Rewriting

How many drafts of a story do you usually make because it's finished? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about your stories and only start to write them when you've decided what form they'll have or do you produce a lot of different versions of the same story? Or are you somewhere in the middle and both plan out your stories a lot and rewrite them?

I'm really curious to find out how other people work because right now I rewrite a lot. One of the reasons why I haven't done much writing in the past two years or so is because I got to a point where I was incredibly frustrated with how sloppy I thought my writing was. So I'd spend 45 minutes thinking of a way to write the opening line and by the time I'd manage to come up with something half decent any desire to write or any inspiration I had for the rest of the story disappeared. Now I just write the first draft as fast as I can and then spend time taking out bits of the story and rewriting them at a slower pace and without taking chronological order into account.

I'm sorry both for the unimaginative title and if there already is a thread about it, the search didn't seem to think there is, but then you can't always trust that.

I had a thread for it, but it looks like it got deleted for whatever reason.



Anyway . . .

I don't like to rewrite. I hate it and I have absolutely no idea where to start with it. I might go back and tweak something, but I hate rewriting. I just prefer to get it right the first time.

I remember hating having to write a rough draft in school. I was like, "can't I just do it good the first time" and then there was nothing to correct on my drafts about half the time and I was all

I like to know what can be improved on, for sure, but I apply it to future stories.
If I decide to rewrite something, I don't even keep the base and fix it. I just start the whole thing over with the same plot.

I'm the same as Dru.

I don't rewrite. I find it incredibly difficult. Sure, I reread my stories afterwards, a few times, and fix a sentence or two, but I don't change big parts. I'll rather start the story all over again than redo the original.

Also I more often than not just have the opening scene, and no idea where to lead the story. It's a little easier for me to write that way than have everything planned out. I find it difficult to follow an detailed idea when writing (which is why it's so difficult for me to write chaptered stories, I think).

Mhh... I usually write a minimum of 10 different versions of the first chapter. Like, seriously. I'm NEVER satisfied. There is always a word that doesn't sound good, a sentence that doesn't fit...
And I never make it past the first chapter because by the time I have written so many different versions of the same idea, I'm so sick of it that I give up.

I have several stories planned out, but I know I will never actually write them. I simply see no point in wasting time on writing anymore. I know before I even begin that I will hate the result and erase all. It's not worth trying.

So, I only write one shots now. That's the best I can do. *shrugs*

^
There's really nothing wrong with writing oneshots though. I don't know if you intended for it to sound that way, but that's how it sounded to me.

dru's konstantine.:

^
There's really nothing wrong with writing oneshots though. I don't know if you intended for it to sound that way, but that's how it sounded to me.

Oh no, I didn't mean it in a bad way.

Well, I guess that I'm pretty sick of myself not being able to write a long story.
When I was at school, I always got good grades in writing and I NEVER rewrote anything or spend a tenth of the time I spend on stories I write for entertainment. (Yeah, I hated school.)
So, I'm frustrated to have such a poor opinion on my writing. And it doesn't matter if people tell me it's good; I always think it's crap.

Okay, I guess it's not very clear, but I can't even understand myself sometimes -.- I'm just frustrated.

^
Oh. That makes sense.
Though I think length and chaptered don't tend to have to be inclusive nor do oneshots and length have to be exclusive.
I have a chaptered story that's 5600 words and quite a few oneshots that exceed 7k.

I have a story that I've written at 13. It was the worst piece of shit known to man. Because I didn't want to feel like all that time was put to waste, I decided I wanted to rewrite it. After I did that, I was well into 83 or so word document pages and when I really thought about it, I'm not that satisfied with the plot. I feel like it doesn't make sense and I can't put the future events I want in it because it was thought out so bad.

So, I'm rewriting for the third time. This time it's going to have the same characters and same theme, plot, everything, just a different setting and different events. This times It's going to fit better with what I'm writing about (vampires: note that I don't really like them, but that's how it started)

I never rewrite. I guess my stories are like my themes- if I don't like it the first time, it's deleted and never used/seen again. I feel like rewriting things takes away from the initial emotion I may have felt while writing it; though my first NaNo novel had a great plot and I wrecked it as the story ended, I'll never try to rework it. It just doesn't need to be done.

