How do you ignore your bad writing?

Discussion in 'Fantasy' started by thabear637, Oct 27, 2011.

  1. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    My question would be how can one continue with the story after a 'bad' chapter? How do you know where to go from there? If it's bad, you know it will have to change - and doesn't that almost demand that the rest of the story changes in some aspect, if not a major one? It just seems to me like building a house with faulty plumbing and then tearing out all the drywall to fix it. Why not fix it first and then complete the house? I'm not trying to change anyone's mind (because I know mine won't change either ;)) - I'm just trying to understand the 'why'. Is it more just to make sure one actually finishes the story?
     
  2. thabear637

    thabear637 New Member

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    Well now you understand my desire to always want to try and fix it. I feel as if the rest of the book will suffer because of it. However, I do have the entire book plotted out, so I know where to take it, and it probably wouldn't suffer too much. But whenever I go back and in "fix" mode, its harder to go back into "writing" mode..or I may go completely bonkers in "fix" mode and fix things that aren't necessarily as bad instead of moving on.

    I think I get why I need to just keep writing, keep myself in my writing mode. Get in fix mode during revisions. Very easily distracted to go back and forth during the rough draft part of it.
     
  3. Jhunter

    Jhunter Mmm, bacon. Contributor

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    I write a chapter, edit a chapter, then rinse and repeat. I cant wait until the entire first draft is finished. If I don't at least know for sure they story is flowing the way I want it, I cant move on.
     
  4. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    I read a very good book about writing once where the author said that it's very hard to be creative and critical at the same time, so basically when you start going back and change things you 'switch off' the creative part of the brain. maybe that is why it's so easy to get stuck when you get too hung up on minor details and so hard to keep writing from there. I think it's a good idea to not look back during the writing of the first draft but just keep writing. you can fix all the bad scenes later, they happen to everyone, but as long as you know where the story is going they won't cause you any problem. Just keep looking ahead instead of looking back. there will be plenty of time to fix those things later, and if you feel the chapter is really bad after having finished it and already know how to improve it just rewrite it from where you are, with new words. when you revise you can compare those chapters and see what works best, maybe you can use a little of both.
     
  5. walshy12238

    walshy12238 New Member

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    Basically I just tell myself that there's plenty of time later for editing, to make it better.
    Don't get caught up with stuff you've already written, focus on what you haven't written yet
     
  6. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    There are no hard-and-fast rules for writing. No piece of advice should be taken as gospel. I think that advice about writing without looking back until the first draft is done is nonsense, at least for me. I happily edit as I go. I'm like the OP - if I know there's bad writing in my work, and I don't fix it, it reduces my inspiration to continue. I can't stand having garbage pages piling up on my desk. I love having good pages piling up.

    And I also think that this idea that there's a "creative mode" and a "critical mode" of thinking, and that it's hard to switch between the two, is also not true for everyone. For me, fixing bad writing is just as creative as writing new material. Fixing bad writing is still writing. It's just rewriting. It's an opportunity to rethink scenes, paragraphs, tones of voice. I don't want to push the movie analogy too far (I don't like it when others do!) but many film directors shoot many takes of a given scene, sometimes sticking to the script, sometimes allowing the actors to improvise, sometimes with lighting changes or changes of camera angles, just looking for the right take, the take that's not just passable, but great. Writers shouldn't be afraid to try the same thing. If you're not happy with a scene, rewrite it. Maybe rewrite it several times - get those alternate takes in the can. It's all creative, and it can make your work much better.

    Don't be afraid to edit as you go. Don't think that if you're editing, you aren't creating. You are creating. Feel proud of those pages piling up on your desk because they're GOOD, not just because they're there. When you're proud of your work, you'll be motivated to write more. And you'll be happier with what you've accomplished.
     
  7. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    sorry - double post.
     
