Changes in Editing?

I have rewritten entire scenes, entire sections, new dialogue, changed the plot direction, eliminated characters, added characters... yeah, everything. That's why it's called a "rewrite." The goal is not to tell myself "how brilliant my first draft is." The idea is to say "oh, now I have a shape. How do I sculpt and polish it to be great?"

I am with Ray on this one. My novel, which is in the query process right now, required a rewrite and a lot of self editing. I am working on catching errors as I go along, while taking my time so that I don't have to go back and do a rewrite. We'll see how it goes.

Seconded [or thirded maybe!]

I'm onto draft three and the book is completely different, and I'm still rewriting!

The very fast first draft took me a couple of months with family commitments, and I've completely changed the ending which means about 20 different chapters.

But that first draft gave me the shape and direction.

I'm curious, too

SusanL said:

I am with Ray on this one. My novel, which is in the query process right now, required a rewrite and a lot of self editing. I am working on catching errors as I go along, while taking my time so that I don't have to go back and do a rewrite. We'll see how it goes.

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For SusanL or anyone:
I understand about editing and changing or even re-writing entire scenes, etc. (I'm at that point right now with my first manuscript), but why would the whole thing require a 're-write'?

What kinds of things (besides obvious grammar, etc.) do editors ask you to change?

Jax3683 said:

How much does your book change from your first draft to when you start editing?

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If I'm reading you correctly, you're asking how much one's book would change between those two processes?

Mine don't. I write the first draft, then edit it pretty soon after. I delete unneeded dialogue and scenes, do a general tidy-up and I'm done.

My first-draft print-outs are a mess of biro and post-it notes but the whole process (of editing, I mean) never takes me longer than two weeks and I've sold three books doing things that way.

With one of them, I needed to add a few scenes at my editor's request - just to clarify the moral stance of the MC as regards his, er...interesting...sex life, but there was nothing major that I can think of.

For me, it's quick because although I love my books, I'm not precious about dropping anything that needs to be dropped. "Okay, I love this scene, but it doesn't serve the story, so...*delete*"

I hate the thought of writing more than one draft. It's a waste of my time which could be better spent on the next book.

I'll rewrite entire scenes if need be, or cut them completely. Other scenes might need expanding; others benefit from trimming. The first draft of my WIP was a bare bones piece clocking in at about 66,000 words. The second is at 70,000 with probably 15,000-20,000 words to go. Once this one is done, it'll need a final read through to look for mistakes and any scenes (I can think of two at the moment) which need developing. Each draft isn't completely different in terms of story, but each is better in terms of writing.

I actually don't deal with drafts--there's no actual completed first draft during any stage of the writing. When I put the ending on the story, I'm ready to go to editing and proofreading.

For editing, I look for anything that doesn't make sense, continuity problems, sentences that I can tighten up, pronoun problems, any anything else that needs to be corrected. There is no revision during the editing.

I think of the first draft as a wide open space -- there's room to make all sorts of decisions, and try all sorts of things. Everything is in play at that point, including the voice, the characters, plot points, etc. As a result, my first draft tends to end up being kind of a mess, but it's the way I like it. The second draft is the heavy lifting, where I go back and make all the decisions I need to make about what stays and what goes. That's why it's a rewrite, to me. But I feel pretty strongly that I often don't know what is going to work until I try it, and I'd prefer not to limit myself in a first draft. I've even changed from third person to first person in the middle of one.

Besides, if I've learned anything during this process it's that the whole idea of a book being "done" is kind of fungible, anyway, until it's sitting on a shelf. I wrote and rewrote my book several times before the version that got me my agent, then did some editing and rewriting with her (including deleting a whole chapter and adding another one), then later did another rewrite for an editor who liked the book but wanted to see it again after certain revisions.

All this before any publication contract -- and if and when that happens, they'll be more revisions.

