How many times?

[TarnishedPenny]

I am working on a story for the On The Job event. I don't use an editor, instead polishing it myself, reading and changing and reading and... I think this is six times through the story for me thus far and I think it'll be another couple of times before my mind deems it acceptable.

Am I the only one who does this to themselves? When does the law of diminishing returns kick in?

That pounding sound you hear is my head on the wall.

 

[TadOverdon]

I revisit and revise a lot in sections or paragraphs as I go. I'm sure that there are passages that I've taken apart, rewritten, or discarded and replaced six times or more during the process.

Then a once-or-twice over from start to finish, of course. I guess I reread a book at least three times. And, of course, after it's out there I see the stuff I completely blew.

 

[KeithD]

Diminishing returns start to insinuate themselves in my stories after about the second read. What I add then might help in some direction, but any adjustments I start making hurt the original sense of spontaneity and flow. I do use an editor, and generally send it off for editing after the second read. It spends long enough in editing for me to see it with fresh eyes when it comes back.

 

[mynameisben]

I am working on a story for the On The Job event. I don't use an editor, instead polishing it myself, reading and changing and reading and... I think this is six times through the story for me thus far and I think it'll be another couple of times before my mind deems it acceptable.

Am I the only one who does this to themselves? When does the law of diminishing returns kick in?

That pounding sound you hear is my head on the wall.

For me, the law of diminishing returns kicks in when I notice myself making microscopic changes to text with one editing pass, and then changing that same text back to the way it was before on the next pass. I don't pay any attention to the actual number of editing passes that takes. The job is only done when it is done. Thankfully, it doesn't take me very many editing passes to get to that point. My first draft is almost always very close to my final draft.

For you, the number of editing passes it takes all depends on how honed your attention to detail is. When your "mind deems it acceptable" seems like a pretty good benchmark to me. Pounding your head against the wall is a less than optimal strategy that I cannot recommend.


Ben

 

[NotWise]

Some of my earlier stories were read and reread over and over. Since then I've done what TadOverdon described. I review and revise as I go, maybe plant some notes to myself in the text, then do one or two editing passes before I call it done.

 

[TadOverdon]

The wonders of word processing: I often color-code paragraphs that I know I'm going to come back to at some point in the process for a second pass. Sometimes, a scene exists in armature connecting better-developed sections.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Whenever I feel I am stalling out, or I am unsure of where I'm going, I scroll back and do a reread, fine-tuning as I go, sometimes, but not always, from the beginning. Generally, when I get to the place I had stopped, I find I have momentum and keep going. Doing this, I probably do a half dozen or more partial rereads. Then, when I'm finished, I do a careful read through, and then another, reading it aloud.


I still find mistakes once it's published.

 

[TadOverdon]

Whenever I feel I am stalling out, or I am unsure of where I'm going, I scroll back and do a reread, fine-tuning as I go, sometimes, but not always, from the beginning. Generally, when I get to the place I had stopped, I find I have momentum and keep going. Doing this, I probably do a half dozen or more partial rereads. Then, when I'm finished, I do a careful read through, and then another, reading it aloud.

This. Starting the day by revising something is a good way to get started when you're a little unfocused.

 

[Trionyx]

Whenever I feel I am stalling out, or I am unsure of where I'm going, I scroll back and do a reread, fine-tuning as I go, sometimes, but not always, from the beginning. Generally, when I get to the place I had stopped, I find I have momentum and keep going. Doing this, I probably do a half dozen or more partial rereads. Then, when I'm finished, I do a careful read through, and then another, reading it aloud.


I still find mistakes once it's published.

Read it out loud. I find more mistakes that way. And it might sound weird, so I can change it as well.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Read it out loud. I find more mistakes that way. And it might sound weird, so I can change it as well.

Yeah, I just said that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Every time this comes up I seem to be the oddity. 98% of my raw draft is in my final. I do a rolling edit as I go along, futzing with words and phrases, getting the beat right. I might fiddle with a bunch of sentences and the occasional paragraph, but rarely more than that. I'll generally read it through twice from the top, a couple of days apart, then submit. Constantly scrubbing the text would kill it for me.

I read of all you guys doing your heads in with multiple edits and say, thank god I think and write the way I do. I'd die in a ditch if I did that.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't know; it can vary a lot. Sometimes I have an old, previously unfinished story that needs a lot of work. At other times the story just comes out, virtually complete.

Maybe four times, on average, is about the limit. I remember Brian De Palma once saying that, when editing a movie, he'd see the same scenes so often that he would lose track of whatever the meaning of it all was supposed to be. Read The Devil's Candy for more details.

 

[_Lynn_]

Every time this comes up I seem to be the oddity. 98% of my raw draft is in my final. I do a rolling edit as I go along, futzing with words and phrases, getting the beat right. I might fiddle with a bunch of sentences and the occasional paragraph, but rarely more than that. I'll generally read it through twice from the top, a couple of days apart, then submit. Constantly scrubbing the text would kill it for me.

I read of all you guys doing your heads in with multiple edits and say, thank god I think and write the way I do. I'd die in a ditch if I did that.

