Who else spends more time revising a story than they do writing the first draft?

[8letters]

My next story is at my editor. It's almost 22k words (about 6 LitE pages). I started writing it on 1/13 and finished it on 3/5. The coronavirus took me out of writing for a while (I didn't get it, but the general state of things took me out of the mood to write), and it wasn't until June that I seriously got down to editing it. I finished editing it on 6/22.

I then sent it to an alpha-reader. She spent a lot of time reading it and provided a lot of good comments. Her last comment was on 7/8. Once she said she was done, I started reviewing her comments. I made a lot of changes, which is not unusual for me to do once I get initial feedback for one of my stories.

I sent the story out to my beta-readers on 8/7. I gave them three weeks to send me their feedback. It took me a while to process all the feedback, and I finally sent the story to my editor on 9/11.

Does anyone else follow a process remotely like mine?

 

[RejectReality]

I typically feel things being off if they are, and end up revising as I go. Or, it gets chucked into the half-baked folder if nothing feels right. My "first drafts", when complete, typically don't change much at all through the editing process. I've already ironed out the rough spots by that point. It's all grammar, bits of spice, and trying to weed out word repetition.

 

[KeithD]

Well, seeing as how I, first, write the draft fast, and that I review it before sending it to the editor, clean it up when it returns from the editor and review it again then, and then review it months later before submitting it here, I guess I spend more time working on it after writing it than I do while writing it.

 

[NotWise]

I don't write "first drafts." I edit as I go. If I've left significant problems in the story, then I'll usually block shortly before I get to the end, because things aren't working out. I'll go back and fix the problems and then the final edit ls the last thing to do when I get to the end.

That might be a pretty amateur approach, but I'm an amateur.

 

[KeithD]

My two final steps (because early on I found they are issues I have trouble with when drafting) are a spellcheck review and a separate check for double quote marks (that quotes that have been opened get closed).

 

[Jamie_and_Lisa]

Lisa: We just start typing and dump everything out, then Jamie edits.

Jamie: I thought you edited?

Lisa: No, we agreed you would.

Jamie: That was when you were doing all of the writing.

Lisa: And?

Jamie: Now we write together so you should do some editing too.

Lisa: So, nobody is editing.

Jamie: Looks that way.

Lisa: We'll get back to you, Eight.

(background) I really thought you were editing...

(even fainter) Somebody probably should be...

 

[masterandmargarita]

I'm amazed by anyone that just writes their story beginning to end and hands it off. I'm not capable of writing anything readable in one go. It takes me a mininum of three months to complete a short story. By then, I will have painstakingly edited and rewritten every sentence at least twenty times. After all of that, it is still a mess and requires outside editing. Some people, like my wife, have true writing talent. The rest of us just have to work our asses off.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I reckon 95% of my first draft remains untouched into the final version. I've developed a rolling edit process, but most of my "thinking it through and getting it right" goes on subconsciously, because my edit is mostly dumb typos, changing words around to keep the beat of the prose, changing phrases here and there, occasionally a sentence, rarely a paragraph. If I get stuck I'll write something else and come back to it.

I'd die a natural death if I tried to do what the OP describes - I wouldn't even start. Our brains are obviously wired quite differently.

 

[Ravenmiller]

I take my time thinking through an outline, but then my initial writing is frenetic, almost manic, as I dump the words on the page. I then slow down, edit, use Hemingway and other techniques to weed out bad writing. Then I have great beta readers and editors I've met on Lit. I've found it helpful to work with someone of the opposite sex, who has a different perspective. Once I have their feedback, I edit a couple more times until I can't bear to look at the story anymore. Then I get it published and cringe at the mistakes I missed.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't write "first drafts." I edit as I go. If I've left significant problems in the story, then I'll usually block shortly before I get to the end, because things aren't working out. I'll go back and fix the problems and then the final edit ls the last thing to do when I get to the end.

That might be a pretty amateur approach, but I'm an amateur.

This is how I work, and I was very relieved to learn that there are pro authors who do the same thing. By the time I have a complete draft I'm about 99% done. What remains is proofreading and anything raised by my beta readers.

I'm amazed by anyone that just writes their story beginning to end and hands it off. I'm not capable of writing anything readable in one go. It takes me a mininum of three months to complete a short story. By then, I will have painstakingly edited and rewritten every sentence at least twenty times. After all of that, it is still a mess and requires outside editing. Some people, like my wife, have true writing talent. The rest of us just have to work our asses off.

