What does "rewriting" mean to you?

I've read a few threads where people were talking about rewriting their novel. To me, this sounds devastating, and horrifying. But I'm wondering, what do people actually mean by this? To me, the word "rewrite" conjures up images of scrapping the whole thing, and starting from a blank document. But I've also just majorly reworked a whole chapter in light of things I learned about a character after already writing about him. I moved the chapter to a different position in the novel, wrote a lot of new material for it, changed quite a bit of the wording of what was already there, cut quite a bit of stuff, and moved things around so it all made sense, flowed and felt cohesive. It was hugely satisfying, and I think has considerably improved this chapter.

So my question is, is this what others mean when they say "rewrite", or do they literally mean that they click "File... New..." and start again?

 

Yeah, that's what I mean by rewrite - a complete do-over. I currently have to rewrite the entire final 17k of my wip and can confirm it's devastating and horrifying. It's worth it knowing that the thing will be better for it, though.

I recently redid the opening to this wip as well, but in that case while I rewrote everything fresh, I kept the old version right next to it and drew off the old sequence of events. Could be some people mean something more like that, rather than a total from-scratch kinda thing?

 

Do you think there is any particular advantage, or disadvantage, to each of the there options? (blank slate, rewrite from original, reworking original)

In my case, I didn’t feel a rewrite was necessary. I was happy with what I had written as a draft, but it just didn’t make total sense in light of some plot changes and character development. But I’m now worried that the overall outcome would be better if I put that version aside and started again.

Having said that, about half of what is in that chapter now is totally new, about a quarter (very roughly) of the original was cut, and the rest had some kind of changes made. So it might be that the result was closer to the option of rewriting with the original version next to the new one.

 

I find it much easier to scrap the whole thing and restart than wriggle about fixing stuff from within a draft. I've rewritten my current WIP from nought three times now, but I'm starting to realise I'll have to fix this one instead of dumping it and hoping to get it all right in one go again.

 

How do you know whether you need to start again or work with what you’ve got? That seems like a difficult, and important, decision to make. Personally I quite like reworking. I’m used to doing it a lot in academic writing. I enjoy it, and I think I’m pretty good at it. I’ve taken a chapter which didn’t really fit, and made it sit really well, in my opinion, within the piece as a whole.

At least I hope so.

 

I think it's more a matter of what problem you're trying to fix. I'm rewriting the end of my wip from scratch because I'm cutting an entire character and changing the context of basically everything that happens in the climax. Some of the beats will be similar, but it's just too different for simple editing to fix. Previously I'd reworked a section of the climax because I just wanted a slightly different sequence with the same bones, so some shuffling around and writing in additional bits and pieces worked fine. A total rewrite there would've been a waste of time, I think, because what I had was already mostly what I wanted and there's no reason to scrap perfectly adequate work imo.

I'm not entirely sure about blank slate vs rewrite from original. Again it might depend on how different it needs to be. Like, I redid my opening mostly off the top of my head because I needed to fix the character voice, which isn't going to happen going off an old version - I just used the old one as sort of a first draft for the sequence of events. If I wanted to change what happened, also, then it would've been useless. If you can get something out of an older draft, it's probably advantageous to use it, but if you've got the voice, events, and tone in your head and just feel you need to update the prose itself, starting fresh might be the way to go.

 

I don't like to rewrite, too much effort. If it gets bad enough I'll either just go with the flow of a different story than planned, or tweak the plot to where it works.

 

I've decided I should rework because every single draft has had similar structural problems, so plainly rewriting isn't working.

 

I would consider my second book (pending publication later this year) as being re-written - I wrote the original version over 5 years ago when my writing was not nearly as good as it is now and I tossed and re-wrote about a quarter of it before submitting. Then when I got my first set of changes back from my editor pointing out some massive characterization and continuity issues, I basically gutted the whole middle of the MS and completely re-wrote that part from scratch. I'd say the book in its current state (after yet another round of edits after the first one is more than 50% original material, which would fit my personal criteria for re-writing as opposed to just revising.

Other people's mileage of course may vary.

 

Cutting away stuff that is shit, adding stuff that is not shit, etc.

