Hi people (and otherwise!)
I want to explain why editing is so much better than writing itself. (Warning: this might not be as useful to plotters, but it certainly is to pantsers who don't have much patience to think every plot detail through.)
What????!?!?!!? will be the reaction of most of the people reading this. I don't blame you. But consider this:
1. you write... a first draft. It goes all right (at least if you're a pantser, you're normally not as concerned with what-on-earth is going on in your ms. At first.) You have a finished product, and if it's anything like mine, then it'll be the bare bones of the actual book. It'll be so minimalistic no one else would ever want to read it. The characters are great, they're actually life-like, and each has their own personality, but their emotions, and the reasons they do things (which they do!) might be lacking clarity. The plot, too, could be refined, just so on page one-hundred Max isn't a guy, when he was a girl before. (Unless that's the sort of story you're writing!)
Congratulations! You now have a skeleton (in your drawer!). It might have 60-100k words (or a looot more) and you can put it aside happily.
It's time to wait.
Wait...
Wait...
Ok. Let's pretend a month has passed. (A month is a good time to get over your initial furious writing draft and start to see things more objectively.)
This is when editing comes around.
What's next?
If you're at all sensitive to story structure/characters/plot you can now tell what the manuscript needs. I don't normally read through any of my drafts in detail. I just skim over them and usually edit as I go. This works for me. It might not work for you.
There might be a lot of things to do... such as:
reordering scenes
writing more scenes you forgot/didn't know at the time but which need to be in the manuscript
clarify text
tighten prose (or on the opposite side/the thing I have to do often: add meat to the bones)
strengthen your rambled adjectives into some more descriptive nouns
cut characters that serve no purpose
cut scenes that serve no purpose
cut mercilessly
add description of places/emotions (or perhaps cut them if they're too much or too fluffy!)
In short: you finally get to edit. You have the bones of a story you find brilliant, and now you have to flesh them out, so other people will be able to get a glimpse of the grand picture in your mind. This is FUN! I don't understand why people seem to hate it. It is the best thing of the whole writing process, when you finally have a framework, and can start doing what you set out to do in the first place.
I do however know why it might turn people off: because the first draft might not be good enough to love editing as much as you should. Do you ever run into problems such as 'the whole plot doesn't make any sense because it's based on something stupid?'. I'll give you an example: say you have an artefact which someone has and someone else needs. The two characters meet very early in the story... and the one in the position of 'more' power (who is also the one who needs the artefact) fails to realize it's next to her - and not because the other character is actively trying to hide it... but because... PLOT. The whole plot would have crumbled if she got the artefact when all intelligence implied she should have. (Yeah this was one of my early drafts.. actually my first finished book... and it was broken beyond repair. Don't worry. It's since been shelved.).
How can you love editing then, if your plot is not a plot, and if you're so close to the manuscript nothing ever works? I tell you what: Trust your instinct. Put the manuscript aside for at least a month, then look at it again. There will be things you hate/which don't feel right. You can cut them (though I do advise keeping them in a separate document in case you change your mind later - which I usually don't, but it doesn't hurt to have backup) immediately. There will be things you will want to expand. That's great. That's lovely. You'll know more now than you did when you first wrote it (unless you're an outliner, and I don't know how useful this essay will be to you!), and you can now put this all into motion.
Here's a quick tip: I don't normally use notes. I make a lot of notes in the month between first and second draft, but I rarely look at them while editing. The important details stick - as all good ideas do. The rest... can be dismissed if it wasn't important/exciting enough to remember in the first place. Plus: your notes might be conflicting (say one note says character A must do X to comply with the plot... but another say character A can't do X or the plot will break) ... and they'll just confuse you to no end.
This editing gives you so much freedom! You finally know what your story is about. You can finally put it the way you wanted it. And don't worry, if even after the edit the story still doesn't make sense. There's always the option to improve on the next draft. And you'll write other stories Your current manuscript is not the only thing you'll ever write! And the more you practise the better your next manuscript will be!
Does this help? I hope it does and I hope you'll have a great week! As usual I'd be excited to have some comments (or sales! Ahahah). Cheers!
J.M.
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