Rewriting - have you ever?

[Tranquility]

Ok, so you've started your story. The first few pages went along well and you've written exactly what you wanted and it turned out exactly how you wanted. Then, all of a sudden, you're a tad lost as to where to go from there so you figure "Alright, I've done the setup so maybe now it's time for a bit of action." But as you continue writing, there's this odd feeling at the bottom of your heart that the words your putting to paper just aren't right, but you go through it nonetheless. And then you're stuck completely. You're not satisfied with the second half of what you've written and to make matters worse, you're even more confused now as to how to continue the story than you were before, so you keep rummaging ideas through your head until, finally, you realize that you went into the wrong direction and have just now gotten the idea you were looking for days ago. So obviously, now you have to go back, crumple and toss those pesky pages you've put the effort to write into the bin and do it all over.

 

In part, you're happy because you know that the end result will be better but then again, you're freakin' angry because now you have to do it all over again and you're about an inch from losing your motivation and just falling into lethargy.

 

Has this ever happened to anyone? What do you do to cope or keep yourself motivated about the story?

[LJH]

Well firstly, the secret to writing the middle is action and sequel. The middle chapters should all flow from the premise in the first three chapters. Plus, a novel should have subplots that intertwine with the main plot. A sequel chapter cannot follow another sequel chapter, it needs to follow 1 or more Action chapters. I am rewriting a novel at the moment, but what im doing is basic. Adding in where the formula doesnt work. What motivates me is the end product. To reach a final word and say there! Thats it. No more.

 

[JamesSavik]

Rewriting is simply part of the process of writing.

 

Most people don't hit a home run with the rough draft. To create a polished work, it takes writing a scene several times until it feels right and natural to you.

 

I just finished spending a week writing and rewriting an important scene. As it was a key scene and the interaction between key players was important, I had to spend the time with it.

[NotNoNever]

I think the more interesting question would be 'have you never?', and 'howdahell did you manage that?'

[Nephylim]

Usually i have a complete story in my head before I start writing so I don't have the problem of not knowing where I'm going but I do have a problem sometimes with getting there.

 

Sometimes I feel that I'm simply writing filler, just words to move the players from point a to point b and that's difficult to break. Ive tried writing the scenes out of order, writing the exciting and gripping scenes first but that just makes it worse because there's less incentive to write the middle bits. The way I've dealt with it is to make the filler bits exciting too. I've made it a rule that every scene has to mean something, has to have some information or hindsight that adds to the story.

 

That doesn't mean that I dont feel that some of my filler is just words but it gives me something to work with at least.

[K.C.]

Like Nephy, I usually have the story plotted out but sometimes get lost getting from point A to point B. If it feels off to you it will also feel off to the readers. It's upsetting to have to tear it apart and start over but you have to do it to try to get the best story possible.

 

Good luck!

[LemonFresh]

Usually i have a complete story in my head before I start writing so I don't have the problem of not knowing where I'm going but I do have a problem sometimes with getting there.

 

Sometimes I feel that I'm simply writing filler, just words to move the players from point a to point b and that's difficult to break. Ive tried writing the scenes out of order, writing the exciting and gripping scenes first but that just makes it worse because there's less incentive to write the middle bits. The way I've dealt with it is to make the filler bits exciting too. I've made it a rule that every scene has to mean something, has to have some information or hindsight that adds to the story.

 

That doesn't mean that I dont feel that some of my filler is just words but it gives me something to work with at least.

 

one thing you could try that i found works for me is try and work the back story of your characters into the filler parts. use the big event scenes to move the story forward and use the down time to give the readers more insight to the characters and itll feel less like filler and more like character development. one thing i love is the talking and walking scene i love when you can just have two or more charcters talking and learning more about eachother. that way you get to the next point without it feeling unnessesary. one thing i always felt is true is character grow the most not when the battles are being faught but in between when there now having to reflect and come to terms with whats happend.

 

but then again im still a rookie so what do i know. lol

Edited September 12, 2012 by LemonFresh

[CassieQ]

Rewriting, to me, is frustrating but part of the writing process. I have gone back and had to trash pages and pages of writing because I was on the wrong track. That is usually what happens when something feels "wrong". I will sometimes write a very basic outline for large projects, that way if I ever feel lost, I can see where I need to be and get myself back on track. Good luck

[podga]

I generally have a pretty good idea of where I want my stories to go and how I want them to get there. But as I flesh things out, start working in dialogue and interactions in more detail, the characters sometimes take over, and I realize there's no way they're going to let me take them where I want them to go. And then I have to make decisions: Stick to the original idea and slap the characters into submission, by rewriting them? Go in the new direction, because it looks like there might be a good story there too, and rewrite any no-longer-relevant background? Keep everything as is, and just go on a small detour, which would theoretically entail the least amount of rewriting, but the most of writing? Any of the three could work (or not), but there's one I'll invariably be more interested in pursuing, and that's what keeps me motivated.