 

When I rewrite, I rewrite. I hated the idea of it, too. After all my hard work, I'm just supposed to do it again? Blank page and all? But it really can make a difference and fix things or solve problems that wouldn't have been addressed as well without a rewrite. I don't rewrite everything. I usually know very quickly when I look back over a chapter or short story if I'm going to need to take another stab at it with a fresh start.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I really appreciate all your thoughts and suggestions. I have just started rewriting a whole chapter, and it's going to be so different that I've started again. I couldn't cope with the idea of just throwing away what I had done, so I actually started typing it at the top of the same file in Scrivener. That way I can see beneath it what I had done before, and know that I have the option of lifting bits I still like or need and rewriting the rest. It's a kind of compromise between the other options I suppose. It's working well so far - I've rewritten loads, am much happier with it, and it doesn't feel as arduous as I expected it to.

 

To me a rewrite does mean a blank document and starting from page one. However the prospect isn't devastating or horrifying to me. The reason I do rewrites is because when my amateur writing career began, mostly fan fiction, my writing skills were substantially lesser than they were today. Admittedly I still have far to go before I'm a professional, which I'll consider myself with my first book publication, but I have improved by leaps and bounds. When I wrote my first fan fic all those years ago it was spitting ideas on paper, winging plots, and hoping someone would like it.

Now I actually plan things out, work on plots, proof read, edit, and a lot of over things to improve the overall quality. I do rewrites which are, to me, personally satisfying to see finished. It allows me to offer my small fan base of readers to see more of the characters I use, worlds I set things in, and so on. Most of my fan fics are based on established franchises, but I also use a lot original characters and sometimes to my own interpretation of things, so it does get interesting. I do plan to one day have some of my original works published, and for me it's a journey, and rewrites are milestones. These allow me to go back and see how I've grown and improved over time, see what still needs work, and come closer to my ultimate goal, publication.

 

What you describe is what I mean by rewrite, yes. It's a more extreme version of "edit".

 

People work differently, depending on how much they are a 'planner' or a 'pantser'. This means, if you can plan beforehand and stick to the outline (not all people can do this), you can safe yourself a ton of work.

However, if you are a pantser or some combination of planner/pantser, you write and afterwards you discover the troublespots in characterisation/storyline/chapters.

I myself am a pantser by heart, but I need to hash out the broad storyline before or I'll have to do a complete re-write of my story after I've written it—and I abhor this idea! What's the point? I stuck to this project now for more than a year, scrapped I-don't-know-how-many-words (three complete structural changes a quarter through the story), and then I should do yet another?? No way! So far, it works.

I don't regret my three re-writes: and yes, that meant starting from scratch with a blank page. Every new start honed my voice and the way I told my story, and when I look at the comments I now get, they echo what I aim for: so it was good and necessary that I took my sweet time. I learned so much, which words, which sentence-structures when, which narrative distance I should be writing in. I don't regret a single word I wrote, when I look at where it's got me.

 

I started as a pure pantser, then added in some planning. I'll still tend to write to see what comes out, then spit shine it with a lot of hard work.

 

My idea of rewriting is correcting things or changing things that aren't working. I don't know if I've ever totally scrapped a novel and started from scratch there's always the bones and certain scenes to keep. Although some characters might bite the dust. In my WIP I started writing with the notion that Eff, the mc Finlay's friend, had never been to Finlay's house and in chapter 2 for the first time sees his crazy art wall and clashes with Finlay's mother. But as I continued writing things changed. I decided to make Eff a best friend that Finlay's known since he was seven which means their initial sleepover has to be rewritten. I leave that stuff for the second draft. The reason I made Eff an old friend was that their crazy bond strengthened the characters.
In a past project I wrote an entire first draft with an artist befriending the mc and actually doing several portraits of the mc but axed this man, and his subplot of the artwork in the second draft. He was replaced with a 'villain' because it offered more conflict.

 

I guess it depends on how good you are. My first draft was rough.

Multiple sentences starting with the same word. Same length sentences. Descriptions that flounder or go on for too long. Dialog, action and description in the wrong order. Plot holes. Whole bad chapters that took place before the story. Info dumps.

I mean, I had the first draft open when I did the second, but I'm sure that by now there are hardly any of the same words there.

It's fun to get better at writing. The only progress you know is by looking at how far your writing has come from one draft to the next.