Writing & rewriting

© Nils Osmar 2010

Most stories go through an initial draft (sometimes called a "rough"), followed by rewrites.   You write a version, set it aside, then pick it up a few hours or days later, read it over and make changes. You may find yourself moving paragraphs around, tightening up dialogue, changing the opening, changing  the ending, losing or adding characters, writing whole new pages or paragraphs and deleting old ones.  This is natural; every writer does it.  Nothing's sacred about your story until you're happy with it.

I recommend saving every draft of your story. If you do fifty rewrites, you'll end up with fifty versions of the story on your hard drive.  This is fine actually.  You can tell which is the most recent version, from the date.  And you won't have to worry about accidentally rewriting something then wishing you had left it as it was.  (You can go back to an earlier draft if you liked the original wording better.)  Text files take up almost no space on your hard drive.... you can fit literally millions of them on an average internal drive.... so you don't have to worry about wasted space.

Saving all your drafts also helps establish authorship.  The multiple drafts show the work and thought that went into it, and help prove that you're the true author, if there's ever a dispute.

It doesn't matter in the early drafts if the grammar is perfect, or your sentences are in fragments, or there are typographical errors.  Why worry about the tense, spelling or grammar, when you may end up tossing out or rewriting large portions of the story?  In the first two or three drafts, most authors are just getting something down on paper -- generating raw material that they can rearrange and polish later, to turn into a finished story.   (Why waste time polishing something you may not use?)  In later drafts, when you've worked out whatever you need to about the structure, you can go in and edit it more carefully.

If you've written a draft or two and generally like how it's shaping up, but aren't sure if the structure is solid, you may want to ask:

• How's your set-up?  Is it long enough for us to get to know the characters, and care enough about them to keep reading?  Is it short enough for us to still have room to develop the plot and resolve all its elements, without turning into a novel or novella?  Set-ups don't have to be any particular length, but if something feels lopsided about your story, take a look at its opening and check whether it may need to be lengthened or shortened.

• Do the characters feel real to you?  Do their actions flow believably from their personalities?  (Are you clear what their personalities are?)

• Who's your main character, and who's secondary?   If you have several characters, and the story feels too loose and unfocused when you read over it, you may need to rethink which is the main one.   You may even need to delete some characters who aren't working... as the saying goes, writers need to be able to "kill their babies."

• Does your main character change and develop from the beginning as the narrative progresses?  In most stories, events change the characters who live through them. What events does your character experience, and how is she or he changed by them?  If your character is a racist, for example, and your narrative throws her into a situation in which she has to work closely with someone from a different  racial background, does the experience change her perspective at all?  Make her more or less prejudiced?  If your character believes money will solve all of his problems, then gets a large infusion of cash from somewhere, does it confirm him in his idea that money is all he needs for happiness?  Or does he turn against the whole idea of money, after seeing the damage that wealth can sometimes do?  (Being shaken out of a viewpoint is a change, and so is being confirmed and locked more deeply into it.)  (Going through a profound experience and not being changed or moved by it can also be the basis of an interesting story.)

• Is there a clear inciting incident that shakes things up after your setup, and sets your characters on the path? (Remember that the inciting incident can be as small as someone yawning in a classroom, if it sets up reverberations that the characters eventually need to deal with.   It doesn't have to be earth shaking.  But if you're following a traditional story structure, it does have to be there.)

• Does the plot hold together?  Do the main events flow from the inciting incident?  Does the ending wrap up and resolve the questions or problems put forward by the opening? (Should it?)

• Does the story hold the reader's interest?  Or does it sag and lose momentum, making it hard for the reader to continue reading?  If it sags, where and why does it happen?  What would have to change about the story to resolve the problem? 

• Does the ending "work?"  Are you happy with it?  Are your readers?  Are the conflicts you set up in the beginning resolved, or at least addressed,  in a satisfactory way?

These are the elements I would look at in the early drafts. In later drafts, it's good to look at the grammar, word usage, sentence structure and other elements.