When you have multiple narrative elements that tie into each other, and/or complex content to work with, what ways do you fix any oversights in the final draft so that everything "looks like it was planned cleanly from the start"? Do you do it on your own? Do you get help even though it could be messy? How do you organize all this stuff so you can edit what's already been edited?
I usually start by planning things from the start. I do a lot of pre-writing, then not only use that as a foundation to build off of, but also as a place to make notes about everything that develops or I decide to add once I start my drafts. I use a lot of comments while doing my drafts, either with highlighters when using paper or with CTRL+ALT+C when on my computer that let me know that something is amiss or been added so I can go back in subsequent edits too add more details at an earlier time in the story. When I get it polished enough, I will then get someone who knows something about writing to give it a once through to make sure that nothing is too confusing or out of place. If not, then putting the draft aside for a while can give me the opportunity to distance myself from it a bit so I can see some of the mistakes and really bad writing I would miss otherwise.
I don't care whether the work looks "planned cleanly." All I care about is that it flow logically (but not too predictable) and that the world and the characters stay consistent to their respective arcs. Life isn't "planned cleanly from the start" (not by us mortals anyway). Stories don't have to be, either; nor do they have to look like they were. Sometimes even the author is surprised by how things turn out.
I don't plan my stories out. I just write it as it comes to me. As to editing, I take Mammamaia's advice to me a long time ago: Edit on paper. It's easier to see your mistakes when you read it like that. Once wrote a novel that was 120K and ended up with 89K after 3 hard copy edits.
You wait six months, then you go back and check it with a fresh pair of eyes! ...then you wait another six months...
Wait a while after finishing writing - in my case, I waited a month. These breaks tend to come naturally because I'm so tired of the same piece of work that I quite literally has no motivation to jump right back in anyway lol. Then, go through it once yourself. What helped me this time is doing a scene by scene breakdown. I have a separate Excel document, which I've included below in a screen shot. There's a chapter summary in each of the green bars (roughly what the full chapter is about). In my case, my book has multiple POVs so I have a POVc column too, which turned out to be probably the most telling in terms of how well each strand of story is distributed or linked together. The word count also gave me a rough idea of whether a chapter was too long - my personal boundary there is between 4000-6000 words. Anything above 6k I will start looking to see if I could cut or move things around, and usually I can. Other times it immediately showed me that a certain scene should actually be moved to the previous or the next chapter (because if 4 out of 5 scenes was from Will's POV, then the 5th scene probably shouldn't be from someone else's unless there's a good reason for it). This, I believe, has been good for developmental editing. Third step - just send it right out to beta readers. There's no much point waiting around some more. Sure, waiting a period of time and coming back with fresh eyes will always reveal a little more, but how much more, really? How long are you planning to wait? You could wait forever, in theory. So I sent mine off immediately after the first pass. I'm in this third step process right now and I find that different readers will call something a different problem, but they may all point to the same scene. That's when you know, "Aha. I need to do something about this." This isn't something you'd ever have caught on your own, quit frankly. So now I'm in the process of breaking down Chapter 1 (which would include some moving around of things probably), as well as adding 2 scenes elsewhere in the MS. Now is the time when I revisit beta notes - what questions did they ask? Was there anything that seemed kinda minor that they wanted to know more of? Because now I have the space, as I'm moving things around - are those elements something I can include now? Side note: I had 2 alpha readers whilst I was writing plus I edit as I go along, so my "first draft" even before I run through it myself for the first time is already pretty neat - so I have the option of sending it out to betas after just one pass. It isn't really a case of banging a draft out, reading it once, and sending. This WIP has been going for 12 years so in that time I've weeded out an awful lot. Everything I kept in this finished draft is everything essential to the story I want to tell, absolutely, so in this sense - I'm not saying things can't change or be deleted still - but pretty much everything does work together by now and issues pertain more to pacing or perhaps any element that needs to be fleshed out more. I can't say I know what the fourth step is, as I'm not there. Probably giving it a last once over. If I could get another reader or one of the betas was willing to reread the edited version, I'd send it through. Then another once over if it's been read through by someone else and there're changes to be made. Then send the baby out
Thank you! This is a very in depth response, and very similar to what I already do! I'm wondering what the process of writing is like with two alpha readers is like, do you send them chapters in increments so you feel that it's safe to continue?
On the whole I find it very valuable, because if there's a glaring problem or some bad logic, it's picked up right away before you can develop the story down the wrong road. It's also very encouraging because your alpha reader probably enjoys reading the book so far (which is why they are still reading)
