Writing new words versus revising

When I revise, I tend to write more than I do when I actually sit down to write rough drafts...

And just like everyone else said, revising is much of a part of the craft as writing a shitty first (or multiple) draft(s) is. So don't worry about taking your time, if you are indeed improving your work

BethS said:

That sounds amazing and I sometimes wish it would happen to me, but the story just doesn't come to me that fast. Instead, I fiddle as I write, sometimes at a reasonably steady walking pace, sometimes at a crawl, and occasionally, wonderfully, at a sprint. But creation and revision are a completely intertwined process for me. I can't separate them.

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Same with me. I create and revise together. I can't crank out an entire rough draft, and then revise like many do. I throw out a lump of clay and mold it, throw out another lump and mold and polish that. It's frustratingly slow at times but that's how I write.

To the OP: You just have to find what works for you. From what you said, it seems that you have.

Christabelle said:

Revising helps me figure out where I want to go sometimes. When I'm stuck, I go revise, and that gets me back into the story and helps me clean up the crap also.

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Exactly what I do. By the time I come to the end of the WIP, I've revised the first half at least twice. I just finished a long edit/revision and then was able to pour out over 10,000 words in a couple of days. If I hadn't done the big rewrite, I'd still be stuck.

How radical are your revisions? Are we talking maybe moving a few events around and deleting a few pages each time, or are we talking about entirely new novels? I ask because I'm doing the same thing, and hoping that it won't take me 2 1/2 years, but willing to do so, in order to get my work straight.

PandaMan said:

Same with me. I create and revise together. I can't crank out an entire rough draft, and then revise like many do. I throw out a lump of clay and mold it, throw out another lump and mold and polish that. It's frustratingly slow at times but that's how I write.

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I know I'm necro-ing an old thread, but it's the one that most closely talked about the trouble I'm having.

The above is basically how I've always written. I slowly and carefully write a few paragraphs (sometimes, I'll spend 30 minutes on a single sentence), and then I go back over them and revise them several times, shaping them into a better rhythm, adding sensory information and emotional subtext. Then I write another few paragraphs and repeat that process. After I get a chapter written, I'll read the whole thing and revise as needed or just edit for typos. The writing goes very slowly, but when I read over what I've already done, I'm fairly happy with it. It's been so slow, though. (I mean, it took me 25 minutes just to write this post .)

I've been working on the same book for four years (a children's book at that). I've tried doing NaNo and CampNaNo four years in a row, and I have never even come close to winning because I just can't write that many words that I like in that short of a period. And I feel like this process is bogging me down. I feel discouraged because I rarely have anything to show. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. I want a career, and I know that part of that is being prolific. But I'm not. So I've started fiddling with my process and trying new things.

In honor of NaNo, I did a sprint this weekend. I used Write or Die! for timed writing sessions, and lo and behold, it turns out I can crank out around 2K words/hr if I just write straight through. That's encouraging because that means I could finish a first draft in two months, and depending on how long revision takes me, have maybe two or three books ready for betas in the same year.

The problem is I'm really unaccustomed to how this first draft is looking. It's absolute crap. It's got none of the layering I'm used to having in a "first" draft. The writing is ridiculously stilted, there's almost no description of environment or sensory information. I can't tell how the characters feel about anything. There's no nuance whatsoever. I understand, intellectually, that basically, I've been taking my writing through a drafting/revision/revision/revision/editing stage one little paragraph at a time, and that the first draft I'm writing now hasn't benefited from my normal, initial revision process... but it's more difficult to feel that. It's hard to look at what I just wrote and say, "Yup, this is going to be good someday." And I'm worried that I won't be able to revise it. It doesn't feel like there's any form there to work with. I don't even know where I would start with this mess.

Reading back through this thread, I do see where other people have said they sometimes write the entire draft quickly and then take notes, compare the notes to their outline or something, and then totally rewrite the draft from scratch. And I feel like a total rewrite is what it would take to shape this up. Is that how this works?

Those of you who write first drafts quickly just to get it down and then spend the majority of your time on revision... do you actually leverage most of what you wrote the first time? Or is it usually a scrap and redo, but based on the skeleton you cobbled together for the first draft? Is first-drafting for the quick writers sort of like a very extended outline that just shows you the scene order and the basic story but isn't actually the narrative that you're going for, and that narrative comes together during a rewrite?

I like the idea of writing faster and of getting first drafts done in short order, but I'm looking for ways to feel better about the process... for ways to not be so scared of how shitty this first draft is going to be. I know people say first drafts are supposed to be shitty, but I can't help but feel they're not supposed to be quite this shitty. Part of me feels like it doesn't matter how fast I write or how many books I can draft if none of the words I actually wrote are usable.

How do you feel about your first drafts? How do you start revising something so terrible? If you revise as you write, do you have any tricks for making that process go faster?

