Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
The next article I had lined up focused on a grammar issue, but I was reading a thread in a Facebook writing group and wanted to weigh in on the subject.
Contributors to the discussion were debating the pros and cons of “perfecting” chapters and scenes before writing the next chapter and scene. My wholehearted suggestion is that writers not try to polish early chapters before finishing a first and often a second draft. There are multiple reasons but the main one is that you don’t know what the opening line, opening paragraph, opening chapter, and even the first act should ultimately include until you’ve written the full story.
Trying to isolate a section of text and make it shine without reference to the rest of the story is often a waste of time. The word choices, tone, focus, pace, and maybe even something as fundamental as the viewpoint character in any one scene is likely to need a change once the complete story is written, so taking time to tweak word choices, sentence structure, and rhythms before the story is fleshed out serves only to delay finishing the first draft.
You may realize that early chapters and scenes don’t accomplish what you’d intended for them to accomplish, so certain changes should be pursued. But think in terms of changing the big picture rather than polishing the fine details.
So if you get to chapter 7 and discover that the story would be more meaningful, present a few more emotional jolts, if back in chapter 3 protagonist Max was betrayed by his former lover rather than by his best friend, make the change. But if you find yourself fussing for hours over the wording choices of the same three paragraphs in chapter 3, move on. Sometimes the simple act of putting the text out of your immediate thoughts will be enough to lead to a breakthrough. But most of the time you should be moving on anyway.
Writing a first draft (and often the second and third) is about getting the story down. It’s certainly not about perfecting scene details and phrasing. Perfecting at the paragraph or word level shouldn’t be a consideration of early drafts. You may create some fabulous and perfect phrasings, of course. But working to create them shouldn’t be the focus at this point of writing a piece of long fiction.
Yes, I know that it’s sometimes difficult to keep writing when some element of any early chapter is gnawing at you, demanding a fix. But there’s no need to let a demanding scene, paragraph, sentence, or word derail the forward progress of an early draft. There will always be time to rewrite and polish once all the major elements are in place.
Trying to polish and edit before the story is complete is like decorating a cake before it’s baked, before all the ingredients are mixed in.
So very much changes between the penning of the first version of the first chapter and the sixth or seventh version of the full manuscript that there’s almost never a good reason to pick at details of early chapters before the whole story comes together.
Writers who plot out their stories to a great degree before writing may be closer to polishing than are pantsers, who end up doing a lot of trial and error in early drafts. But even plotters shouldn’t try to polish before the story has come together. Too much will change. Why take the time to make paragraphs and scenes perfect when there’s a good chance that the paragraphs and scenes will need to be changed based on where the story ultimately finishes up?
When you’re tempted to polish and rewrite, hoping to perfect a scene or section of text (especially for the earliest scenes you write), remind yourself that the underpinnings of that text are likely to change by the time you finish the first draft. You may find you no longer need a particular scene once you start shaping the story, once you start narrowing the focus.
To give you an idea of issues that may force rewrites and major changes to early scenes, I’ve included an abbreviated list of story elements that may well need adjusting once latter scenes and chapters are written. A rewrite or two will be necessary to ensure that the story that is begun in the earliest scenes and chapters matches the story produced in the last scenes written.
• plot—events, order of events, causes of events, reactions to events
• opening scene, opening hook, inciting incident
• the story’s starting place
• scene focus (for each scene)
• scene tone or mood
• scene purpose
• scene pace
• scene conflict level
• scene viewpoint character
• character responsible for scene events
• characters in a scene, characters absent from a scene
• number of characters
• scene setting
• importance of a scene’s events, need for a scene’s events
• emotional impact required of a scene
• links to subsequent events
• foreshadowing
• extended or additional character reactions to earlier events
• character motivation for a particular behavior
• rhythm, pacing
• amount of dialogue, amount of narration
• point of view
Tell yourself that your time is valuable, that there’s no way you’re going to spent time perfecting text that is likely to change more than once or be cut altogether.
Stories can change dramatically from a first draft to the fifth or the eighth or the twelfth. The focus or mood of stories can change appreciably from the writing of the first chapter to the writing of the sixth or seventh chapter, especially if it takes you, the writer, a while to get into the swing of writing and into the rhythm of a particular story. Reminding yourself that a scene isn’t in a fixed state when it trips off your fingertips will help your efficiency as a writer. Wasting time polishing an unformed scene, a scene with holes, or a scene that will get a major rewrite once you resolve a key plot issue is pointless; don’t do it. Understand from the start that a first draft of any scene or chapter is going to be incomplete until you make all the necessary connections that link each scene to the others and to the story as a whole.