It's not that I just write a given passage once and then go on to the next. It's that I do my reworking in little bits, as I go, rather than writing a first draft and then making another pass over the whole thing.

 

[Abbafan]

I tend to edit as I go as well. Doing drafts made more sense back in the days when you had to write on paper, I think. You couldn't go back and change things cleanly like you could on a word processor. So do a draft, make notes, cross things out, then do another complete draft.

I can see advantages to that too, so if it works for you, that's cool.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I write and edit as I go, by the time the story is finished (As in the climax and conclusion are written) It's a matter of running it through Hemingway Editor and Grammerly and submitting.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Even before I start typing, I have hashed out the story in my head. I see there as a movie. I know the characters names and what they are basically going to say. When I do start typing, I edit as I go, most of the time as I have the story all hashed out in my mind.

If for some reason I set it aside, I have found myself doing that a lot lately, when I go back to it, I just read it through to refresh my memory. I also do a lot more editing then too.

When, I think I'm done, I run it through Grammarly, give it one more read through and then dropped it here at Lit.

Once it posts, I read through it again. If the errors aren't all that bed, I leave it be. If I find something horrendous, I do an edit drop.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm from the write hot edit cold school, I don't like to revise in process because it screws up the flow.

What I will do is if I hit a hiccup in a longish story-example if the character says something that for some reason I think he may have already said I highlight that sentence in yellow then keep going.

When I'm done I'll usually have 4/5 highlighted lines that I focus on while editing to check what I felt was off.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Write, let it sit, then edit and edit and edit. Tedious, But it works for me.

 

[SimonDoom]

Definitely not me. My writing process is pretty slow these days, comes and goes in fits and starts, and is non-linear. I edit as I go. By the time I'm done with a draft it's usually close to where I want it and I just proofread it a few times before submitting it.

 

[yowser]

Drafting dilemmas

Thanks for this thread, I was close to posting a question closely related: 'How many drafts do you do?' but your question is more intriguingly framed.

It is clear that writers' approaches vary, and I suspect even sometimes from story to story. Some tales almost seem to write themselves, others take ages to wrestle them into submission.

My first draft is generally 60-80 percent there, but I cannot finish if I haven't printed it out and marked it up ferociously. Paragraphs get moved around, wording gets changed, often multiple times. Only a couple times with complex stories have I had to print out a second full penultimate draft, but it has happened.

My editor, unfortunately, lives inside my head, the worst parent you ever had. He's not happy until he can't find a divot or a rough spot on the wall anywhere, and it is finally time to put the last coat of paint on.

One other necessary step is many many ruminative strolls in the neighborhood, outside, amongst trees and living things, since all manner of things get sorted out that way.

 

[RejectReality]

So far as timing goes, I'll sometimes pound out an RR story in under 24 hours. Lowborn as Dark took me several years ( with long lulls ) to go from the first four chapters to the finished story.

I've got stories like Violet Valentine that I've been fiddling with around that time every year for going on a decade. I know the story is there, but it's just never quite hit the right note in time for the contest or the holiday itself. Once I miss the window for a themed story like that, my drive vanishes until the window opens up the next year.

Sometimes I come back to something I'd abandoned as "off" and not have any idea what I thought was wrong with it. I've had stories sit for months and then finish in a day upon reading back through it cold.

 

[Emirus]

My next story is at my editor. It's almost 22k words (about 6 LitE pages). I started writing it on 1/13 and finished it on 3/5. The coronavirus took me out of writing for a while (I didn't get it, but the general state of things took me out of the mood to write), and it wasn't until June that I seriously got down to editing it. I finished editing it on 6/22.

I then sent it to an alpha-reader. She spent a lot of time reading it and provided a lot of good comments. Her last comment was on 7/8. Once she said she was done, I started reviewing her comments. I made a lot of changes, which is not unusual for me to do once I get initial feedback for one of my stories.

I sent the story out to my beta-readers on 8/7. I gave them three weeks to send me their feedback. It took me a while to process all the feedback, and I finally sent the story to my editor on 9/11.

Does anyone else follow a process remotely like mine?

I was absolutely amazed, 8letters, when I read your system of writing, your editing, alpha reader, you reviewing her comments and making changes, sending it to your beta readers (plural?), you processing their feedback, then sending it to your editor. In answer to your question, I should be surprised if anyone follows a process remotely like yours. Who would want to?

