go blind to certain errors. Misspellings, missing words, missing quotes etc recede into the background noise of the flickering screen.

When you print the ms out, it looks sufficiently different that you spot many more of the tiny, annoying mistakes, often the ones you've had there since you started. It's a real, physical/psychological phenomenon that really isn't all that phenomenal at all. It just happens.

Originally Posted by lin robinson

"To boldly go where no man has gone before", of course.

When Patrick Stewart first took on the role, and prior to the first broadcast of the Next Generation, there was rampant speculation about whether a Shakespearean actor of his standing could utter those immortal words with out haemmoraging.

[KSeriphyn]

Sorry, going back to the original question...

I've revised my draft seven times. I'm going through it again to make sure I catch any grammar/spelling errors.

The first five drafts were really making sure the plot and characters ran consistent and how I wanted it. How I did that:

I wrote the story with whatever came in my head first time around.

Second time, I read through it and took notes. From those notes, I started creating a history around the characters and their world. As I went through rereading the draft, I added and changed according to those notes.

Third - fifth time around was really making sure the story worked and was consistent.

Six - Seventh was adapting according to feedback.

Eighth is the polishing off stage.

That's my process. I'm sure you'll find what works well for you. Don't be afraid to experiment.

[WriterDoug]

It would be difficult for me to convince myself that I deliberately set up draft "stages" for each aspect of a manuscript, but I did cover (at one point or another) all the key points mentioned above.

My best, completed manuscript has gone through four *major* revisions and possibly several smaller ones. After stewing on the idea for so long and having a forty page 'starter' that I wrote for a college project to keep me continually interested, I finally sat down and wrote the entire novel in one month on MS Word. Roughly eighty percent of the original forty page starter was scrapped.

I will advise the first important step from here is to put the entire manuscript into standard format (Courier, doble-spaced, proper margins, etc etc) unless you have been typing this way all along. If so, great for you! If proper formatting is not 100 % completed and taken care of early on, I promise it will come back to bite you in the ass.

This next part is really cruel to trees, but I am a writer. I love nature too, but such is life. I printed out the entire novel and bound it into a spiral notebook (after carefully triple-hole punching the entire thing, thirty pages at a time.) I made as many corrections as possible with a pencil and when I was completed, I transferred all the corrections to the electronic copy.

Trees again. I repeated this process a few more times of printing out the entire novel and going through with a pencil to make corrections. I was pleased to find less and less errors as I went along. The important thing to remember is that less than ten percent of my total corrections were made exclusively on-screen. I personally benefit greatly from having a hard copy of the story in front of me, and I imagine nearly anyone else would, too!

Anyway, the first major "print" focused around the characters, their actions and the consistency of the story; I commented on every scene by writing questions to myself all over the margins. Some pages were removed completely. Some were expanded heavily. Between the first and fourth major draft, my final chapter grew from three to twenty-three pages. The second and third "prints" focused heavily on grammar, word choice, poetic licenses, the syntax and literally anything else that conflicted with the beauty of the words or the language. I estimated (roughly) that I marked up almost 3,000 errors or weaknesses during these two phases. Only about ten total were the fault of spelling, so do not stress heavily on this.

Ultimately between the first and final draft, the novel grew from 56,000 to 80,000 words. I can say none of this was padding either, becuase I initially chose not to explain gaps in the novel that would have been largely unsatisfying for a reader to stumble upon. Anyway, my final piece of advise may get mixed reactions, but I am going to throw it out there anyway.

Pretend you're an actor.

Read the entire manuscript outloud, and read the dialogue just as you think the characters would really say it. You might feel stupid after awhile, especially if you're doing this on a crowded subway, but I promise that if you start to trip on speech or laugh then just maybe you've found something awkward or corny in the writing.

cheers,
WD

[Interference]

Personally, i'm going to print out WriterDoug's post and nail it over my writing desk.

It seems bang on, to me.

[bradHart]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

I agree completely and it's good to see somebody else say so. Witch hunts against passive voice and adverbs and such are the mindless slash school of writing commentators. Few who actually work in the fields say that sort of thing.

Any part of the language has reasons to be, and to be used. You don't tell painters to cut all yellows or secondaries colors, or musicians not to use doric mode or fifth chords, you don't tell writers to eliminate genera of expression.

Grammatically correct you will find many editors who will require this to be fixed before publication. Editors, at least good ones will tell you, to eliminate genera of expression, among other things and when they do you should damned well listen to them. A certain amount percentage of passive sentences is unavoidable, but when you open up one of those handy little word processing tools that tells you there are 69.2% passive sentences, you have a real problem. A passive voice also doesn't lend itself to writing tight prose. If you want to identify and correct your passive problems in word and probably a host of other word processing programs you can set the spelling and grammar checks to point out your passive sentences.

[bradHart]

Originally Posted by Dragonlady

No-one who's read it has come up with any major problems, though I'm sure it needs editing. What do you look for when you redraft?

If no one who has read it comes up with major problems in the first draft, then no one has really read it. I am sure people, probably friends and family members, looked at the words and said oh that's nice, but they are readers, not Readers and there is a difference.. The first thing I find invaluable is my critique group. The second and third in no particular order are my Red Pen of Doom wielding wife who along with a masters in composition and rhetoric has no compunction about telling me all my mechanical flaws in a piece. The other is her sister who is one of the most picky and voracious readers of fantasy and scifi I know and not above telling me my story sucks in total, barring that she goes to great lengths to show me where it is fatally flawed.

