To Revise or Rewrite

My first thought, of course... is that I'd want to see your chapters to make a proper determination.

Can you share what your readers had to say? And were these folks your family/friends, or were they impartial online strangers? It makes a difference, and you want honesty in your critique buddies.

I also wanted to share that it's perfectly normal to write an entire story and not find your grove until like.. chapter 5. It's normal to come back and rewrite the first few chapters. I'm on my third major revision for my first chapter; and that's okay. It needed it - and it's a hellavalot stronger each time. Don't think it has to come out perfect out of the gate.

And sometimes editing means rewriting. But sometimes your chapter just needs a little love and clarity, not a do-over.

thedark said:

My first thought, of course... is that I'd want to see your chapters to make a proper determination.

Can you share what your readers had to say? And were these folks your family/friends, or were they impartial online strangers? It makes a difference, and you want honesty in your critique buddies.

I also wanted to share that it's perfectly normal to write an entire story and not find your grove until like.. chapter 5. It's normal to come back and rewrite the first few chapters. I'm on my third major revision for my first chapter; and that's okay. It needed it - and it's a hellavalot stronger each time. Don't think it has to come out perfect out of the gate.

And sometimes editing means rewriting. But sometimes your chapter just needs a little love and clarity, not a do-over.

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Well said. I'd also add that, if possible, find out what's stopping them from getting past that?

Great advice (including the limitation on anyone's ability to provide much based on a description only). I'm only posting because I think what you probably need is revision, one way or the other. Revisions can be huge, but the term literally means "a new vision" of that part, so it's miles beyond editing. As to the particulars of how much can be scrapped or saved -- that's the stuff I don't think you can rely on someone else to answer. At least, not unless that someone has read the entire thing, and you have way more reason to trust her judgment than you have to trust mine. Short of that, you need to be your own guide. Sounds like you're following strong instincts, though. So have some faith in them, one way or the other.

One more thing (which may be unique to me). I can pump out 3K of pretty close to final product in a solid day if I have a good idea where I'm going. I can restructure and tighten at about half that rate. So, depending on how you write, it may be more efficient to just junk what you have and rewrite from scratch. If it turns out to have similar elements, then you have the option of comparing the two and cherry picking the best parts from both, too.

BaneStryfe said:

It's a bit of a long story, but the question comes down to whether or not I should just look into revising the draft, or rewriting it again with another idea I've been considering. I am really not good at editing and revising, I have troubles figuring out what shouldn't be and what should be. It's easier for me to just rewrite a complete other story, but always doing that I'll never get anything finished.

I'd love to get some advice on this: To revise or rewrite.

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There is no possible way I could answer that without actually reading the material.

All you mention is that readers can't get past the first couple chapters. Is there a specific problem? If so do all your readers have it or are there multiple issues?

There is an old saying that you have to write a million words of crap before you can REALLY write. If you do end up revising or rewriting don't feel the effort has been wasted. Think of it as practice. You are learning how to write.

Figure out specifically what the problem is and work on it.

I think writers learn more, and learn faster a lot faster, but writing new novels, rather than by continually tinkering with old ones.

BaneStryfe said:

I wrote a draft for a story a couple years ago. After a few attempts to get people to read it I realized that no one could really get past the second chapter so I ended up rewriting the entire thing, keeping the character but setting the book about half a year earlier and putting together a plot that was originally going to be back-story.

This draft of the book was finished as a NaNoWriMo project last year, finished in mid December at 85,000 words. I've kind of let it sit since then, making small edits and posting it to some writing sites, but it seems that I am having the same trouble again with readers getting past the first couple chapters.

It's a bit of a long story, but the question comes down to whether or not I should just look into revising the draft, or rewriting it again with another idea I've been considering. I am really not good at editing and revising, I have troubles figuring out what shouldn't be and what should be. It's easier for me to just rewrite a complete other story, but always doing that I'll never get anything finished.

I'd love to get some advice on this: To revise or rewrite.

