Is it normal for authors to rewrite their script completely, several times during the process? I'm on my fourth rewrite and I find it most liberating to ignore everything I've written thus far and I only go back to a previous draft to make sure I haven't forgotten anything.
Maybe? I feel like my words are like dying cells. Just like the human body cycles out all of its cells every seven years, I think my drafts cycle out all of their words in seven drafts. lol But I redraft right into a copy of the previous draft, rewriting paragraphs as I go.
My life lesson: Definitely, definitely leave a chunk of time between the rewrites. You lose your frames of reference if you don't look away a while—risk the revisions being worse than the original.
If it's working for you, it probably doesn't matter what's normal or what other people do at all. Glad you found a method you're enjoying.
I'm pretty lazy so rewritting everyhing would not be something which I would do on an impulse. But no, I don't think its at all uncommon. In my personal experience the more we work with a story and its characters the better we get to know them and the more we can adopt them to how we imagine them to be and give them depth. I know for sure that when I conceptualize characters and stories these are kind of boring, bland and predictable when I start. But the more I think and wonder about the story and the characters, new sides of them emerge that allows me to develop them more and more. Also secondary characters can become rich additions to the story as I experiment with them in new situations, interacting with other characters that I had originally thought and so on.
I second this. I think it just comes down to the person writing it. If you make progress rewriting the whole thing, then that's normal for you, and you shouldn't do it any other way. Don't worry about what is and isn't normal. I really think most things having to do with writing don't have a clear definition of "right" or "wrong." If something works for you, just go with it.