That's what I do too.

ETA: Unless I'm trying something different than what I've done before. Then I tend to move paragraphs/sentences to where I think they fit better. Or I just toss it into a folder and move on.

 

[Voboy]

Every time this comes up I seem to be the oddity. 98% of my raw draft is in my final. I do a rolling edit as I go along, futzing with words and phrases, getting the beat right. I might fiddle with a bunch of sentences and the occasional paragraph, but rarely more than that. I'll generally read it through twice from the top, a couple of days apart, then submit. Constantly scrubbing the text would kill it for me.

I read of all you guys doing your heads in with multiple edits and say, thank god I think and write the way I do. I'd die in a ditch if I did that.

Same.

One single read-through for continuity. If it's fucked after that, I don't post it. Either way, I'm on to the next one.

 

[XerXesXu]

I am working on a story for the On The Job event. I don't use an editor, instead polishing it myself, reading and changing and reading and... I think this is six times through the story for me thus far and I think it'll be another couple of times before my mind deems it acceptable.

Am I the only one who does this to themselves? When does the law of diminishing returns kick in?

That pounding sound you hear is my head on the wall.

You have a confidence problem. I'll bet your rough drafts are better than 95% of the submissions here. Time to write down a limit to your revisions, maybe 2, and trust yourself.

 

[SimonDoom]

You have a confidence problem. I'll bet your rough drafts are better than 95% of the submissions here.

This is so, so true. You're one of the better prose stylists on the Site. You're a good writer with a good feel for words, and a good feel for your characters.

You can never lecture another writer regarding the appropriate care they take with their words. If perfectionism is important to you, it's unlikely anyone can talk you out of it.

I see Literotica as this great big playground on which to play with my stories and try things out. They may not be perfect. I may nitpick artistic choices I make post-publication.

But, eh. Whatever.

I usually take quite a while to get to the end of a first draft of a story, and I pick over and revise things along the way. So once I'm done with the first draft I probably have no more than about two additional reviews before publication.

My general philosophy is that the best way for me to become a better writer is not to keep picking over the story that's done but move on to the next story. Others may disagree.

 

[HeyAll]

I usually do just one slow edit of the whole thing, which usually takes about 1-3 days depending on the length.

That's where I look for typos, flow, quality control, improvements, etc...

Then before submitting I do a quick skim of it to look for minor things. That always leads to small changes.

After that I'm done. There is a point where I like it and I'm happy with it, and I could read it several times over and not want to make new changes (except for maybe tiny things).

 

[oggbashan]

I review on screen about four times and then print off in large print. I sit down with the printout and a pencil and go through about four more times. If I make substantial changes I go back to stage 1.

Even so, I can still miss name changes and a few minor typos...

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Six times sounds about like me, and, unfortunately, I usually still find some little point that needs correction. After I submitted my story for the On the Job challenge, I reread it again and noticed that a "not" was missing. That changed a major aspect of the story, so I did a minor edit and resubmitted yesterday. It's approved this morning and waiting for the 26th, so I'm not looking at it again until it goes live.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I draft one chapter/section at a time, usually on an iPad. Then, I move that draft over to a bigger screen with all the proofing tools switched off. I go through from start to finish, rewriting and adding additional content. Once I’ve done that with each chapter/section I put them together into the submission that’ll go online and do the start to finish thing again. Then, it’s back to the iPad, this time running a programme like Grammarly but taking its suggestions with a pinch of salt.

So, four phases in total.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Usually, what I write the first time stands. I may change a phrase here or there because it's in passive voice, but other then that what I write the first time stands as it's been thrashed about in my head before I start writing.

I do however reread it several times to get as most of the typos corrected as possible. Grammarly helps a lot with that though, but it's not infallible.

 

[8letters]

I am working on a story for the On The Job event. I don't use an editor, instead polishing it myself, reading and changing and reading and... I think this is six times through the story for me thus far and I think it'll be another couple of times before my mind deems it acceptable.

Am I the only one who does this to themselves? When does the law of diminishing returns kick in?

That pounding sound you hear is my head on the wall.

Do I go through my stories many, many times after I finish the first draft? Yes. But the law of diminishing returns does kick in and at some point I ask other people to look at my story.

I'm finalizing a 52K story. I had someone beta-read it, and they found 98 minor errors in it. And they didn't find them all! At some point, you need a fresh set of eyes.

 

[TadOverdon]

When I talk about revision I'm throwing final read-throughs and proofing in there. If I separate the two, then I'd say I revise from start to finish maybe once, with numerous bits of revision here and there as I go.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Interesting, the different methods and philosophies.

Simon, XXX, thanks for your compliments. Story has been launched.

 

[gordo12]

I guess I'm quite anal about this. During the course of writing, I will start from the beginning and read through the entire story for flow and errors, doing minor edits & polishing along the way. Then I start writing the newest section. That can mean dozens of edits. Dozens of readthroughs. But it gets my mind into the flow of the story and characters.

When I finish, I toss it into Grammarly and let it show me the other stuff I've missed.