Young Writers Society

I'm almost done with one of my novels, and half-way through one I wrote a long time again. Both of them need to revised desperately. I've never finished a novel so this will definitely be a first. I'm not going to post it on here until I rewrite it because right now, it sucks. I sorta have an idea of how I'm going to go about it but I'm really not sure.

So how do you revise and edit your stories? What do you change first? How many times do you rewrite?

-Harmony

Rewriting/editing is exactly like writing in that it is different for every single person and in some cases for every story that you create. So keep in mind that you can test many different waters to find what your comfortable with first. ^_^

One thing you can do is print out a copy of the whole draft, double spaced, though with 10pt font or something nearly unreadable, but manageable, to save for paper. Read through and mark it. Mark the heck out of it. You can change grammar, but in the end it isn't completely important because you will be rewriting almost everything, I am certain. I would suggest writing mostly plot notes, and things like that, or changing words or things. I've never actually done this, except for on other peoples works, so I can't exactly give a whole lot of advice on it.

What I have done with both novels and short stories is rewrites of sections. For that I open the chapter I am working on and push it to the side of my screen (I have a large monitor and I can also use two screens, so this might be easier for me than it is for you.) and then I open a second window of word. I'll start reading over the old section, and then begin rewriting. Occasionally there will be some parts I can copy and paste over into the new document, depending on how well I wrote the original. Usually, though, once I get going on the new document I don't look back at the old one accept to figure out what else I need to write, treating the old document like a time consuming outline, haha.

I love rewriting stuff that way, although it does take a lot of time and effort on my part because it is also painful. (For me!) Some short story I can do what I call "internal edits" only, where I do not rewrite but work within the body of the story and add, remove, or change words/paragraphs/whole sections.

I've never worked with a full manuscript that was, well, huge. This summer I'm going to be editing my ~54k novel, which is a scary task for me. I've been practicing my editing skills on other short stories and a novel I'm currently working with. Some of my advice may, in the end, not work out for a large project because I haven't done it yet. My biggest suggestion though, because I think it would work for me and so may work for you, is to do everything in small steps. You may want to use your first draft to write a second, brief outline. Find your plot holes, and either leave space in the plot to fix them later, or figure out how to fix them now. Move events, remove events, change things entirely. The plot will need to be fixed before you begin rewriting, because for all you know you may need to begin somewhere else entirely. Once you have an idea of where your semi-new plot is going, focus on a single chapter or, say, 5,000 word passage, so that you have less to manage/think about. Rewrite it so you are satisfied, but don't be obsessed. Move on after a while, because line perfection can come later. For me, in the second draft I want to perfect the plot and characterization, the writing can still be semi-nasty because I can fix it later. So long as everything is in the right order.

A book I purchased a while ago and enjoyed was The Artful Edit. It may help you as well. My review of it on my blog may or may not be helpful. Good luck!

I use track changes in Word and fix tiny parts. I usually find myself just rewriting major chunks, though, but once I've edited it several times, I only have a few red marks. I just don't allow myself to stop until the whole chapter is full of red, either from being added or taken out.

Doing it chapter by chapter also DEFINATELY helps. I've only ever edited a long fanfiction (not on here,) and that's how I did it. Short pieces are so much easier to handle. ;P

Just don't give up!

~JFW1415

I've got each chapter saved as it's own document in Word. I go back and edit to my heart's content, saving the revised edition as it's own document. I end up with a bunch of versions of the same chapter, but that way I always have the original, in case I end up decided that I really did like it better that way, or just for a morale booster, to go back and look at how bad I was then.

In general, I don't look back at the old version, so the new one is fresh. But then, there are also times when I just go and copy-paste entire sections from one to the other. In my current second draft, the story is HUGELY different from the first time, so I pretty much just threw out (figuratively - always keep the old stuff) the original draft and just started over. I'm probably going to have to go through and edit it when it is done, but I'll probably just read through it and add or subtract as I go, rather than rewrite.

I guess it depends on the needs. When you have to drastically revise something, sometimes it's best to just rewrite the dang thing. That way you don't get bogged down trying to work out a way to fix the original. But if you like what you have and just need to edit (grammar, etc.) or just add some scenes, working with the original might be best, just saving it as another draft.

Good luck with your work...

~GryphonFledgling

Thanks for the advice. I just finished my first rough draft ever. (I have a habit of stopping half-way through) I'm really excited but I've got to wait a while before I rewrite. Too many other stories to finish.

*high fives* Awesome sauce! ^_^ Most people cannot say they've done that, so.

My favorite thing to do is to do a read-through on the computer and make notes in the margins--most of which are things like, "EEEK BAD DIALOGUE" and so forth. If you don't worry a whole lot about grammar and sentence structure at first, and focus on the "big things", like where chapters go, you can get things in better shape to post sooner. Plus, with the rewriting that comes with Big Stuff, you get a lot of your line edits out of the way at the same time.

It also really helps to go back through and do an outline of the story after you've finished, especially if you wrote it in a rather unorganized fashion or during NaNoWriMo. Make a list of character entrances and exits, and what they're like as the story goes along.

After that...chapter at a time. Rip it apart, stitch it back together, and ask others what they think of it. Best of luck. ^_^ Tell me when you start putting it up! I'd love to read.