 

I never throw anything out though. That paragraph or character that didn't work in one story, might be the perfect kick-off for a new and different one.

[Zolia Lily]

I'm with Podga in that I never throw anything out. If i get that "wrong" feeling, I tend to open a new document, copy paste in everything I am happy with, and then continue on from there. Sometimes it's not even in a completely different directly - sometimes it's just a different way that a character reacts to something, or a subtle difference in the conversation or description.

I have been so stuck before that everything i wrote just felt "wrong". The trouble that time was that I'd already posted all I had online, so I couldn't go back and rewrite. It took me close to a year to finish just the next chapter, and I'm still not happy with it; the ratings for that chapter are lower than for the others, too. In the end though, it was just a case of getting it DONE so that I could move on to the final chapter.

I guess if I one day lift that story from its current posting I might rewrite the end to something that satisfies me more.

 

Rewriting is sometimes hard. Sometimes I hate it, but sometimes I love it. The feeling of everything coming unstuck and flowing again is awesome.

 

I read somewhere once that it took Tolkein 14 years to write The Lord of the Rings because if he made a mistake he was brutal with the destroying and rewrote things multiple times. While I don't mind rewriting, I don't want to be that perfectionist either....

[Johnathan Colourfield]

Constantly. I always come up with new ideas which mean (usually) I have to rework the whole plot of a story.

 

Eg. Take 'House No. 654' - i had 10,000 words for the story and then I changed one element in the story (removing a part of the plot arc) and BOOM! I had to change the rest of the story in its planning stages.

 

Rewriting is good

 

I'll admit it, with stories that are completed like Angel (62,000 words), i find it very hard to pin point where I need to change!

 

Darn attention span of a goldfish...

[hh5]

Why would someone rewrite their successful story that has receive a lot of positive reviews?

[JamesSavik]

Why would someone rewrite their successful story that has receive a lot of positive reviews?

 

There are a number of reasons.

 

Writers skills change as they do more. They might like a story that they wrote a few years ago but want to clean it up or improve it.

 

Now- with electronic publishing, more stuff is getting published. A rewrite may be in order to give paying customers a better/expanded/improved version of a story that they can find online.

 

Another reason to revisit old stories is that you may want to write sequels or even prequels. If this wasn't planned from the beginning, structural changes may be necessary to assure continuity.

[Hayden L]

I could fill a building with pages I've re-written. I'm in a class now (literally sitting in the class right now & surfing this site ) Anyway, the professor is trying to get us to just write - to put our thoughts onto paper. From there, we're going to develop and write a story without worrying about re-writing...

 

I guess she's trying to get us to overcome our fears of writing crap??? I dunno.

 

But, whatever or whenever I write just to write, I find myself running the story over and over in my head and writing and re-writing the same chapter(s) over and over again. From what other authors have told me it is all part of the process.

 

I do find, though, that once I get started on a solid thought I cannot seem to stop writing, so I guess that's a good thing.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Hayden93

[Xtro]

You never stop re-writing. I've lost count of the number of times I have thought a typescript/MS was ready to go out, only to have someone either re-proof it and turn up something (my 'tic' at the moment is double .. from editing a sentence and not deleting the . - and then adding a new one automatically.)

 

I also do not delete or throw away anything that has gone before, including revisions, etc. Sometimes it pays off - cut a 100,000 novel down for a publisher - 80,000 upper limit. They went belly up before publishing, so I've now gone back and re-written more than 6,000 into it, while taking a completely different set of scenes and reworking them as well.

 

Every time you look at something you've done you should be able to find something, no matter how small. You never get a chance to correct it once the proof has been agreed (not unless your publisher is very, very, very understanding... )

[comicfan]

Rewriting is all part of the process. I usually know where I am taking a story. I usually get the notes from my beta about filling in more details. How did this happen? Why is this here? Where did that character come from? While I have the whole story in my head it is usually the process of getting it onto the paper that takes times. As my betas and they will tell you that my mind is faster than my fingers and I often skip a word or two as I go. But that is one of the main reason I love my beta's so much, they let me know when I missed something important.