I've often thought it would be cool to take a page from a manuscript and do a little movie that shows all the changes it goes through from the first writing to the final draft.

theneffzoo said:

For SusanL or anyone:
I understand about editing and changing or even re-writing entire scenes, etc. (I'm at that point right now with my first manuscript), but why would the whole thing require a 're-write'?

What kinds of things (besides obvious grammar, etc.) do editors ask you to change?

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There are two questions here.

1. Most don't need a complete rewrite. Or else you may consider dumping the whole story if everything is wrong with it. "Editing" is a different thing. It could be a line edit, or copy edit. Fixing typos, etc. If every line has to be changed, then you have a bigger problem than I realize...

2. Editors may also change things that are unclear, or lack good motivation, or don't make sense. They may change things that are slow-moving, extraneous, or suggest cutting characters, etc. It all depends on the editor and the amount of work still needed to be done to polish the manuscript.

The 58000 wd novel I just completed was more or less ready for press when I was done. But an earlier one took four years of tinkering, adding chapters and rewriting others, before it was ready for prime time.

And there you go, about ten diff ways to arrive at the same end result. Variety is the spice of the writing life.

My "Revisions" come in the form of rewriting sentences to sound better when read aloud, or just so they're structured better. Occasionally, I'll move a scene to an earlier time to give the characters (and the readers) more time to absorb important information. The rest is editing, which involves rewriting sentences to eliminate overused words and phrases, too.

I haven't arrived at the stage where an agent or editor has asked me to revise. When they do, I'll gladly comply, if it means getting published.

Linda Adams said:

I actually don't deal with drafts--there's no actual completed first draft during any stage of the writing.

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Yeah, the concept of drafts always confused me and I finally (recently) realized why. The term 'drafts' dates back to when books were written on typewriters, so if you made any kind of major change the entire manuscript had to be retyped, or 're-drafted'. Since we don't work that way anymore the term is kind of confusing/irrelevant.

I've never rewritten something in the strictest sense of the term (meaning rewriting the same event because the writing was unsalvageable in some way), but I've certainly removed scenes and replaced them with new scenes portraying different events. My first novel had most of the first 5 and last 4 chapters replaced with new and hopefully more interesting events. My second novel had half a chapter in the exact middle replaced because the original events didn't make any sense (no idea how that got past both the outline and first writing).

I've already added a sub-plot and edited the surrounding scenes to make sense with it for one of my current WIPs when I realized it was too back-loaded (meaning not enough action in the first 3rd of the book). That's why I can't do Nano, because if I see something wrong I have to fix it before I can continue. I consider that the only logical way to work because making a major change can have a ripple effect on the rest of the book. In the case of my current WIP adding a subplot to the first section changed the ending and solidified the genre.

I've straight-up deleted at least a few scenes from everything I've ever written too, usually when I realize the information conveyed in a scene could just as easily be summed up in a single paragraph tacked onto the next scene.

Jax3683 said:

So it got me thinking! How much does your book change from your first draft to when you start editing? Do you rewrite entire scenes?

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None. When the first 'draft' is done, the story's done. Editing is short and sweet.

Jax3683 said:

How much does your book change from your first draft to when you start editing? Do you rewrite entire scenes?

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Not much, actually. I nail most of my prose in the first draft, so that when I get to the end, most of what I tinker with is form (although there is some general tidy-up and rewording).

Last time around, I swapped the order of a few scenes (I had two time lines going on, so it didn't affect its surroundings too much), and I chopped a huge action scene. The scene was great...for a completely different story. I replaced it with two much shorter scenes, each with much more emotional punch and internal conflict.

There were a few tiny things, too; minor punctuation, a couple of typos. Fun stuff like that.

We were going to go on submission as it stood, but at the last minute my agent made a suggestion and it was one of those light bulb moments. So I changed a couple of events in a particular scene but made sure it had the same outcome. I added another tiny scene (about 4 lines) and two lines of foreshadowing earlier in the piece.

