My personal process after the first draft goes as follows. 1. Re-read: go back and read the entire novel again and take notes. Use this opportunity to make minor edits 2. Review Notes: Look at what needs to be changed, the major issues, the minor issues, chapter rewrites or complete overhauls. 3. Re-Write: Complete your full rewrites 4. Repeat steps 1-3 again. 5. Polish: Go through and put a grammatical shine to it Those are my basic steps without getting into other things such as Alpha and Beta readers, which I usually rely on.
I have pamphlets of notes I can look at. Without them, I'll have a huge lump of text with no direction. Start by editing one paragraph at a time and get yourself some notes.
I really feel like I need to reread the first 16 chapters of my novel before I write any more, in case I find anything that can be used in future chapters that I may of forgot about, or just making sure I've got out all the information that needs to be out so far (and to make sure it's only in there once), etc. So, I just opened chapter one, and one paragraph in, I'm typing something I want to add. I really do not want to do that; I just want to sit back and read what I wrote. I think this is actually the reason I don't want to reread my work, because deep down I know I'm gonna sit there and mess with it instead of absorbing it. Should I just let myself go through it and mess with stuff, or do I really need to just put the keyboard aside and read? If the latter is the case, how do I do that?
I don't have an answer, but this is also something I'd be interested in hearing opinions on, since I will sometime (hopefully) be finishing this draft of my novel soon, and I have not yet read through it from start to finish. I would like to read through it uninterrupted, but would be concerned about tinkering with it too much. Because it's a slippery slope getting bogged down with changes and editing that is end ups losing that feeling of how well the novel works on a larger scale as opposed to its finer details. But not do I want to ignore potential issues, or double.mt workload by spotting all the mistakes and then have to find them all again at a later date. I thought of perhaps leaving a short note for each part I spotted something that needs addressing, but that in itself could take time to do.
My advice is to print it before reading. You can’t edit the file that way. And if you feel a really urgent need to edit it make a note in pen (but not in red - it can be really threatening to see a page with a lot of red marks. I use green or purple).
I agree with printing it out. Even if you don't want to waste the paper, "printing" it to PDF makes it that tiny bit harder to start editing.
My method was to pop in into a google doc and read it on my phone. Since I read other stuff on my phone but find writing on it extremely tedious, it more put me in the "time for reading, not writing/editing" mindset. When I did this daily writing challenge I was posting the shorts on a blog every day and the next day I'd read them on the blog, where going in to edit is this whole thing that's just inconvenient enough that I wouldn't want to do it - plus then I'd have to save the edits I make to the blog version to the version on my hard drive, which is another layer of inconvenience. Just make it harder for yourself to actually edit. Printing works too, but I think there are easier ways to go about it. That said, I sometimes read through things on my laptop with no intention of editing, too, and I think it's a worthwhile thing to build up in yourself - the not tinkering just through force of will. It's hellacious, to be fair. But you get used to it.
I would mess with it while reading it through. I don't understand why you would want to put it off since you feel like you need to read through it now anyway. I let myself edit each chapter and then go back over it all again everything 10k words. It's working for me. You've got to figure out what works for you, but there's no writing police coming after you if you want to start editing now or while you read through it. I mean you are planning to do that anyway. Doing some of it now will just make things easier on yourself later.
I find that when I'm "just reading" a piece I have a slightly different experience than when I'm simultaneously editing and reading. Editing a sentence breaks the flow, and to get that flow back I have to start over, but the flow is still disrupted because by the time I'm done I will have read the very beginning a few times, while I've only read the end once or twice... Anyway. So I assumed that the original poster had the same issue--not that they wanted to refrain from editing until some arbitrary late time, but just that sometimes they wanted to refrain for the length of a reading.
I guess I can't "just read" until a piece has been edited and polished. And I don't really want to train myself to ignore mistakes. But that's just the way I want to work.
Oh, I can't either. I'm not sure what the original poster's opinion is, but I'm talking about re-reading a piece after it's as polished as I could make it last time I dealt with it.
I upload my stuff to my Kindle to read through it. I do highlight anything I come across that I want to change, but then I can ignore the highlights until I'm ready for editing. If you've never done it before, putting your own stuff on Kindle is really easy. All you have to do is find your Kindle email address (Amazon has a help page on that) and download a program like Calibre Library (free). It takes about a minute for me to get a Word document onto my Kindle.
Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. All the chapters I have so far I deemed "done" (at the time they were written and I went through them one last time) and some of them (the earlier chapters) have been set aside for months. I know they aren't perfect yet, I just want to sit there and read them instead of fix them.
I re-read my work all the time. I hear others say not to, but I do it anyway because I am a rebel. When I finally got it finished, I printed it out, then divided it up into binders just to make it easier to carry around. I went to Office Depot and I bought myself some red pens, and I started from the very beginning, marking out mistakes, re-writing, underlining, making notes and more notes. My book now looks like I handed it in to the meanest English teacher in the school and she really hated it. But next, I'll get back into Scrivener and put all those red marks to work. I figure I'll probably do that another two or three times before I hand it over to someone else and they can go through it with their red marker.