  8. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Agree with minstrel. Everyone has to find their own way. Editing as you go works just as well as editing after it's done - if you have the discipline not to stall in nitpicking. But the same can be said of revising afterwards. Some people will keep revising the same 'completed' novel for years and never actually finish it. (Or worse, they get so bogged down with the massive revision process they give up.) And rewriting bad writing is just as creative, or should be - unless you're doing the spellcheck type things.
     
  9. spklvr

    spklvr Contributor Contributor

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    Editing as I go would be waste of time for me. By the time the first draft is finished, there are so many things that have changed and scenes that needs to be rewritten that most things will need to be changed anyway, so if I edited as I went along I would have had to change everything I first edited. But you know, if you feel like your mood changes the way you want the scene to go, I suggest outlining the scene before you write it. Make some bullet points about where you want it to go and how it should get there, and do the same with conversations. I have a general plot outline for the whole story, and then I have several "sub-outlines" for each chapter and scene (unless I already have a very clear idea of it in my head, in which case I don't need it). It's very helpful to me.
     
  10. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    The thing (for me anyway) with editing as I go is that what I've written and kept determines where the story is going to go. It keeps me from going off on some tangent because it has to fit with what I've already edited/revised and am happy with. If it doesn't - it goes into my note file for another story.
     
  11. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    Why is this a problem? Rewriting and editing are NEVER wastes of time - they are always creative work. I edit as I go, and once the draft is done I sometimes throw away big chunks of it because the story has become clearer in my mind, and I realize I don't need or want those chunks. But writing and editing those chunks was not a waste of time. I learned a ton from doing that. I remember reading an interview with Elie Wiesel, who won the Nobel Prize, about his book "Night". He said he wrote 900 pages for it, and cut it down to 160 pages. Did he think the 740 omitted pages were wasted time? Of course not. It was part of his creative process.

    If you have to change what you first edited, go ahead and change it. What's the matter with doing that? D.H. Lawrence would write a first draft and then throw the whole thing out, and write a second draft of the same novel again from scratch, without referring to the first draft at all. Change anything that needs to be changed, anytime you need to change it. Write as many drafts as necessary to get it right. Cut where you need to, add where you need to, and go on until the work is done.

    I can't work that way. That's what Isaac Asimov called "playing the piano from inside a straitjacket". Writing should be creative. You should be creating with every word you set down, and you should feel free to follow any new threads of ideas that occur to you as you write. Sure, you can come up with a preliminary plan, but I wouldn't advise casting it in stone. You have to leave room for the spontaneous, the improvisation, the idea that comes along that you hadn't thought of when you came up with your outline, but that makes your work ten times better.
     
  12. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    I totally understands what spklvr means with the above post, that is more or less how I feel too. (about revision and editing.) I don't consider it a waste of time, but since I probably will change most of it anyway after the first draft is finished it just seem unnecessary and I prefer using the time to look ahead and not backwards.
    Besides, who said planning and outlining isn't creative? To me it's maybe the most creative of all phases, maybe because I don't think well when I actually write, I need to do the thinking before I start. But I guess for someone who can do it it's perfectly fine. just wanted to point out that to some people the planning stage is where a lot of the creative work happens and the writing of the first draft is just a documentation of that creative process.
     
  13. spklvr

    spklvr Contributor Contributor

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    If I have spent lots of time editing and perfecting something and later realize I have to change it completely, I will be much more reluctant about doing so than if I had just written it in a hurry to get it down. I actually don't like to edit the language at all until I've got the plot down just as I want it. If a passage is crap anyway, I don't feel bad about pressing delete at all.

    Also, I don't like to write while inspired. The result is always a mess. That's why I stick to plotting while I'm inspired. Sometimes I even re-plot what I'm working on to see if whatever shiny new idea I have is better than the one I had. I often find that it wasn't when my mind calms down. I write when I'm calm and uninspired. That's when my writing is at its best, which I realize sounds odd to most people. I finish first drafts pretty quickly anyway, so it's not like I don't get editing practice. I'm always working on something or other.

