Joe Abercrombie on drafting

[Mouse]

Yeah I'm a Debbie Downer, soz.

If I didn't edit as I go, I'd be so daunted by the amount of work to do at the end that I'd not complete it. I'm always impressed (and shudder a little) when I hear about all the rewrites, mass deletions and insertions that people here do.

 

[Steve Harrison]

Below is my opinion. I'm saying that up front so that no one confuses my comments with advice.

If you are writing in the hope that people will read your work, the most important thing is the finished work. The second most important thing is finding the ways and methods that best suit you to make the writing process an enjoyable, challenging and interesting journey. Readers have absolutely no interest in the angst, horror and desperation of your writing experience and processes. And they don't care how much advice or nonsense you have consumed and digested along the way. They only want a good read.

So how do you find what works best for you? By ignoring 'writing advice' and applying your own creativity to the problems at hand. Trial and error. No short cuts. The old fashioned way. It's like when you buy a new car and until you fiddle with the controls and work out the optimum seat adjustment to suit your back and rear end, you are uncomfortable getting to your destination. You wouldn't go on the internet looking for car seat adjustment advice. (OK, maybe you would these days)

While I find the writing carnage inspired by the internet, a place where anyone who has ever pushed a key on a keyboard, can claim to be an expert, to be interesting, I thank the stars every day that my formative writing years were pre-internet when I knew no writers, nothing about writing and the only external influences were articles in dog-eared second hand copies of Writers' Digest.

 

[sknox]

There's what works, then there's what works best. Therein lies much wasted effort. I think that's why many of us still look to writing advice, in hopes of finding a way to make the whole thing work better. The lucky few find what works best for them. Those are the James Pattersons of the world. Some discover this early (e.g. Isaac Asimov or Agatha Christie) while others wrestle with it throughout their careers.

I'm coming to believe I only need two things as a writer: a good system, and a good editor.

 

[zmunkz]

I think the advice about moving on is to prevent the possible cycle of eternal rewrites.

^ this.

Some few may be the exception, but the vast majority seem to struggle with actually finishing a draft. Also, after finishing that first draft, perspective changes in ways that can’t really be taught, or so I found. No guideline will apply to all people in all circumstances, but this one is a very solid default.

You're not wrong, though. Do what works best.

^ this too. If you aren’t sure what works for you, give it a try and push through to the end of at least one draft, then you’ll know.

 

[Appello]

My problem is if I don't edit as I go my story wanders off like a disobedient child, and before I know it I'm having to race around the shopping centre of my mind, screaming at the top of my voice and bothering all my other imaginary friends and just generally making a nuisance of myself until I finally find my plot gorging itself on candy in the snack food aisle, about fives lanes from where it is meant to be....

Ahem.

Anyway I've reconciled myself with the fact that I'm just not a 'free words' kinda girl when it comes to serious writing. If I'm going to let my story go without editing, then I need to have the kind of notes that would make Tolkien blush, otherwise I'm just wasting energy. Plan plan plan, then write write write, is my current motto. Now, if I could only stop getting distracted by dog videos on facebook...

 

[Boneman]

James A Michener: "I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."

 

[The Big Peat]

I hate all this sort of 'advice' though. Just do what works for you. Some people can't do the 'just move on' thing. I'm one of them - even when I do NaNo, I can't help but fiddle as I go. I turn in clean first drafts (and the draft I sent to my publisher for WM and the one that got picked up straight away, was a first draft!)

If you edit as you go and end up with a clean first draft, then surely you end up doing the same amount of work as someone who does a messy first draft and edits it after to clean it up. Whatever way you do it, as long as you get there in the end why does the 'how' matter?

Almost verbatim to what Fonda Lee said in an article about writing Jade City. Victoria E. Schwaab operates on similar principles too if memory serves.

Not that we should need the words of authors signed to big publishing houses to verify this approach - but for anyone who wants them, they're there.

 

[sknox]

I want to believe that editing as you go comes to about the same as a quick write and a long rewrite, but that has not been my experience. When I try to edit as I write, I naturally progress through the story more slowly and that creates a problem for me.

At the beginning of the first draft, the story is nebulous and exists entirely in my head. It gains form and substance as I write. As I plow my way through Chapter One, Chapter 55 is distant, sitting out beyond the horizon like a hill on the other side of the mountains, existing in imagination. The longer I take before laying eyes on it, the more it slips away from me.

Most times, I am so anxious to give shape to the key concepts, scenes, moods of a story, I wind up skipping over entire chapters with bare notes or even no more than a title as a placeholder, so I can get to that fight scene, crucial dialog, or whatever. Because if I don't, it will fade like morning fog. Sure, sure, outline. I do. It's not the same. The outline is like some cardboard cutout of that distant mountain, an artist's drawing of it. I need the real thing.

So, the two approaches don't come to the same thing because the very shape of the story is different depending on how I approach it. For myself, a story is an elusive beast. I have to throw my net over it early so I know what I've got. Then I wrestle with it. To be less metaphorical, I'm in the messy first draft camp.

 

[Mike Donoghue]

When I come across those "moving on" points, what allows me to move on is if I know what comes after the scene, dialogue, etc. I also write a brief note to myself about what needs to be written there.

 

[The Big Peat]

I want to believe that editing as you go comes to about the same as a quick write and a long rewrite, but that has not been my experience. When I try to edit as I write, I naturally progress through the story more slowly and that creates a problem for me.

See, for me, they both work as well as t'other... which is to say neither does. Yet.

