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Editing and revising
How do you edit & revise? I'm talking about your manuscript/document, not how you decide what to cut/add etc.
Do you replace the original? Keep both versions? How do you make sure you use the latest version? What if you realize the previous was better? When you cut all unwanted text, do you paste it somewhere just in case? What do you call/How do you label the different versions?
Do you replace the original? Keep both versions? How do you make sure you use the latest version? What if you realize the previous was better? When you cut all unwanted text, do you paste it somewhere just in case? What do you call/How do you label the different versions?
Comments
Shamefully, I admit to working with the original. I think for me, rewriting and editing is where art comes into it for me. It is like working on a painting, adding brushstrokes etc. I've never discovered that the original was better (probably luck more than anything else). Although, if I feel something is good I do paste it to another document if I would otherwise delete it. At the moment, I'm starting a new draft from scratch, so it is called bound 2008.
As you probably guessed, I work exclusively on my laptop, until the final draft where I print it off and read it aloud.
I,ve heard of people using different fonts for versions and sometimes changing the colour and/or printing on various coloured paper.
But I have to have hard copy to read and use pen/pencil to delete/scrub/comment.
Anything I delete is still on original if needed - and in notes, sometimes - but when working I paste bits onto new document and rework it rather than delete on screen.
Sometimes type alternative versions in red on the document (copy of original)
See ? I AM organised after all ! :)
So for this reason alone I now replace the original. Obviously if there is anything I think i golddust I will keep in case I can use it elsewhere.
This 3rd version, on file, is the basis for any further revisions. These are often substantial, resulting in a new version. At this point, if I forgot to make a copy of version 3, I get very cross!
After that, it's usually a matter of relatively minor things to do with style and typos. Until someone like my editor sees it - at which point the redrafting may begin all over again!
I end up with a lot of material, both longhand and in computer files, which I can never quite bear to throw away, just in case. Hence an overcrowded computer and an overcrowded house!
And where/how do you keep any paper copies? My flash fiction is mostly in plastic wallets in a ring-binder; and my stories are in (used) A4 envelopes. I eventually had to give each story a reference number - I'm up to 276 now - so I could find things.
I write in double line spacing so that I can do my first edits in longhand. I only transfer to computer when I'm pretty happy with the text. Then I type it out, print it off and continue polishing and editing on the hard copy.
The computer version gets corrected from the hard copy; I rarely edit on-screen, unless I'm on the road in which case everything gets done in the notebook til I find an internet cafe and type and send the final version.
Sorry that was so long-winded Jay!
To answer your last question - I keep all my notebooks with notes and dates of the contents written on the covers.
i write in a little notepad whenever i get an idea while i'm on the bus or wherever, but just copy that straight onto my computer as soon as i can. there are a couple of bits in book #1 that i chopped from short stories that i've written, because i liked a particular sentence or paragraph i'd done there, and it fit perfectly in my book. i just copied and pasted those parts straight over.
i'm almost done with my 2nd draft of book #1 now, and did most of my edits in red pen or highlighter on the printed copy of the first draft, and stuck on post-its for any big additions, rather than trying to scribble it on the page (it's hard enough to understand my own handwriting sometimes without trying to do that!)
i've actually been worried that i'm doing something wrong, because i haven't cut an awful lot from the first draft. i have chopped a few bits out, but nothing big. i've mostly been just amending or adding to the draft or moving bits around. i mean, i was editing the first draft as i went along (for quite a lot of it i was rereading the chapter every time i sat down to write, before i wrote any more on it), but i thought that editing usually involves culling huge amounts of the book and rewriting it. maybe my editing as i went along has stopped me needing to chop chunks out.
i've found i'm working the same way with book #2, too; editing and rereading and rewriting as i'm going along.
*SA*
While editing I do something that not all writers do, but which I urge you all to consider. Firstly I create a document called "Scrap" and I have this document open (in the background) while working on the story. If I find something that is very very cool, so cool that it can never be edited, but sadly doesn't work either in this part of the story, or at all, then I CUT (ctrl+x) and PASTE (ctrl+v) the paragraph/page/sentence from the original document into the Scrap document.
You see I haven't actually deleted it, so I don't have to chew all my fingers off worrying whether this work of genius should be lost forever to the admiring public.
For the record, I have never ever used anything from my scrap documents, but should I need to, my ego knows where to find them ;)
Once I have been through the text until my eyeballs are bleeding, I then pass the copy onto my wife who, being German, can often sniff out spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Once it passes this hurdle, has been corrected by me again, it is then passed onto one of my trusted readers to go through and read, find mistakes, give me feedback. This can take several months, so I usually start another project while that is happening.
Once I get the call that feedback is ready to be given, I pop round, eat some humble pie, take the red ink stained MS with me, start working on the corrections and plot holes.