The last three things I think you need at the end of your draft if you didn't have them while you were writing it are copies of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer, and the thesaurus.

[lin robinson]

Grammatically correct you will find many editors who will require this to be fixed before publication. Editors, at least good ones will tell you, to eliminate genera of expression, among other things and when they do you should

damned well listen to them. A certain amount percentage of passive sentences is unavoidable, but when you open up one of those handy little word processing tools that tells you there are 69.2% passive sentences, you have a real problem. A passive voice also doesn't lend itself to writing tight prose. If you want to identify and correct your passive problems in word and probably a host of other word processing programs you can set the spelling and grammar checks to point out your passive sentences.

This is very hard to read. But it's nonsense.

[SJAB]

The use of passive voice, hmm, thorny issue.

All I can cite at present is that in my current work in progress I am using the manner of speech and usage of words that I was brought up with, and it has by it's nature turned out to be very "passive voice heavy". A strange discovery I can tell you. If I were to rely only on what the grammar program in word was telling me, and not my knowledge and gut with this, my characters' speech would be totally stupid to say the least. Though grammar programs are very helpful, you do need to at times go with what you feel is right for the work.

Actually I find removing too much of the passive voice makes the writing harsh to read, but that is a personal opinion. I like work that has a beat, an ebb and flow of language, that can often be lost if you "stick to the rules", which are really not rules but loose guidelines, which the best writers do and will break to create wonderful works.

[lin robinson]

f I were to rely only on what the grammar program in word was telling me, and not my knowledge and gut with this, my characters' speech would be totally stupid to say the least.

God yes. I've run grammar and style checkers like once each for a couple of minutes and immediately recognized them as robot slaves of Satan insinuating literary lobotomy.

[WriterDoug]

I don't know how relevant this advise will be to each of you personally, but I have thrown together a mini-guide on the subject of revision. Some might find it silly, but I have done or contemplated all of these. They are simple exercises that I feel should accompany the drafting process. I will not be covering anything terribly obvious such as checking for proper spelling and grammar.

I
Write a synopsis of your own book. Do not look at your manuscript. Try 150 words, because this is about all you're going to get in the synopsis paragraph for your query letter, should you choose to approach a literary agent. Next, try a 1-3 page synopsis. Then, try something longer such as a ten to twenty page outline or summation of the entire book.

When finished, did it end up being accurate? If not, you might have some internal conflict going on between the story you wanted to write, and the story you really did write. Establish right now before you go much further that what you have written is really the story you wanted to write, and it is the best idea you can produce; a synopsis can also help you look at an abridged version of your own work and help you decide if it's golden or just a goose egg.

This exercise is also a good test to see how well you know your own story by heart; it will be a big help to navigate around the entire manuscript with relative ease if you know when and where everything occurs. (Bookmarks in MS Word are great for this, too, I hear!)

II
Be prepared to identify the genre of the novel you have written and (possibly) why it is unique when compared to the literature already out there. Also having a firm grasp on who will want to read this story (your target audience) is a great idea, too. Literary agents and publishers especially like when a writer has plans and goals beyond just getting published.

III
These will likely be in your notes, if you're one of those types. Jot down the names of all your major (at least) characters and address a few questions. Who is this person? Why are they important/ unique/ necessary? What did they want? Did they accomplish what they wanted? Did they change in any way, and if so, how? How would the story be in danger by removing this character entirely? You should know the answers to ALL of these questions, and if any of them are weak or evasive, then you should consider working on that character.

IV
Ask yourself if it would have been possible to write this story in a different POV (such as going from first person to third person omniscient) and subsequently gaining any benefit. Most likely you will be very defensive in the POV you have chosen, and I believe most writers naturally are. Often writing only one short scene or a couple of pages in a different POV should immediately tell you which choice is best.

V
Just for fun, consider different ways your novel could have ended. If you choose to go a step further, try writing a few different versions to the ending. The only important thing here is to make sure the ending you do ultimately choose is the most satisfying resolution to the plot and does full justice to the characters and world you have created. They deserve it!

VI
Read your dialogue out loud, if it does not embarrass you too greatly. If you wish, you can read the ENTIRE novel to yourself. I did this at least three times. For the sake of this exercise, I really feel though that the dialogue is the most important. If a friend or family member does not mind, you should consider having them read parts back and forth with you. Even if you are both terrible actors, there should be no problem just reading the lines without laughing or stumbling over speech. As mentioned briefly in my last post, this is usually caused by the brain being confused or disagreeing with what your lips are reading on the page. Circle those sentences and rewrite them.

VII
Here is my last tip for now, and this was probably my favorite exercise. I used to hear in college from a fanatic that one of Shakespeare’s greatest talents was his ability to make every word count. She often told me that you cannot remove any one act from a Shakespearean play and have it still make sense or be as meaningful as intended. Everything matters. While Shakespeare is hardly my favorite author, ask yourself about the significance of every scene or chapter in your own story. What is the significance of this scene? What does it reveal or introduce to the reader? What would be the impact of combining this scene with another or removing it entirely? If you are not convinced by your own answers about keeping every single scene, you should consider hacking away.

That is all for now.

(This entire post was written fairly quickly, and I may decide to revise and expand on it later. Please go easy on me if you feel any of my exercises “suck.”)




Cheers,
WD