How do you redraft?

[Interference]

Originally Posted by WriterDoug

While Shakespeare is hardly my favorite author ...

There's an idea. Let's start a Bard-Knocking thread!

[timelord4]

WriterDoug has given some excellent advice.

In a nut shell, make yourself a Journal. Great way for you to keep to your goals, organise your writing, cut your editing time down and writes your synopsis as you go along. If you use a chart as well, you can determine your *actual* tension against "proposed* tension, plot development, character development etc.

Simon Haynes (Hal Spacejock) has made his own which he kindly allows you to download free. It's called yWriter2 Spacejock but make sure it's the one by Spacejock Incorporated. There are two out, and the other one doesn't measure up for me. I only use the version 2 until all the bugs are ironed out of version 3. Simon's site can be found at the top of Chrons page, or copy what I wrote in bold, and paste straight into net window. While you're at it, have a look at what his advice is, regarding our discussions here. Not only informative but very funny and certainly worth copying into your Journal at home.

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by Interference

There's an idea. Let's start a Bard-Knocking thread!

Depends if you want your @%$# kicked or not, thou drivelling whey-faced clotpole

WriterDoug, that was a great summary of how to improve your novel. I'm currently revising my rough draft, which is to say, throwing most of it out apart from key scenes and rewriting the rest from scratch. It could take several redrafts to get the story from merely OK to stonkingly good, but that's what you have to do to get published...

[Dragonlady]

I'm back, after two months of no internet! So what sort of journal do you mean? And another question, do you revise chapter by chapter, or take, say, a character or a plot thread and look at it through the whole novel?

[The Curious Orange]

I tend to edit one character's plot thread / POV all the way through, but it essential to edit them in reading order too. I've found things that jar when switching from one POV to the next, and have either had to re-write or change the POV order.

For example, when one POV character enters a town, I might spend a little time describing the town. If a second POV then enters the same town, because I wrote those POVs from begining to end, I will have written another descriptive passage. When I interlace the two POVs, I've got two similar (or contradictory!) descriptions of the town. The second is redundant, so gets cut (and possibly pasted into the first, if better).

But the best editing advice I can give is to post an excerpt on the critique forum here, and listen to the feedback given.

[Theleb K]

Two main points for me, the first one being time.... leaving it alone for at least a month so you can come back with something approaching a fresh perspective.

The second important one, I think, is to reflect on why you wrote the thing in the first place - what are you trying to say, what are the themes and why should anyone else want or need to read it... Revisit old notes and synopses and make some new ones. Then go over the text, cutting dead-wood and reinforcing narrative and characterisation with this 'grand scheme' in mind.

[ChrisBfla]

I think setting it aside for a time is constructive and then go back and read it as if it were someone elses work. Try to be objective. I know on my first published book, I had three opportuites to revise it before typesetting from my publisher. Each time I went through it, I found something worth revising or making the point with greater clearity. Just try and be objective.

Chris

[Lith]

I've found this to be pretty handy:

One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle

Helps focus your thoughts so you know what you need to change.

[KESpires]

Originally Posted by Dragonlady

I have been told, or read, or heard time and time again that a first draft of a novel will need a lot of work before it is up to publishable standard. I have completed a first draft, but am finding it hard to tell where it needs work, and if I do find something I think might need changing I'm wary to do so because last time I thought, I'll cut that section, people at the writing group I was going to at the time said it was great and didn't need to be cut. 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?

I'd let it sit for a month, or two, and write a few short stories in that time. Then break the manuscript back out and start hitting the grammar really hard. There are sure to be mistakes.

Check for unnecessary adverbs. A lot of time we use adverbs because we're worried that our intended meaning won't be conveyed strongly enough (there's one!). But most times upon a reread I find that a lot of the adverbs aren't necessary.

Check for pronouns with unclear targets. It's easy to use He or She and think we're being clear. Sometimes we aren't and the person's name is better.

Check for comma usage and semicolon usage.