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Can't say without seeing those two chapters that readers can't get past. Get your 50 posts here (critiquing in Share Your Work is a great way to do it) and then post your own work for feedback.

Do your readers give you reasons why they lose interest in reading further?

I'm with James on this one. Put that novel aside and write another novel. You'll be surprised at how much you improve the more you write. You can always come back to the first novel.

I think that everyone is giving very good advice. I'm going through a similar situation with my writing because whether I was writing an essay or starting a story the hardest parts in a writing something for me, is the beginning and the end. Overall I'm doing what the others have advised, to get people to read it and see what can be improved, then that will dictate what you should do from there.

I think you need to learn to edit an revise. If you are continually re-writing then you are always dealing with a first draft which is usually crap compared to a polished draft. At least mine are. I don't know which genre your are working in, but when I was stuck in revision hell I read a great book which got me unstuck, "Writing irresistible kidlit" by Mary Kole. It really helped wrap my mind around doing revisions that I feel were effective. I'm sure there is a similar book in your genre. Good luck!

Jamesaritchie said:

I think writers learn more, and learn faster a lot faster, but writing new novels, rather than by continually tinkering with old ones.

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And then go back and tinker with the old ones, using what you've learned from the new novels. You'll also learn a lot by applying new knowledge to old work ("I wrote WHAT? Eugh!! Fixed.") But there has to be a significant upward step in your ability before this works, because without that, it's just tinkering, not improving. And you get that upward step mostly through practice on new material.

So... go write more stuff. Fix this one at some future date, when you know enough to see what's wrong with it. And more important, what's right/I] with it and should be kept and maybe even not tinkered with.

Hell, write a sequel. That may tell you a great deal about where the first one needs to go.

Okay. I wandered over to your blog, and there found that first chapter. It has a couple problems that are probably turning off even readers who are your audience.

One is lots of basic errors, like how to format and punctuate dialog. That's something you'll need to study up on (there are plenty of threads hereabouts).

The other is that I don't know whether to take stuff literally or not -- fantasy or perception -- partly because, far as I got (a couple paragraphs and then some skimming) it feels rushed and skeletal. That's more of a practice issue, since you seem to have some nifty imagery lurking in there, at least.

It's not my thing (probably not what I'd read regardless) but I do see potential, so certainly do NOT give up!! But what it needs isn't a revision nor a rewrite. It needs the author to put in more time practicing and learning both the craft as a whole and the basics (dialog formatting etc.) Like I said above -- stop tinkering with it, cuz in doing so, you may well kill off all its good parts too. Instead, go forth and practice -- write another story, or a sequel, or whatever comes into your head. But leave this one alone til you've gained more experience. Then come back and fix what ails it.

I've done both moving on to a new story and rewriting an old one and you can learn a lot from both. I did enjoy rewriting as it was obvious how much the story and writing improved the second time around, but I also did a lot of revisions to the original before I decided to rewrite.

However, I did find I needed a break from working on the same story over and over (even if it did change every time I went through), so I started another story alongside it.

I think studying writing techniques can also be very helpful for either practice and for any future stories you write, so why not have a read through some writing blogs or the SYW boards here, then decide what you feel like doing?

Well, you've actually got a random bunch of errors, rather than just one. But in general, dialog and surrounding text is formatted in two basic ways:

"Blah blah," he said, and ran away.
(Dialog plus tag -- the 'he said' part -- is all one sentence, joined by a comma, and the subsequent action is another phrase.)

or

"Blah blah." He ran away.
(Dialog has no tag, and the subsequent action is a separate sentence.)

However, you've got some that are:

"Blah blah." he said.
and others that are
"Blah blah," he ran away.
which if you think about it, doesn't make grammatical sense.

Anyway, incorrect both ways, having mixed the two basic methods into one. This is a common early-writer error, tho. (And at least once you omitted the space between dialog and dialog-tag.)

Some of this is just getting your typing hands into the habit of laying the right punctuation at the right spot, too.