(Oh, and my MC didn't have a last name until the last minute, so I had to fix that. Last time I looked, "X" didn't really pass muster as a legitimate name. )

aadams73 said:

(Oh, and my MC didn't have a last name until the last minute, so I had to fix that. Last time I looked, "X" didn't really pass muster as a legitimate name. )

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That guy in The X Files was known as X. And he was cool.

To me, drafts are basically editing rounds. I go through the draft, in order, and edit anything I see fit. It could be little stuff, like fixing typos, or it could mean that I rework or delete whole scenes or chapters. When I have finished a draft in this way, I do it all over again. If all is well, each successive draft takes less and less work, until the point where I find myself fiddling with commas and semi-colons, which is when I declare the thing 'done'.

This is going to depend on:

1)self-edit or write now edit later

2) pantsed pr outlined

3) the book itself

4) the author (school of thought on editing)

5) beta or no beta

My last MS I spent (am spending) over 3X as much time on editing as I did writing. I didn't plot things out before, I did some during. It was my first fully completed work. I had a TON of grammatical errors. I had a beta, but then later decided it needed a second beta.

I have a strong feeling my next MS will be far different. It's been planned in advance. I've learned many many things grammatically. I have betas lined up. I've begun to self-edit more. I have AW.

I don't think there is a right way. I do think you can over edit, but that too will vary with each book and each author.

Pretty much none. The difference between my first drafts and my final, edited draft is only a polish. I go through and rewrite any clunky sentences, polish bits of dialogue that don't ring true. That's it.

Nothing else gets changed until and unless an editor requests changes. They usually do not.

But I work awfully hard to get the first draft right, and the opening gets more work than anything else.

guess I'm different

I start with an outline, and then think about a scene before I write it. The harder scenes might take days to get right, all before I set one word down. It's like a big puzzle in my head. One scene took over a month to invent, I could probably write a short story on the process of writing it. The scene, the action, everything is in my head before I start to write. Once I actually write it, the plot and dialog doesn't change much at the top level.

However, my writing, dialog, sentence construction kind of suck, so I'm working on improving that. I end up rewriting every sentence 3 or 4 times, I'm a dyslexic typist, for some reason I type in homophones as well, things my brain knows but my fingers don't. Terrible, but I'm still learning. If I was any good at sentences I could have written the entire Lord of the Rings by now. I've read paragraphs aloud, convincing myself they were perfect, and then found 10 things I wanted to change the next day. Yuck.

I let my characters go where they want, but I have a fixed idea of what I want to achieve within each scene. Like sending them to the drugstore but not telling them how to get there. Lucky for me the plot works itself out, if I had to fix both the scenes and the sentences it would be (even more) hopeless.

When I was working as an editor for a small online romance publisher, I had authors change grammar, punctuation, typos, POV and delete anachronistic words as needed. One manuscript was 30K words over the 100K word limit, so I chopped whole scenes with an eye to tightening up the story and helping the pacing.

Some scenes were cut from books otherwise under the word limit, mostly because of content (such as near-rape) that was off limits under this publisher's guidelines.

Karen Junker said:

When I was working as an editor for a small online romance publisher, I had authors change grammar, punctuation, typos, POV and delete anachronistic words as needed. One manuscript was 30K words over the 100K word limit, so I chopped whole scenes with an eye to tightening up the story and helping the pacing.

Some scenes were cut from books otherwise under the word limit, mostly because of content (such as near-rape) that was off limits under this publisher's guidelines.

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I suspect my writing is full of anachronistic words. I don't change them, or allow them to be changed, but I understand this is a touchy area with some publishers.

Anachronistic words are such a gray area, too. Words come into use in speech long before they are documented in print. I usually looked things up at www.etymonline.com to get a ballpark idea.

It's especially difficult to avoid anachronism when the book is set in medieval times. Most of my favorite author's books are filled with anachronisms and I just skip right over them because the writing is otherwise so good -- and it obviously wasn't a problem for her publisher.