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]

Because I write in the character's voice, going through and hacking out words just for the sake of shortening things would really muck things up, so I don't do that.

See, but that's not really what editing and cutting stuff down is about. Editing serves a very definite purpose. Trimming the extra stuff helps keep the pacing of a story moving. Forward momentum is quite important, and narrative bogged down by extra description, stuff that's not particularly relevant and dialogue that goes on for too long tends to make readers loose interest and wander off. Trimming helps keep the story both focused and moving along. So personally, I think editing and cutting are just as important part of the writing process as banging out that first draft.

I didn't really realize this myself until some pro editors went through some of my stuff and suggested trimming things, and really it made a ton of positive difference in my writing.

I do understand characters not going where you think they would though. This happens to me quite often actually.

[niniane]

This is true. I wake up every morning, eventually make myself get out of bed, turn on the computer, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, put on clothes, etc.

All kinds of dull, boring, thoughts go through my mind. But most likely, no one wants to read them. *sigh* So just because they are in a genuine voice does not make them interesting or valuable.

I do agree, though, that hacking out stuff just to shorten a story isn't a good idea. It needs to be hacked out because the stuff that you're shortening wasn't really all that interesting to begin with/didn't add much to the story. But I agree with Pris in that this is the point of proper editing.