Rule 17 Writing Question

[prisoner_24601]

Since I'm always curious about other people's creative process and how they write, I thought I'd ask the other fic writers on this community how much editing and trimming do you do to your work? Do you edit and trim at all? Write a first draft and then are finished? How much of your stuff ends up on the figurative cutting room floor? I'm wondering if other writers love to edit and pick at stuff the way I do or if they have an entirely different way of writing.

I know that for me, I'm a huge fan of Strunk & White's Rule 17 (Omit needless words) and that most of the time, I tend to do as much work editing, trimming and cutting my fics as I do on the actual first draft. And I've definitely had stories where my betas (or myself) have chopped huge parts out and trimmed the dialogue, etc... to pick up the pacing and the rhythm of the fic, and always my stories seem better for it.

So tell me your creative process because I'd love to know!

Comments

[nithu]

Is that because you weren't taught it, or because you're too old to remember it? :p

[scarylady]

Both. My memories of English Language classes are of endless comprehension tests, I have no memory at all of being taught any punctuation.

Mainly, like my spelling, mine stems from reading constantly from the age of four. I know what things should look like. But I made loads of punctuation errors in the first few chapters of T&S (before I got a beta who taught me the rules I didn't know) which I keep promising myself I'll go back and fix.

[nithu]

It's strange, I can remember quite clearly being taught about speech punctuation in junior school, I just can't remember the detail. My 'comma muscle memory' is getting better and I do understand why most are necessary (or not, or should be semi-colons), but I can never remember all the technical explanations. As far as grammar goes, my limit is remembering what verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns are.

It's not just grammar, when I learn something, I'm shockingly bad at remembering all the proper explanations of why something is done as it is, I just sort of remember the 'sense' of it. It was the same with programming.

[prisoner_24601]

You know, I don't think I was ever taught dialogue punctuation in school either. And it's really tricky as hell until you get the hang of it. I had to look up how to do it when I started writing fanfiction, because I really had no idea how to do it correctly.

[niniane]

I'm not sure that I was ever taught proper grammar. Hmmm...this may explain much. Spelling, yes. But I think that only one teacher really bothered with punctuation/grammar/anything other than spelling and reading comprehension.

Oh well...I live in a state with bad schools. *sigh* Obviously.

[prisoner_24601]

Oh man, we had to diagram sentences to learn grammar. I remember all of that stuff. It was freaking horrible. I honestly think the best way to learn grammar is to learn a foreign language. It's so much freaking easier that way.

But dialogue punctuation? I don't remember ever learning that in school. I don't remember writing much fiction in school either, so that might be why. Maybe they just never get around to it.

[niniane]

It is if you learn a romance language. Mandarin Chinese, not so much. ;)

I think I saw one sentence diagrammed, ever. This probably does explain my lack of English language skills. Hmmm...

[prisoner_24601]

Yeah that's true. I was learning Latin (yay! So useless and yet fun!) so there you go, lol.

[niniane]

I've heard that it helps with Spanish? Spanish is useful, although I'm now beginning to wish that certain people didn't know that I spoke it. *sigh*