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]

Tooooo true.

[niniane]

It really is. Although then I worry that someone who reads one thing I write will wander into my collection of stories and be like "OMG, WTF? This stuff stinks!" Which makes me think that I need to tear through everything I've written and remove the crappiest parts. I kind of want a warning like "Some of these fics are not very good. I have put a star by the ones that are. Please ignore the others."