What does work for me is a lot of planning and a quick write. If I plan the hell out of something, I can - sometimes - get really tight first drafts. Not quite tight enough, and editing something tightly put together is one hell of a drag, but I find getting all my ducks in a row first the best so far. And editing as I go/quick write with the aim of a long rewrite just sooner or later lands me in a morass of boredom and bad story.

That said... most of my planning has come from doing bad stories and random excerpts to figure out what I have. I think most of us have to accept we're gonna make a mess somewhere in the process.


p.s. Since I mentioned Lee was an edit as they go person, I thought I'd share the article where she talked about her process - Fonda Lee: Jade City, An Anti-Nanowrimo Case Study

 

[X Equestris]

If I didn't edit as I go, I'd be so daunted by the amount of work to do at the end that I'd not complete it. I'm always impressed (and shudder a little) when I hear about all the rewrites, mass deletions and insertions that people here do.

Yeah, I tried the whole "just write it, then edit" way of doing things on a very short story (a bit shy of 2000 words for the first version) once. It took me weeks to iron out most of the issues, and some still slipped through. One of those was responsible for a rejection from a high tier market that otherwise probably would've bought it. I can't imagine the amount of work that would go into a novel with this method.

 

[SPoots]

What does work for me is a lot of planning and a quick write. If I plan the hell out of something, I can - sometimes - get really tight first drafts. Not quite tight enough, and editing something tightly put together is one hell of a drag, but I find getting all my ducks in a row first the best so far. And editing as I go/quick write with the aim of a long rewrite just sooner or later lands me in a morass of boredom and bad story

I’m trying my hand at this approach. I wrote my first book for NaNoWriMo 2015, got part way through the fourth batch of rewrites and edits and found I just couldn’t face any more. Hoping this will smooth things out.

 

[sknox]

So, I have two short stories, two novelettes, and one novel behind me, with a second novel in progress, and I can confidently say I'm still thrashing about like a bear in underbrush. Which is better than like a drowning man as I was with the first novel.

I appear to need to see the shape of the whole story, pretty early into the process. I can't just "see no further than my headlights" as Doctorow put it. I've tried, but it's no good. I get too anxious. I at least need to know I'm headed east rather than west.

The result is I tend to open the war on multiple fronts. I outline. I start writing chapter one. I make notes about the ending. I write character sketches and research the setting. All this happens in the "getting started" weeks. Once I have a feel for the story (the blind man declares it's an elephant not a tree trunk or a snake), then I can settle into writing scene-after-scene. That carries me some distance until the process fractures again.

This phase is still a mystery to me. The first novel took me too long (years), so it's hard to say there was any process at all. This time round, it seems like I get bored, or lost. I have in mind some key scenes later, and I find myself writing or at least sketching those. I tell myself, and I think I'm right, that certain details of those scenes are directly affected by things that happen earlier, so there's no point in drudging on here in Chapter 6 when something in Chapter 22 would necessitate rewriting Chapters 6 and following. So I jump forward, write, then go back to where I got lost/bored. This happens multiple times.

Maybe I'm slowly moving to a point where I really can write in sequence--I think I'll always need to outline and will always need to know the story's shape and direction--without having to lurch around like a drunk at a party.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

If you edit as you go and end up with a clean first draft, then surely you end up doing the same amount of work as someone who does a messy first draft and edits it after to clean it up.

You don't have to spend as much time, because you don't write all the parts that you later have to remove and rewrite. And rewriting a completed novel is a much, much larger task than realizing a few chapters in that the female character you've been writing should be a transgendered hooker and not the main character's girlfriend, and going back to rewrite her part before you move on.

Yeah, sure, you can just make a note there that you're changing the character and will rewrite it later, but then you start your rewrite and you set her character up in the opening... and realize that you've just added a whole bunch of details about her that you'll now need to weave into the rest of the book.

Also, in my experience, 'edit as you go' writers tend to be pantsers, so they don't spend the time that many rewriters spend on outlining before they start the book. I'm not really sure how a writer could be a pantser without editing as they go, because the story is likely to change so much as they learn more about it that the first draft would be a complete mess otherwise.

That doesn't mean it's the best way for everyone, but it's proven to be the best way for many successful writers.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'd go (more) insane if I second guessed myself about my writing practice. It's all a struggle, all of it.
I take it day-by-day, trying to get something down.

What I'm strangely looking forward to is completing my wip and leaving it in the drawer for a year before going back to it with fresh eyes and see how I can decimate* it.

pH

* if you know, you know.

 

[ctg]

Ian Rankin said that getting stuck is a curse he has faced on everyone of his books. He calls it: "the page 67 curse," to which his wife says: "get over it." Getting over it is the thing when you're stuck and you keep rewriting the same pages time and again. If you don't give up, you'll get over it. One day.

To me that is what the "repeat, repeat, repeat," advice means.

 

[AlexH]

I'm one of those who edits as I write. It means I have less editing to do next draft, and as I make things up as I go along, I find it gives me more time to think (even subconsciously) about what will happen next. Most of my stories don't tend to change massively from first to last draft. None are unrecognisable, even the one that went from 400 words (first draft) to 3,200 words (final draft).

As for the muse quote that hasn't been touched on much - am I in the minority in that I don't have much problem finding the muse? I have more stories than I can finish - there's so much inspiration out there. A recent prompt was the words "prickle" and "drum" and with a timer I got a story I'm pleased with (that needs a lot of work) out of it. Some of my favourite stories and poems have been inspired by a favourite photo. As for how many of these stories are publishable, I'll find out over the next year or two and hope I don't have to reconsider this muse comment!