Your process reads as writing by committee. That isn’t meant to be offensive although it may seem that way. It’s a process I can only say comes across as someone who has no confidence in producing anything on their own. I don’t see anything wrong in asking someone to read a story and give their opinion and then send it to someone else to edit but to go through the process you describe? Unbelievable. I’m actually wondering whether you are winding us up and it’s not true?

When I first began writing my method was to start with an idea and where it was going and then begin with the first sentence, work it out in detail as I went on, and finish with the last sentence. After which I edited it before submission.

Then, by a series of circumstances, someone did a combination of beta reader and editor on a few stories while I continued on my begin with the first sentence and finish with the last one. But that relationship ended.

My last two stories have been different. I still have the idea for the story and know where it begins, what’s roughly going to happen on the way, and how it’s going to end. The difference is when in the past I’ve had an idea for something later in the story I’ve done nothing about it and just continued. The problem has been when I’ve reached the part in the story where I want to use it I can’t remember what I had written in my head.

Now I will stop writing, write out that scene, and when I get to that part of the story it’s there waiting for me. I haven’t had anyone’s assistance for those two stories but I will admit it would have been useful.

Is it my place to criticise another writer’s system? No. But I don’t consider I’ve done that, I’ve merely expressed my amazement anyone uses such a long winded process and feels they need that much assistance. However, looking at the success of 8letters stories, particularly My European Summer Vacation, it obviously works so keep going.

 

[Omenainen]

Write, let it sit, then edit and edit and edit. Tedious, But it works for me.

This sounds like me.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Another who benefits from letting it sit. I don't think it's coincidence that my best-rated stories were ones I'd mostly written years earlier then tidied up for Lit.

I tend to write chunks on my phone, then read through and put in the punctuation and edit, generally fleshing out certain bits. May do that again, then get the whole thing into one document to read and move sections around as needed. Final edit before posting.
Then I couldn't resist editing each chapter before submitting it in my recent series, which helped when I'd forgotten some of what I'd written months earlier (so when a guy says he's going on holiday in 3 weeks, I could then ensure that 3 weeks later he referred to why the trip had been cancelled).
Generally I stop editing when I stop having fun (or for work, when the deadlines land, when ideally I've at least done a first draft)

 

[8letters]

I was absolutely amazed, 8letters, when I read your system of writing, your editing, alpha reader, you reviewing her comments and making changes, sending it to your beta readers (plural?), you processing their feedback, then sending it to your editor. In answer to your question, I should be surprised if anyone follows a process remotely like yours. Who would want to?

Your process reads as writing by committee. That isn’t meant to be offensive although it may seem that way. It’s a process I can only say comes across as someone who has no confidence in producing anything on their own. I don’t see anything wrong in asking someone to read a story and give their opinion and then send it to someone else to edit but to go through the process you describe? Unbelievable. I’m actually wondering whether you are winding us up and it’s not true?
:
Is it my place to criticise another writer’s system? No. But I don’t consider I’ve done that, I’ve merely expressed my amazement anyone uses such a long winded process and feels they need that much assistance. However, looking at the success of 8letters stories, particularly My European Summer Vacation, it obviously works so keep going.

I enjoy writing as a collaborative process. I like people challenging weaknesses in my story, pushing me to write a better story. My first draft is a sexual fantasy that I find hot. What I want to publish is a sexual fantasy that many, many readers find hot. I feel that my confidence in my writing makes it easier for me to accept feedback and to make changes based on it. I don't need to prove that my original story was a good one.

I sent the story to seventeen beta-readers, heard back from six.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

Doing the rewrite is my favourite part. I tend to 'write' in my head on long walks then crash it all in to make sure the ideas are all there. Then I can go back and edit/add at my leisure.

I write and record my own music and use the same approach. Stick a load of guitar and keyboard ideas down then edit and play over them to fine tune it all.

It is a nice feeling when what is initially an incoherent mush or words or sounds becomes readable or listenable.

The first draft is a slog. The bells and whistles are the fun part!

 

[Bramblethorn]

I was absolutely amazed, 8letters, when I read your system of writing, your editing, alpha reader, you reviewing her comments and making changes, sending it to your beta readers (plural?), you processing their feedback, then sending it to your editor. In answer to your question, I should be surprised if anyone follows a process remotely like yours. Who would want to?

8letters' process doesn't seem particularly outlandish to me. From what I can glean from acknowledgements and authors' notes, it's not at all uncommon for pro authors to get feedback from several readers (often other authors) before the story goes to an editor, and then proofreading after that.

 

[Emirus]

I sent the story to seventeen beta-readers, heard back from six.

How did you find seventeen beta readers?