Editor's Berserk

[Marky Lazer]

Today I started to edit my fourth draft of the book, and more than before, I realized a lot of parts are rubbish. The draft was 80-90 pages, and, letting myself be as honest as I could, I ended up with Chapter one and five untouched, and the rest totally deleted (a puny 6 pages left). Have you ever had such a rage that your whole story doesn't make sense at all, anymore?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Often. Sometimes I was over-reacting, and other times I was right. Once I threw out the whole last third of a novel and wrote something completely different.

 

[Paradox 99]

Not yet, but I think that's more likely a weakness and not a strength. I'm already looking at the end of my latest novel and thinking of scrapping it though - I just haven't got the gumption to do it yet.
I suppose it must be very frustrating to get rid of a large chunk of your work, but console yourself with the fact that it shows you have the honesty and drive to get it just right. You know that the end result will be much better.

What I really hate (and this happened to me recently) is when you know you've got something just right and then the whole lot gets wiped by accident. It never goes quite the same way the second time round.

 

[Brys]

Not to the same extent, but I haven't finished my first draft yet. I've already had to remove a 2000 word section from the prologue, because it was irrelevant, and rewrote lots more of the early section - but there's still a large amount in the first part (which is about 50,000 words) which really needs to be edited, rewritten or removed.

 

[Marky Lazer]

Well, if anyone wants to have a look and convince me it's not complete nonsense (what I think it is), I'd be happy to email my novel to you. Please PM me if you're intrested.

 

[Mark Robson]

Often. Sometimes I was over-reacting, and other times I was right. Once I threw out the whole last third of a novel and wrote something completely different.

Interesting. For me it was the first third. I threw away about 35000 words of Trail of the Huntress and wrote it again. I'm so glad I did, as the second effort was much better.