I keep a separate file for all my ideas on changes to the story. Somehow, I convinced myself that feeling a sense of completion of that list makes the second draft less work. I'll come up with some ideas, write them down, decide they're bad, change them - happy I didn't spend time writing them out.
First thread! YAY! (I hope it's in the right section) I've been writing all my life like most people here on this forum, but I'm ashamed to admit that I only finished a novella when I was in 7th grade. My dream is to write novels, but I'm having a really hard time finishing my first chapter. I get a great idea, an interesting character and feverishly write. Like, I just let go and it's easy and fun. I feel really good about it....and then I read it over and over again. And I edit it until I persuade myself that it's not good enough and then I shelve it. Does anybody else have this problem? I found this article that kinda of open my eyes to this dilemma and was wondering if anyone here realized that they were, in essence, self-sabotaging themselves and how they overcame it.
The strategy that has been working for me since sometime last year has been to write individual scenes from various points in the novel and polish the scenes, but not require the scenes to fit together in a nice smooth string of beads. Polishing the scene fulfills my craving for kinda-pretty writing. Not worrying about pasting the scenes together (yet) keeps me from perfectionizing to a standstill. I'm not recommending this strategy specifically, so much as suggesting that you try different habits until you find one that has you making steady progress. (Speaking of steady progress, I have been writing needed scenes but I haven't moved from the three-quarter point to any point closer to the end of the novel in quite some time. It's probably time to force some un-tethered scenes in that last quarter.)
I'm going to second this. Sometimes I feel inspired to write, but not linearly. For example, one of my characters is in a coma, and the POV character is complaining about how if he'd just listened to her when she told him it was a bad idea, he wouldn't be in this mess. The event that renders him unconscious has not been written, although I've got that chapter started in another document as well. In another, I've written a bit of quite important plot that actually takes place between two paragraphs in another chapter. If I waited to write until I'd rewritten the latter chapter, neither would ever get done. Note: I also have a problem with procrastination, but that's a pre-existing condition irrelevant of my writing habits. >_>
That just might work and I'll try it out! I have a habit of forming scenes in my head and I find I never get to write them because I'm trying to write it in a linear format. I'll save it for a later chapter and, of course, it never gets written. If I write them all down, I can get a better picture of how the story is panning out and connect them that way.
I third the proffered advice (or at least the investigation of the option). I accepted long ago that linearity was not my way of doing things.
Everyone writes and edits in their own way. No way is right or wrong. Writing and editing is a journey, however long, winding or bumpy the road. It's the destination that matters - finished novel/short story etc. I write out of order and mainly a scene that either comes into my head or interests me. Then put the scenes together. The more story you have the more you know where a scene fits. I edit in the following ways - 1. I often write a scene on paper and then type it up. The scene sometimes is edited/amended as I type it up. 2. If I add something to a already written scene like extra description I will edit the scene to ensure the new stuff fits. 3. On a regular basis I print a copy and go through it and write all over it what to add or remove, spellings to check etc. I usually change the version number when I print so I can go back to the earlier version if needed. 4. I sometimes transfer the text into a Text-to-voice app which reads it back to you. It gives an idea of what it would sound like read out aloud. Of course it is better to have a real person to read it. Personally I don't worry about getting one scene perfect initially. I just write and see where it takes me. My story has changed so much from what I originally thought it would be (even though I didn't write it down I had a rough idea of how the story was to be structured but that has completely changed now. Was two parts and a prologue now a continuous story, prologue currently undecided.) My advice is try different writing/editing techniques until you find the right method(s) for you. You may find that what works after three chapters doesn't work after thirty chapters. But that's okay. It doesn't matter how you do it if it's right for you (or the individual story - some stories are easier to write or edit than others, so need to be edited it a different way.)
A perhaps non-obvious value of writing out of order is that if you write a scene while in an emotional state suited for that scene, the scene is likely to come out better.
I wrote a very emotional death scene and a really great dream sequence while i was 'in the mood'. If something's important, getting it down while the getting's good is much, much more critical than writing whatever is chronologically next in your story.* *obligatory YMMV disclaimer, i guess, I'm new here still
For me first drafts are a sort of funny thing, as they are not linear. I write the scenes or concepts then put them in their order and work my way to them. usually by the time I get to them, so much as happened that the concept drafts are much different. Also, my first goal is to always write for myself, it's also my second and third goal as well. . But also I write by hand so, editing and revising is a bit tougher. so basically drawling a line through rejected ideas and moving on, and I also have a physical journal for any upcoming ideas or ones I missed, and plus for character development, lore, songs. etc. along with keeping track of my progress.