No one scene or chapter is ready to be “perfected” until the entire story is fleshed out.
Once you work through multiple manuscripts, taking them through rewrites and maybe through the editing process with an editor, it’s likely that you won’t bother to try to polish and perfect early chapters. You’ll know from experience that so much will change that polishing at an early stage is a true waste of productive writing time.
For those working through a first or second manuscript, I hope you’ll accept my advice in lieu of that experience—don’t waste time decorating your early scenes and chapters before all the ingredients have been added. Once you work through the full manuscript, you might discover that your creation needs a lot less of chapter 3 and a lot more of the second scene in chapter 4. You may discover that you need to move scenes around, giving them much different introductions and transitions than you’d originally written for them.
Make scenes as full and complete as possible as you write your first draft, but expect that some items will be missing, items you haven’t yet dreamed of because thoughts about them won’t come to you until you introduce a new character in chapter 15. Expect that you might discover a new bit of back story that speaks to a character’s motivation while you work through the scene right before the climax, a detail that you can then weave into the early chapters. Expect changes of every kind at every level.
Expect to make major and minor changes to all scenes once you’ve completed the first draft and again after you’ve worked through plot and character problems in the third or fourth draft.
Polishing and editing are necessary, and they will need all your skills and creativity. But editing and polishing follow multiple drafts and lots of rewriting. Skip the polish until the full project takes shape.
Tags: first draft, polishing Posted in: Beginning Writers, Writing Tips
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Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
Spot on!!!
Thanks, Brenda. Spot on is such a perfect phrase. So eloquent and efficient at the same time.
Absolutely, Beth! Put me down on your team. :o))
Polishing an unfinished manuscript is entirely too restrictive to the creative process. Over-whip eggs and they get tough. Over-work a chapter and it’s in cement.
If you simply must perfect something…let it be your concept, structure, plot and character development. Make an outline, world descriptions, flow chart – whatever you prefer – cover the walls with them…just don’t polish anything until you have written the entire book.
Thanks for switching up and speaking out, Beth.
Maria, you went even farther than I did with your suggestions for what a writer could be perfecting—wonderful. All great ideas.
This article is dead-on correct! Well done! Thank you!
Thanks, Jim. I think there’s a mindset that every new writer has to change. And that change does come naturally with the second, third, or fourth manuscript—or after the first edit with an editor. But new writers could move along much faster if they resolved not to polish until the time is write.
Thanks again for this blog. I always appreciate every suggestion you make. The abbreviated list of story elements is particularly useful, so thanks!
If you don’t mind though, I’d like to chime in to give a different point of view. I have a musical background and doing scales and arpeggios was always part of a routine when I was first learning to play an instrument. The reason is that you practice every part of the art at the same time. You do the technique and the creative aspect of learning how to play a particular piece.
Transcribed to writing, I find that, if you have time, it’s actually useful to both work on refining your craft early and let the creative part of you interact at the same time. I do understand your specific advise to make sure you have something on the page first. But if you never learn how to work in details before you get to the end, you will lose as much time at the end. Learning how to edit and rework a scene, find the right words is akin to learning scales and arpeggios. It’s technique. Waiting to learn that at the end might (for some people) make it very difficult when they realize they have no clue how to edit.
To me writing is a full experience. It’s good to learn how to let your creative juices without tempering with them, but yet, without technique, you’ll find yourself having to learn everything at the end. That said, it might not work for everyone, or for all purposes (if you want to publish fast for example).
Just thought I’d share my experience as to me editing and writing are not separate. They are the technique and the creative aspects of a same coin.
Catherine, I definitely understand what you’re saying about writing being a full experience. Yet writing and editing are two very different activities, coming from very different places; mixing them can be almost impossible to do well. And yet whether the activities are mixed or not, the writer must still go back to early chapters and scenes once the entire story comes together. For almost every writer, there’s simply no way to get even the foundation right on the first pass, much less every other element. So much will change that aside from the experience of working on craft—which is, I’ll agree, usually a great idea at any time—polishing too soon can quite often be pointless.