I rewrite all the time (I'm actually doing one for Pete and I've done at least four rewrites for Perpetual Guilt).

Like Neon_Baby, I usually have a few versions of the first chapter (summary and prologue, too). I think they're all just so important that I feel like they have to be perfect. I rewrote the long summary/prologue for Silver at least three times because I couldn't decide which should be which and I ended up scrapping the entire initial first chapter and replacing it with something completely different than I first planned.

I've got a couple of new stories I wrote about three months ago that I still can't get posted to the site because I keep on finding reasons to rewrite it.

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Has anyone done a complete rewrite of a finished story? I've got a couple of my first posted stories I've been trying to rewrite for years but I find it so difficult to do.

I'm in the process of rewriting things write now. Mostly the stuff that I posted when I first joined. None of those were very good because they basically lacked a plot among other things.

I want to start trying to rewrite two stories I took down, but I have this sinking feeling it's going to be pretty frustrating. I'm not terribly great at rewriting and rethinking and so on, but I like the story ideas too much to just let them go.

It depends on the story. A lot of my oneshots I've rewritten completely. When I get the idea in my head, I just go ahead and write it, but if it doesn't feel right, I'll shelve it and wait until I get the inspiration I need to make it work. An original fiction story of mine, The Anatomy of a School Shooting, took over a year to write. I'd write it one way, decide it wasn't right, shelve it, work on it again, until I finally was in the right place mentally to make it flow. Others, like Wanderers of Ruin, I basically wrote in one draft, just tweaking the chapters here and there.

I've rewritten my first major fic because it was a train wreck, but just gave up after that. I don't mind rewriting, but at the same time it's so much of a hassle. Though, my friend Quinnie & I are rewriting a joint story we had a few years back on here. It's going to be another take of taking some of our favorite people from bandom & putting them in a reality tv show house.

Occasionally I'll rewrite sections of pieces, but I never really rewrite an entire chapter or oneshot. Though I may end up doing it for a recent update for one of my chaptered fics because the original chapter is just brain vomit

It depends for me. I don't think I've ever rewritten a oneshot, but I will go back and edit little things. But for chaptered fics, I've rewritten loads. For example, when I finished the rough draft of ATSOHP, I rewrote the first thirteen or so chapters because they were awful. And same thing with my NaNo, I'm planning on rewriting several scenes because they're just... weird xD

The only time I've rewritten something completely is when I lose the file. If I really like the idea and lost everything, I have no other choice.

Sometimes the writing doesn't come as easy and I make several versions of a scene, but usually the most I do is change entire paragraphs. I'm having such a hard time editing my NaNo because I love it to bits and don't wanna scrap anything, even if I think some parts are sub-par.

I rarely rewrite whole fics, especially chaptered ones, but there have been occasions where I have gone back and rewritten the beginning of chapters to overcome writers' block. For example, I might be going in a certain direction or writing from a certain point of view and not be getting anywhere, then I switch pov and it flows perfectly.

Ie. With my fic for Aviators, most of it is written in First person. When I got to the chapter which is now written in third person [the first 3rd pov chapter] I originally wrote it in first person from the main character's pov but it just wouldn't get going, or move the plot. So I switched to 3rd person pov and I was able to get unstuck.

I've never fully finished a chaptered story. At school I was only ever allowed to write two drafts of a story, and that was never enough. Then when I started writing more at home I'd write the first chapter, maybe get 10 or 20k into it, go back to the first chapter and rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it and eventually just chuck out the whole story idea. I'm awful at sticking to stories

The first chapter of As The Sister of Harry Potter I think I've rewritten... three times? Four times?

I scrapped the whole chapter the first time, and then I just kept rewritting bits of it until it's where it is now.(About four years later, mind )