Layla Nahar said:

I write a synopsis as I go and when I'm done I review everything, look at the big story structure

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I'm kinda doing this in reverse - I reached a point in my novel where I just couldn't go any further - it's an old NaNo and so will need a lot of work - so now I'm going back and doing the synopsis, to see if it will hang together.

I think your way - doing the synopsis as you go and then looking at it - sounds good for a pantser.

ironmikezero said:

To revise is to comprehend your mistakes; to not repeat them is to hone your craft.

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This pithy sentence makes sense to me.

heza said:

Is first-drafting for the quick writers sort of like a very extended outline that just shows you the scene order and the basic story but isn't actually the narrative that you're going for, and that narrative comes together during a rewrite?

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Hi heza! I've been reading a book called "Story Engineering" by Larry Brooks. I think it's in this book that he says pretty much what you said here: for pantsers, the first draft is basically a detailed outline, and then the craft of writing comes into play on the re-writes.

Hmm, I just noticed on his website he's got a free ebook in which he deconstructs his own recent novel and shows his process. Here: http://storyfix.com


I think I'll download that and take a peek.

juniper said:

Hi heza! I've been reading a book called "Story Engineering" by Larry Brooks. I think it's in this book that he says pretty much what you said here: for pantsers, the first draft is basically a detailed outline, and then the craft of writing comes into play on the re-writes.

.

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Good theory, but I've yet to meet, or even read about, a successful panster who works this way. This simply goes completely against real world writing, and the history of more pansters than I could name in a week.

There are exceptions to every rule, but Larry Brooks, if he writes this way, is definitely an very rare exception.

juniper said:

Hi heza! I've been reading a book called "Story Engineering" by Larry Brooks. I think it's in this book that he says pretty much what you said here: for pantsers, the first draft is basically a detailed outline, and then the craft of writing comes into play on the re-writes.

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Well, that's reassuring.

I've always really loved the Sara Zarr quote Smish runs around with: "Revision is where you earn your money - and if you haven't made any money yet, revision is where you pay your dues."

I've always held that one close (I have it posted on my wall), so I know that revision is important and I've always liked the revision process (even if I usually do it on a micro-scale). I've always felt I'm a competent reviser. I've just never seen this much of my work needing such heavy revision (rewriting) all at once, and it spooks me.

I'll go ahead and try it this way. If it only takes me a couple of months to get this first draft out, then in the grand scheme of how I've been writing all this time, two months is not exactly a long time to have wasted on process experiment. If the first month of revision turns out to be impossible, I'll call it a wash and do it another way.

It's still just... bewildering to have written what I did. I mean, I know not to do the things I've done, but in the heat of a timed writing exercise (and not having pressured myself like that before), it just seemed to be the easiest, fastest, most basic way to get my thoughts onto the page. But it really does feel like the writer equivalent of grunts and whistles. Will it get better? If I keep doing it, will I start to think faster and start being able to apply more actual craft to the first draft while I'm writing it quickly?


Thanks for the link. I'll probably take at look at it, too. Tell me what you think about it.

heza said:

I like the idea of writing faster and of getting first drafts done in short order, but I'm looking for ways to feel better about the process... for ways to not be so scared of how shitty this first draft is going to be. I know people say first drafts are supposed to be shitty, but I can't help but feel they're not supposed to be quite this shitty. Part of me feels like it doesn't matter how fast I write or how many books I can draft if none of the words I actually wrote are usable.

How do you feel about your first drafts? How do you start revising something so terrible? If you revise as you write, do you have any tricks for making that process go faster?

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Speed has no bearing on quality. The fastest writers throughout history have also been the ones who wrote the best first drafts, and often only first drafts. Quality is a matter of writing good words, and good words stay good words, even if you write them extremely fast.

I've studied every writer I've ever read, and a bunch I haven't read. There simply is no basis at all to say that slow writing is better writing, or that multiple drafts make better novels. It may work this way for an indivuidual writer, but it's because teh writer can't write fast, not because the process is better.

It's absolute nonsense to say that first drafts are always shitty, or that they should be shitty. Hemingway started that nonsense, and it wasn't true, even for him. His first drafts were better than most writers tenth drafts. His final drafts were often very different than first drafts, but his first drafts were not shit.

But people, particularly new writers, often misunderstand what "fast" means. Fast is not how many words you type per minute. Fast is how much time passes between the time you start a story, and the time it's ready to submit.

Two hundred and fifty good words per hour that need little or no rewriting is a much faster rate than a thousand words per hour that make take several passes and days of work to get right.

The same is true of a full draft. A full draft that's really well-written in six months is a heck of a lot faster than a truly crappy draft written in one month because the crappy draft is going to take numerous complete drafts and a ton of work before it's ready to submit.

