Do you edit for major plot elements first and then go to a line by line edit? The opposite? Both at the same time? Or do you have some entirely different way of breaking up your editing tasks.
Also, how many drafts do you usually go through before declaring a story "complete" enough to submit it?
Jon
If that doesn't work, I just edit the part that needs changing, sequentially.
If I'm editing for how I said it, I usually go sequentially.
I stop rewriting when I think it's as good as I can make it. (I know, duh, but that's the criterion I use!)
And as much as it's supposed to be bad, I have an eye to edit every time I read the story, and when I writ eit in the first place. The trouble is, if I go through to many times I get too bored to see the errors and start skimming. I mean, even the most interesting story is only interesting so many times in a row.
Does that make any sense to anyone?
-Monolith-
quote:
Do you edit for major plot elements first and then go to a line by line edit?
No, but I should.
Editing, for me, is as arduous a task as writing. More so, sometimes, because I tend to over edit, and it kills my passion for the story.
I should learn when to stop, I guess, but I'm never satisfied. The inner critic just doesn't have a mute button, the bastard.
I think this is why I've never submitted anything. No story is ever good enough.
1) Block off a scene. (A scene is a chunk of story - how I decide a scene has ended varies, but it generally means I've shifted time, shifted place, or shifted character so the MC is talking to someone new. It doesn't really matter. The point here is to bite off a chunk of story I can chew.)
2) Skim the scene and establish its purpose. A scene ought to move either the main plot or a subplot forward or tell the reader something significant about the characters/setting. Preferably it will do more than one. If it does none of those things - or if it just repeat things I've established earlier - I draw a big X over the scene. It's toast.
3) Figure out whether the scene is in the right place. This has a lot to do with timing. I try not to run subplot or character-building scenes one right after the other, but at the same time I want to space the main plot out a bit. If the scene is in the wrong place, I move it. If there's nowhere to move it, then I make a list of essential information in the scene, X it, and move on.
4) I go through the scene paragraph by paragraph (in the case of dialogue, this is more like clumps of lines), and, bearing the essential purpose(s) of the scene in mind, I do a quickie evaluation. If the paragraph does not further the plot or subplots, does not estabish setting, and does not say anything new about the character, then it gets the big ol' X. If it does one of those things but in my opinion distracts from the scene's main purpose, I try and find somewhere else to put it. If I can't, it gets the X.
5) There are now big holes in the scenes, sometimes ones that need filling with new and better material. I write new material in the margins. I keep a notebook handy for when I run out of margin.
6) I go over whatever's left of the scene and do line edits.
7) I block out the next scene.
---
The process isn't really as organized as I've laid it out here, but I will do all of these steps on every scene in the novel. Only the order changes much. And I always evaluate before I start line edits: it saves me editing stuff I'll only throw away.
I'm in the middle of a big edit right now and it's killer... but I expect this, the first edit I've done on the finished draft, to also be the last. That's how I like it. I don't want to go over this material again; I'll only get sick of it.
I will have one more chance, though, when I go back and type the changes in. There's usually some minor adjustments made then.
[This message has been edited by Blue_Rabbit (edited June 14, 2005).]