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.