Once that is finished my wife gets the whole thing AGAIN to read through. Once the corrections are done, I then leave it for a few months, come back to it and polish up the opening pages and work on the dreaded synopsis.
See, being a writer is easy ;)
Like ... writing four pages at the weekend, and then being told the author wants to rip them up and start over again in a completely different format, which we did last night. He wrote a page, we tore it apart, all but destroyed it and began again ... this, I hasten to add, is not Guy who is standing back, highly amused, as this author works his way through the start of what will be, essentially, an ongoing Journal. So, as a Journal it needs to be fluid, personal, casual, not the formal way it began, hence the rewriting.
So ... for anyone who thinks I get the easy tasks around here with spirit authors ...
Don't rely on it for big mss, though, as it's notorious for failing especially if you fiddle with it a lot.
(The master document, I mean...!)
Sorry if I've confused you by resurrecting this thread - I couldn't find the one I was looking for.
I've just been revising some of my short stories and found that, even though they weren't written all that long ago, technology has made them sound out of date. I've had to replace the word 'video' and there's no mention of SatNavs in my map-reading story.
Google does have its uses...
Articles become outdated, too, and new research often means that questions I have posed in previous pieces have been answered and the information can be incorporated and maybe new questions raised. Even if writing on the same topic I only read through any old articles to refresh my memory but then start from scratch on the new piece.
However I do change stuff on the computer and basically I do get very muddled up as to which are the latest versions... sometimes I change the title of it to say, latest, the version, the best version etc... which sounds obvious at the time but later on I can't remember which is which. Although reading it usually tells me. But then sometimes I file it n different places and don't know where I've filed the latest or if the one I'm looking at is the latest.
So basically I'm a completely useless person to ask.
Poems can go through a lot of changes and often it's only one word, and later on I'm unsure which word I like best. Some poems of mine out there have two versions or more.
That's a good idea that I will tart using. I often cut text from my documents, but simply call it the name of the story I am writing, followed by "extra words." The result of this is I have lots of docs, with extra words that aren't really doing anything because I'd have to view each one to see the words.
Keeping it all in one area labelled "Scrap" will help me save time.
I've nearly finished editing a short story, but I can't help thinking I've used the characters' names too much. It's M/M, so 'he said/she said' isn't possible. I've put 'his partner' and am toying with 'his companion' (although I'm not terribly happy with that), and I could thingy*** [such a way with words] between one character's full name and the abbreviation. They're in a car going somewhere for Christmas.
I wasn't concentrating properly as you can see...
It is a children's book and is, well, really not good. What he sent me is what he considered his final draft, but IMO, it's a few drafts away from being done. I read up to where I considered was the natural end of the first chapter (7 pages in) rather than where he'd marked the end of the chapter (29 pages in. No, that's not a typo. Twenty nine pages in. In a book for ten year olds). To be honest, it was a real struggle to read. Both characters sounded exactly the same; the only way I knew who was speaking was because he had A remarked, B exclaimed, A cheered, B noted. There were adverbs all over the place, terrible grammar, punctuation and spelling, unrealistic dialogue, no descriptions of anything until about five pages in, and telling, telling, telling.
I marked up the copy he'd had my mum email to me - pointing out the good as well as the not so good, with suggestions - and asked him to give me his email address so I could send it back to him, but he didn't reply. My mum's just told me that he's submitted the version that I read, as it was. I think that he wanted me to say I'd be honest, when actually he wanted me to sing his praises, and didn't want to hear it when he realised I was going to have some negatives in my critique. I don't see the point of that. How can you improve your work to publishing standard if all you have is everyone telling you what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear?
*SA*
Although coming to think of it, someone (elderly) once asked me how to get something published. On further enquiry, he had written a picture book without reading any picture books, without knowing about word count, page numbers and multiples, leaving some of the story to be told in the pictures etc. etc. etc.
I asked if he'd sent it anywhere. Yes. What did they say? That it had nothing to recommend it whatsoever and they suggested he gave up writing...
Well, I tried. The dialogue didn't mention their names at all, and one of the names isn't usually abbreviated. I managed to remove a few, and will have to hope for the best.
Then there was the 5 page story with illustrations about a dragon on the Isle of Wight. It came from someone in a writer's group ... she sent it because we were on the Isle of Wight and could publish it for her. It didn't seem to matter that we have no magazine ... I sent back advice on submitting work generally, told her to give it to the whole group, who obviously had no bliddy idea, (unquote - daughter's saying) but didn't say that. Never heard a word. Now I don't bother, it's 'sorry this is not suitable for our list' and done.
"I'm a saint," retorted Rob.
"The only saint you come close to has his name on a label in your underwear."
OK, I know I've put verb then character's name.