The best way to write fast is often to slow down and write well. Find the fastest speed you can write while still producing quality, and stick with it. Over time, you'll get faster, but worry about quality, and let speed take care of itself. But quality doesn't have to mean super slow, or half a dozen drafts. It usually means the opposite. Most often, quality means trying to write quality.

I've seen a lot of drafts the writers thought were crappy, but they were actually pretty darned good. They need changes, sometimes revision, but they were still good.

I can think of a draft I've ever seen that truly was crappy that ever became a published novel, even after many drafts.

I don't think good writers can write a truly crappy draft unless they simply aren't trying to write well, or are writing so bleeping fast that quality is impossible. The one phrase I hate, and that has become increasingly popular with the advent of the word processor, is "With a word processor, I can write as fast as I think."

So can I, but there no way in blazes I can produce quality at that speed.

Jamesaritchie said:

But people, particularly new writers, often misunderstand what "fast" means. Fast is not how many words you type per minute. Fast is how much time passes between the time you start a story, and the time it's ready to submit.

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This definition of fast makes sense. It's not a race to THE END. And I don't think it contradicts what Brooks was saying. He's a person who outlines, and that's what he teaches. He just thinks that a first draft often functions as an outline, as it needs to be adjusted for plot etc.

Neither outlines nor first drafts are set in stone but are adjusted to make the final product. Is it Dean Koontz (amazingly prolific) who makes those adjustments page by page, or sentence by sentence, or something like that? And JAR, I think you do page by page, isn't that what you've said somewhere sometime?

(forgive me if I'm misunderstanding or misremembering)

Jamesaritchie said:

I've studied every writer I've ever read, and a bunch I haven't read. There simply is no basis at all to say that slow writing is better writing, or that multiple drafts make better novels. It may work this way for an indivuidual writer, but it's because teh writer can't write fast, not because the process is better.

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And that might just be the way I am. I might just be a slow writer. I'm aware, now, that going fast enough to keep up with a timed exercise, I can think of the concept of what I want to describe, but I don't have the time to find the right words, so I settle for the simplest, most basic ones to convey the meaning. Given half an hour with a paragraph, I can write exactly what I mean, with all the layers I need.

But that way still hasn't been satisfying. I don't want to be that slow.

So maybe I'll just finish up NaNo, puke out my first draft as quickly as humanly possible, and then go back to crafting as I go, knowing that I can puke out a novel. Maybe that will knock something loose in my other method and help me speed up a little, having developed the habit of being more productive.

I don't know. Sometimes finding the right process seems like a big mystery if you don't already know how best you work.

Unless you are writing The Great American Novel, two and a half years is way too long to revise before publishing. Yes, you learn more from working on new material.

heza said:

And that might just be the way I am. I might just be a slow writer. I'm aware, now, that going fast enough to keep up with a timed exercise, I can think of the concept of what I want to describe, but I don't have the time to find the right words, so I settle for the simplest, most basic ones to convey the meaning. Given half an hour with a paragraph, I can write exactly what I mean, with all the layers I need.

But that way still hasn't been satisfying. I don't want to be that slow.

So maybe I'll just finish up NaNo, puke out my first draft as quickly as humanly possible, and then go back to crafting as I go, knowing that I can puke out a novel. Maybe that will knock something loose in my other method and help me speed up a little, having developed the habit of being more productive.

I don't know. Sometimes finding the right process seems like a big mystery if you don't already know how best you work.

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I tried this on my first Nano. Epic fail. Well, I won. But I had to rewrite that darn thing. And it was still so confusing that I'm rewriting it again for THIS Nano.

Normally I'm a slow writer, because I mull over the scenes before I write them. I'm a pantser, and I write out of order. I don't do rewrites, with the exception of this one, and that's because everyone told me to turn off my inner editor for Nano. Never doing that again. It was a waste of my time. This story could have been finished much sooner, but instead now I'm having to start from scratch again. In the long run, putting down the quality words first and having less editing saves me more time than upchucking a jumble of words that I have to make sense and spend ages fixing.

By all means, experiment if you'd like. But you don't have to go against what comes natural to you. Everyone's method is different. Do what works for you.

juniper said:

Hi heza! I've been reading a book called "Story Engineering" by Larry Brooks. I think it's in this book that he says pretty much what you said here: for pantsers, the first draft is basically a detailed outline, and then the craft of writing comes into play on the re-writes.

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I can't think he knows too many pantsers. That's not to say that someone couldn't write the way he describes, but many pantsers revise as they go, and produce drafts that are both complete and well-written.

In ref. to the o.p.'s original question, I recently came across this, by author Steven Campbell, on a writer's forum:

I think if you want to stay at 80% of your potential, keep writing new stuff. If you want to reach as close to 100% as you can, you need to edit and prune and pluck. Because it's vastly harder to do that stuff than it is to write. It's unbelievably painful to tear out two pages and throw them in the trash. But if it was easy everyone would do it.

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