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

[1smut_princess]

I do cut some stuff. You will only rarely see me cut scenes. As for wordflow... it depends on the character.
If their speech/thought patterns tend to be very stream of consciousness... then no. I barely touch them except to make them not sound like morons.
But beyond a rough draft, I send it to a beta, then we throw it on googledocs after she's looked at it and gone through it a few times, then we go over it together, and then I go over it. It doesn't take anywhere near as long to do (for me at least as I'm absent for the bulk of it) to edit as to write.
Why do all that when I've got splendid perfect peoples like Amku and bellaknoti at my back? They usually tell me to go away and let them at it, so I can get back to things that they want me to do: like writing more.

[prisoner_24601]

Interesting. One of the reasons I like to edit, is because I tend to learn a lot by doing it. By sitting down and trying to be critical about what needs to stay and what needs to go, is a great learning experience. But I think we might be talking about two different things: editing and proofreading.

[1smut_princess]

No I actually do know the difference between the two. And I do learn as I go along, I learn by seeing what the betas do and what they're thought process is on things (not the word rules etc, just ask the comma fairy... as I'm hopeless) that they think should be changed around and why. Or cut. But there's almost never anything cut. Like - ever really.
And critical - my dear, my grandmother is the biggest yenta you could ever meet, and I've inherited the trait. I just apply it to everything I do, rather than what everyone else does.