Then after you've marked it all up with the grammar you can start to nitpick the plot elements, the character motivation, and the random events.

Most folks don't like random events. Make sure your plot is driven by your main character or another character's actions.

Make sure your point of view is clear. Often during the process of writing we can mistakenly step out of point of view and into a quasi omniscient view. If you're writing in omniscient view, then that's ok, but make sure it's consistent through the story.

Then after all that is done. Do it again. And again.

Editing is fun.

[The Judge]

Hi

I'm nowhere near as experienced as everyone else giving advice, but an exercise I find helpful in re-drafting/editing is to impose a limit on the length of a chapter.

With me, this happens because I have a pathological aversion to having a chapter end a few lines into a new page. If that happens, I have to go back and reduce word-count - or rather line-count.

I find it valuable because it means that each and every line (sometimes each and every word) has to justify its existence.

You don't have to share my foible (I blame a poverty-stricken upbringing - no wasted paper here, thank you!) - picking an arbitrary reduction of, say, 5% would work as well.

Hope this helps.

[Beast]

1. Do you have an outline? You have to get rid of every scene that doesn't somehow advance the plot, which means parting with a lot of superfluous stuff that may sound nice but doesn't need to be there - in other words, is not directly related to the outline.
2. Get rid of as many "suddenly(s) as you can
3. Rewrite scenes so you are showing and not telling by eliminating words such as decided, felt, imagine, etc. (I'm sure you can get to an online list somewhere).
4. Stash it away for a few months and then look at it with a fresh pair of eyes

[HareBrain]

Best advice for revising generally: leave it alone for a while

Best advice for final polishing: read it aloud. OK, so it's a slow old process and none of us wants to do it, but it really works, especially with dialogue. (Remember Harrison Ford's comment to George Lucas re the Star Wars script: "You can write this stuff, George, but you can't say it")

[Interference]

Originally Posted by The Judge

Hi

I'm nowhere near as experienced as everyone else giving advice, but an exercise I find helpful in re-drafting/editing is to impose a limit on the length of a chapter.

With me, this happens because I have a pathological aversion to having a chapter end a few lines into a new page. If that happens, I have to go back and reduce word-count - or rather line-count.

I find it valuable because it means that each and every line (sometimes each and every word) has to justify its existence.

You don't have to share my foible (I blame a poverty-stricken upbringing - no wasted paper here, thank you!) - picking an arbitrary reduction of, say, 5% would work as well.

Hope this helps.

I'm exactly the same, only it comes from writing for radio where a page is almost literally exactly a minute of air time. 29 pages, even if it's only a couple of words, bug me mightily. So I'd always have to justify and re-justify each word's place on the page with the occasional danger - be warned - of losing the sense.

Also, describing a scene to somebody can help you find (particularly) lines of dialogue that are far more natural than the ones you've written. Friends who ask, "what is your character trying to say here?" are like gold-dust to you when you're re-editing and polishing.

But bear the reverse in mind, too. Cutting to the chase might sound good, but it isn't always the best way to get there. I might over-write a description somewhere and know that later I'll want to pear it down, but I might still keep it quite detailed if I think it's helping the pace.

While I'm definitely no expert and have no credentials to show how successful these techniques can be, but I have a feeling they might be useful and might encourage others to develop their own polishing skills, if only by doing the reverse .

[One_With_No_Name]

Originally Posted by vintagefury

The passive voice is grammatically correct. I had a teacher in HS who threw a fit when she read that one of the questions on this standardized test we took, asking which phrase was correct, had a perfectly correct passive voice and a perfectly correct active voice - the active voice was correct, and passive would have been marked incorrect. It was the first time I actually saw fire in someone's eyes.

Next up: the war against the war against the split infinitive. It's legal sometimes, damnit.

According to things I have read, Split infinitives are never wrong, it's all in how it sounds. It very often sounds much more professional and "nice" to have them joined. However, by all means if it sounds better to have it split, do it.

[KESpires]

To boldly go...