[Alex Sweeney]

I'm only on chapter 4 of my new novel and already I've had to trash a big lump of chapter 2 because some stuff happened too soon and some stuff that should have happened hadn't happened yet.

I'm now in the process of writing an outline. Which I should have done to start with, I'm so lazy!

 

I've heard of people that don't rewrite - well, I think I've read about one or two - but I think it's extremely rare.

 

What you write in a hurry while you're in the first flush of lovesickness with your story doesn't always stand up when you reread. It needs a little grammatical Viagra if not a complete rewrite to emphasise whatever it was you thought you were talking about

[layla]

I trashed 8 chapters of Guitars that completely avoided a key plot point in the story. Rewriting is so important, sometimes you just go the wrong direction, or things just don't turn out the way you want them to and a rewrite can yield much better results.

[The Pecman]

You're not satisfied with the second half of what you've written and to make matters worse, you're even more confused now as to how to continue the story than you were before, so you keep rummaging ideas through your head until, finally, you realize that you went into the wrong direction and have just now gotten the idea you were looking for days ago. So obviously, now you have to go back, crumple and toss those pesky pages you've put the effort to write into the bin and do it all over.

 

I think one of the cores of the dreaded Writers Block is the inability to write something that's terribly flawed. I think there's two solutions:

 

1) write it anyway, flaws and all, with the understanding that nobody else will read it and you can fix it in the edit

 

2) write a later chapter first. If I have a general outline of where I'm going to go, in some cases, I've been able to jump ahead and knock out a forthcoming chapter, then write the prior chapters leading up to it later on. Nothing wrong with that. 

 

What I generally feel like when writing is that I'm watching a movie and writing down the dialogue and the action that I see and hear. If the movie ain't happening, I ain't writing. But if I have a fairly vivid picture of what's going on, then it almost becomes a compulsion to get it down on paper (or the computer screen, as it were). 

Edited February 11, 2013 by The Pecman

[Sasha Distan]

I see you have nanowrimo'd then. writing long after the love has one it hard... i stopped a novella at 44000 words because there were just so many options that i couldn't chose. i feel for you. my hard drive is home to many unfinished stories due to languish forever.

[RobsWriting]

This has happened to me more times than I often care to think about. Over the years I have worked out the following way to deal with it:

 

1) Curse under my breath. (Not P.C., but it helps me).

 

2) Work backwards to work out where it all went wrong. (Usually to the last idea I had doubts about).

 

3) Cut everything after that point and paste it into a new Word document. (I tend not to delete ideas, even bad ones. You never know when they might come in handy for another story where they will fit better).

 

4) Put the new file into my "Bad Ideas Graveyard" folder.

 

5) Have a nice cup of freshly-brewed coffee. (My boyfriend is convinced that the definition of the word "Writer" is "A human device for turning coffee and cigarettes into stories.")

 

6) Re-write. Either a new scene and take the story the story in a fresh direction, or re-write the problem scene in a way that is no longer problematic.

 

I tend to find that this works for me, although you'll find your own way of dealing with it in time. I hope it gives you some ideas though.

 

PS: You could also try writing an outline of the story to map out the rest of the plot. I occasionally do this, although it tends to get departed from within a few chapters (actually within one, if I'm totally honest). It can be very useful for getting yourself out of a problematic scene.

Edited May 22, 2013 by RobsWriting

[Sasha Distan]

I recently re wrote 2000 words because i'd started in the present tense and that stopped working really quickly. i fucking hate re writes. that's why i need editors.

[Thorn Wilde]

I rewrote Nemesis twice. I started the thing when I was 14, got about halfway and abandoned it. Then I picked it up again three years ago, rewrote the whole thing from scratch. Then I went back again and made all the characters one year younger, added several scenes, changed some parts of the plot completely, etc. Finally happy with it, so it was worth it.

[Lugh]

snickers.... sometimes rewriting is like cancer treatment... there are lots of ways to treat it but the end process is the same... remission (or a reworked, finished product) or death (or the when I ever think I might want to deal with this again file)

 

I once cut 200,000 words from a document because they had to go.  Yes, two hundred thousand words.  Shit happens and so does bad writing.  

[Krista]

Lordy I need to do a crap ton of rewriting and polishing my older stories.. but I likely won't. Maybe if they weren't ever posted, I would do rewrites. Now that everyone has read all the 'blemishes' I don't see much of a point.

 

If a person is looking to publish, then rewriting probably becomes an essential tool... for 'pleasure' writing, which is what I'm doing here on GA.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Krista