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]

Oh yeah I totally understand writing under a crunch. A lot of my prompt stuff falls under this where there's a fic deadline and I'm busting my ass to try and get it done so while I'd love another pair of eyes to look at it, I never get it done in time for that.

Outline are an interesting... hmmm... I should have asked about that too as I'm all curious about that now. I don't generally write things long enough to require them anymore other than the one chapter fic that I'm shocked to find myself working on. I like outlines, myself. I tend to deviate from them and change them as I roll along (as the characters sometimes don't behave) but it's really great to have a place to start and at least a general direction of where you're going.