Show don't tell is the dumbest thing writers regurgitate to each other. It's all about knowing WHEN to show and WHEN to tell.
If it's dumb advice because it doesn't always apply, then by your definition, all writing advice is dumb. OF COURSE nothing is absolute. There is ALWAYS an exception. But advice like this is said because new writers generally "tell" instead of "show" when they should "show" instead of "tell." As my teacher always said, "Learn the rule, and then learn how to break it."
My writing is evolving. It seems to be taking up more and more of my computer time. Up until recently I was spending far too much time in motorcycle forums. Then the weather warmed, and I spent more time riding. Since computer time was streamlined, I concentrated on more important writing pursuits. There were times I had only worked on my book something like every third day. Then over morning coffee everyday, and now several times per day. I even run dialogue while at the gym. If I cannot force myself into constructing new paragraphs, I polish existing pages, even if it's only to add commas or break up run-on sentences.
I personally write everything as well and as detailed as possible. I am continuously reading back over my fabrications, looking for mistakes and ways to improve my creation thus far. The idea of tediously looking back over my work once I have completed it is not overly appealing. Hence, taking the effort to make the task as easy as possible in the end.
I write the RD to completion without looking back. I don't plot. I write longhand in ink so I can't go back and manipulate any of the original thoughts until the rewrites. Everyone does this different. Thats how I do it, and it works for me.
Everyone is on Henning's side. No one has ever said, "Only show, never tell," which IS stupid advice, which is WHY no one ever says that. Henning merely misinterprets what people mean by "Show, don't tell." It is not absolute. Anyway, I'm a huge planner. I need to know the Big Picture of something before I write it. It helps me find the story that best matches the setting and the characters.
Wrong Funky. I think I went to school and I know writers, it's not a misinterpretation. But it's not really "Only show, never tell" it's more "Whenever you can show instead of telling, do it." They love that. Sad isn't it? But I'm glad it's unimaginable to you.
The reason "show, don't tell" is offered as advice to beginning writers is that most beginning writers haven't learned to show. They tell, as though instead of writing a story, they're giving a police deposition of the events. "Frodo had to destroy the ring. So he and his friends started on a journey to Mordor. But Frodo was being affected by the ring's evil, and Gollum was with them and looking for any chance to get the ring back. So Sam, who was the only really good person involved, had to take action and make sure Frodo threw the ring into the volcano." A lot of beginning writers write like that, believe it or not. They take an epic story and shrink it to a paragraph or two and ask on forums like this how to make it longer. The advice that comes back is "show, don't tell." But for experienced writers (and I don't just mean published writers), that advice is useless, because they already know where to show and where to tell. When an inexperienced writer complains that an experienced writer is telling instead of showing, it says more about the inexperience than the experience. "Rules" in writing are just guidelines, and should really only be referred to if your story isn't working.
I agree Minstrel, (although your example was a little scary...) but why does no one want to believe that there indeed are many writers (published or not) who are supposed to have some sort of experience after years of writing who STILL go by that "rule". That's why in my original post I was saying I laugh at THEM, because THEY are ridiculous! That's all I was saying.
Now that I think more about it it's the same as relentlessly describing characters physically when there's no need to. That's advice I heard a lot too, and beginner as well as published writers do it so much... So to answer the original post (sorry for getting off topic) I plan a lot, change a lot of things as I write, and I do try to make it as perfect as I can on the first try. But I also stay away from doing things like "show don't bla bla bla..." and 5 pages to say that my main character has brown eyes.
I'll outline first, trying to keep everything open so that ideas can continuosly shape themselves in my mynd. Then, chapter after chapter, I'll proceed to write the first draft. But I always repeat the same error: I revise while the first draft is still incomplete!
That depends on why you're revising. I revised mine before it's complete because, well, the story wouldn't work otherwise. Something in the story wasn't right and it couldn't progress - and before long there were too many questions, errors and things that just bulged out to be criticised that I just couldn't write anymore. I revised the overall plot and ditched the entire draft and wrote from scratch. For example, I hated my MC, had 3 heros who all acted the same, and the entire logic of why the characters were together just didn't work. My MC was meant to start trusting his companions when instead the way it progressed, he got more and more suspicious of them and it was getting harder and harder to make him not find out some big secret without just making him sound plain stupid. Thus, I went back and revised - this is not something you could just kinda "continue" and "revise later". But now, I'm still writing that same first draft, and there're a number of things I've changed since, but I have not gone back to revise. Why? Because those pre-existing details and scenes DON'T affect the rest of the story, or the flow of the story. They're details, set events, whose consequences would be the same even after the revision. So although the event itself has changed, the effect of the event on the rest of the story hasn't. Thus, no need to revise just yet. Write on, and revise later. So, it all depends.
When it's good enough, so that you can continue writing. Only go back and edit if it will make it easier to keep writing. You want to finish your first draft, but it's okay to go back and edit along the way. Some people don't edit until after the first draft, some people edit a lot, but everyone's trying to get to the finish line. Ask yourself: Can I live with these errors? Or do they bother me too much to keep writing?
How I write depends on the scene. Scenes that are easier for me to write, like scenes with a lot of action and/or dialog I can write with a lot of detail, and even when I go back to it I don't find that much to edit (just bad sentences here and there). This is because I can plan it fairly well beforehand. If the scene is heavy on description or is just generally slower and the writing itself require more thought from me, I just rush through it and go back when I’m done with the draft and take my time then. I just can’t let stuff slow me down too much, or I never get on with the story. I also leave description until the end, because I noticed that was what I was always changing and what was always slowing me down. Anyway, editing is kind of pointless unless I leave the chapter for a long while. No matter how much I edit it the first time around, a month later I look at it and I still have to change half of it. I just can't see the flaws right after finishing. Also, I rarely have a full grasp of the story and characters until the very end and I have the whole piece in front of me.
I close my eyes and bang on my keyboard for about an hour, and then I make some coffee and cry for a while. Then there's a 50% chance that I'll go back an revise what I've written, and try to get all the little descriptions and dialogue just right. It's actually a really inefficient way to go about writing.
I write when I've gotten everything else out of the way, then I'll read what I have so far before adding in the next section. It helps get my head back into it and maintain continuity.
There's very few things I loathe more than editing, I find it so utterly boring- I'd rather clean my apartment than edit, and I hate cleaning- just not as much as editing. However, if I was aiming for perfection whenever I sat down to write, I'd produce about 300 words a week- and I still wouldn't be satisfied. Thus, I've had to compromise, and I now aim for my writing to be of high enough quality as to not require being edited to death, but allow myself to write, a lot, even though some of it might have to be edited, or even re-written or simply cut. As far as outlining go, it's right up there with edititing in the pile of boring things which I tend to avoid if possible. I wrote the first 75% of the novel I'm working on now (my first) with only a vague idea about where the story would go next, now that I'm finishing up, I feel like some planning is necessary, if I'm going to successfully wrap up the storyline, and make the narrative work, becoming a novel, not 350 pages of rambling. So, lately I've been doing some flimsy outlining- but I still don't know how my novel will end. What would be the fun in that?
First draft, I do a chapter... redit it and redit it until I'm happy, I do this until the story is finished. Then on redraft, I re-write the story and add/remove things as required.
I mentally self-edit almost obsessively as I go. Even though noone will ever read it, I still feel a little guilty if I actually write down something that I could have put better. I do edit afterwards too, extensively, but I find that then I'm mostly cutting and rearranging rather than rewriting.