    I can't remember ever saying I don't change anything... quite the opposite. I simply like to give my new ideas some thought before I change things, and I like to know where all my chapters and scenes are going before I write them so that I won't go off track. Thing is, I lose inspiration about almost anything very quickly, so I need discipline to stick with it.

    As for practice, I write loads of fanfiction, and I use that for writing practice and for testing new techniques and stuff like that.
     
  14. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I'm not sure I understand this. If editing as you go is unnecessary and/or a waste of time, then how is writing a complete first draft which you're probably going to "change most of anyway" any more necessary or any less a waste of time?

    I think this just points out that neither system is any better or worse than the other. It's only a matter of which works best for the individual.
     
  15. Samar

    Samar New Member

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    well, to me there is always something that i need to fix after i finish writing, i mean lets forget about the mistakes and the words i forget, but when i finish and i read what i wrote i can judge as an outsider, so i find that i must change few things, or maybe i can write this in a more beautiful way, so this absolutely not a waste of time, we need to go through the same thing over and over again to write as best as we can, but i also want to say that at times when we are passionate enough and we feel that we're inspired to write, we come out with a piece of art that we ourselves won't believe that it was written by us.
    good luck
    http://echoes19.wordpress.com/
     
  16. spklvr

    spklvr Contributor Contributor

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    I totally agree with that. I just responded to minstrel like I did because I thought his/her tone was rather rude.

    And one writes the complete first draft to get a better idea of the whole story, which makes editing and removing plot holes and so on, easier (for us). Even if I have the whole plot written down, I don't really know exactly what needs to be changed until the very last scene is complete. I mean, I once had an entire story in need of being rewritten because of a single sentence I added on at the very end. Rare occurrence, but still, it happens.
     
  17. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    Maybe wasn't clear enough. The first draft of course is not a step you can avoid, otherwise there would be no story to edit, but while writing the first draft i come up with so many ideas on how to improve it (even though I didn't see it during the creating of those particular scenes) and change things to make what I want to say more clear, and I usually don't see that while actually writing it, it takes me a little time and distance from what i just wrote to see if it needs improvement, so going over it right after having written it for me is useless, because it's still too fresh and not enough time has passed for me to look at it objectively (if a writer ever can look at his own writing completely objectively). And maybe even in the cases I do know something needs to be improved maybe I don't know right then HOW to improve it or what it really is that is not working, so time and perspective works in that case too. I find it a lot easier to come up with these things when I'm doing/writing other stuff, then ideas just happen to pop up in my head :) But of course everyone is free to use the way that works best for them, I just thought that in the OP's case he/she is clearly saying that there is something not working with the way he/she used to do it and maybe then it's time to try a different approach, hence all the advices to skip editing until later. if it works for you then of couse you have no reason to change it, that was not what I was saying. My reply was directed at the OP.
     
  18. barba thoma

    barba thoma New Member

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    Bad writing. We're all guilty of it at some point. But if you have the passion to write, and for what you're writing, you'll hammer away until it's good. Sure, it's just work sometimes, but often as not it turns out to be fun once you're 5, 10 or 20 minutes into the task. And you won't even remember that your writing session started out as work.
     
  19. LX_Theo

    LX_Theo New Member

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    I believe the writing every day idea is simply so that you can ideas on to paper and make it a habit. Its not for everyone, especially people like me and you it seems. I personally have the same issue in that I get less motivated as I work. So many different creative projects I've left unfinished because of it. For writing, I'm determined to finish this one.

    Originally, I wrote a lot of the background (like 5 pages in word of timeline alone) as I was brainstorming. It gets me hyped to write and makes it flow better. But eventually the hype dwindles and its more difficult. What I'm trying to do now is to scatter my brainstorming so I can fall back to go more in depth on my ideas when I'm feeling demotivated.

    Just try spacing sessions of the different parts of writing each day. Brainstorm new ideas. Write a bunch the next day. Proof-read/search the internet for new ideas on how to improve your writing in general the next day. And repeat. Variation, just like in the story itself, keeps it interesting.
     

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