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

[prisoner_24601]

Interesting. I've never tried a timed prompt. I don't think I could turn off the internal editor enough to do one.

I'm like niniane - sometimes I get things betaed, sometimes not. I think in a perfect world I would but sometimes it's just something for the kmeme or it's a challenge fic with a deadline date or it seems to be working well enough that I don't need a second pair of eyes.

But I lot of times, especially when I get stuck or something isn't working, I think I'd go crazy without a second and third pair of eyes. And they catch stuff that you'd never think of. I personally find it to be extremely helpful.

[niniane]

The last point is very true. My betas are more clever than I am. I freely admit it. ;) And sometimes they can see themes in my stories that I'm oblivious to!

And, yeah, in a perfect world, everything I write would be ripped up by 10 different people, and I would rewrite a million times. But I am pathologically lazy. ;)

[amhran_comhrac]

If you ever feel up to it some of the character-specific threads on BSN have them every week. I know the Anders, Zevran, and Nathaniel ones do at least. Maybe Alistair's does, too. Not sure, I generally just skim that one.

It'll usually be something simply- like on the Anders thread this week's prompt is just "morrigan." Other ones have been things like "earring," "children," "jealousy," etc. Really vague so you don't get boxed into writing something too specific and we don't just end up with half a dozen versions of the exact same story.

I find it's a good way to try out a new style of writing or do something wildly different from my ongoing fics, which is a nice change of pace. The timing really forces me to focus on getting my grammar right as I go, too, which is never a bad thing.