I like your references to music. I don’t have a background in music, but I do have one in dance and choreography. And while I might have had to practice my dance skills to maintain them, when I choreographed, when I created a dance, I didn’t practice or run through exercises at the barre. That is, I had to warm up my body—and my dancers’ bodies—but when I worked on choreography, I wasn’t also practicing my dance skills. Again, two different activities that require different skills and a different focus. A performance would see practice and creativity come together, but creating a dance and practicing that dance weren’t the same thing. I assume that the creative activities vs. performing activities would be the same for a composer. That composer might warm up before sitting down to compose, but a composer doesn’t have to play scales in order to compose.
You hadn’t actually connected the elements this way, but since you mentioned music, I did want to emphasize the difference between learning to play and composing. I also see a difference between writing exercises and writing a piece of long fiction. For writers who’ve never done it before, writing that first novel manuscript is a learning experience. And yet even with exercises—be they for dance or playing an instrument or writing—there is typically an order or specific steps to a procedure or a series of best practices. Musicians and dancers and singers often warm up in a particular order. In addition, they learn the stages of their craft in a particular order. Students learning to play an instrument learn fingering and how to read music before other lessons. (At least I assume that these are some of the early lessons. I can’t remember my own days of learning how to play. 🙂 ) Or maybe it’s time signatures they learn about first. What I’m getting at is that if we’re talking solely about learning, there’s often a best order. No, it’s not always the same for everyone, but when certain steps should come before other steps because that order works well for a number of reasons, that should be the recommendation.
Thus I recommend that writers not try to polish before they’ve finished at least a first draft. The comparison to making and decorating a cake definitely works for the novel-writing process. When the ingredients haven’t all been added, when the cake or the novel is still incomplete, putting on finishing touches seems pointless.
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I love hearing your point of view, so do keep the conversation going if you’ve got more to share.
Catherine, that’s a great way of putting it. I feel exactly the same way. When I write I tackle different things at the same time: sentence structure, word choice, character development, plot development, etc.. What I’ve found after 20 years of working this way is that this method has become second nature.I don’t even think about it. I just do it. And, it has never ever interfered with my creativity or productivity. I do get blocked, but it’s not to do with the fact that I edit as I go, it’s to do with confidence. There’s no easy cure for that.
Thank you Beth for your wonderful article, it’s highly valuable advice for many writers. But I totally agree with Catherine when I look at my writing process. Writing is not always a linear process, and for sure it’s not a reasonable, efficient process. It’s messy and irrational and totally time-inefficient, like any creative process 🙂 And that’s fine!
When I write a book, I can only continue with the story once the previous chapter or scene is completed and polished. To be honest, I enjoy the process of rewriting more than writing. And I believe that’s good because the story is not as important as style.
I see new writers focussing far too much on the story and the plot, they’re desperate to find a ‘clever’ storyline. But after 40 years of reading (and writing) I believe plot and storyline are not that important at all. I think we love great books mainly because of the writing style, because of the right choice of words, because it’s so terribly well polished. The story doesn’t have to be spectacular. Take Pride and Prejudice, the story is not that special at all… but the style is and that’s why, 200 years on, we still love it. Picasso painted women for most of his career, coming back to that subject over and over again. It was his unique style that turned this everyday subject into art. Wedgewood produces cups for centuries now. But it’s how they do it that makes their cups more valuable than other cups. Style is everything.
When I had completed my novel, I have edited some scenes. And yes, that meant throwing out some carefully crafted sentences. But so what? It’s all part of the learning process. Again, a creative process can’t be efficient. It’s supposed to be messy and you throw out more than you’ll end up with.
But as a writer I can’t judge scenes if they are not exactly right and polished. It would be like building a chair from roughly sawn planks, then afterwards try to machine it to give it the look I’m after. When writing a book, I keep track of the storyline while rewriting and polishing. In my view, that’s part of the writer’s skill set.
I know different people need different approaches, and the trick is to see what works for you as a writer. If you, as a new writer, feel you have to rewrite and polish before going on, it’s okay. You can’t write in a time-efficient way anyway, writing is time-consuming in itself and spending time writing a book is never wasted, because you learn from it. So don’t feel guilty when you love to rewrite and polish while working on your book, it’s probably just the way to go for you.
Marisa, you’ve touched on some of my favorite topics—writing is a messy process, writing and rewriting is all part of the learning process, and writers have different approaches and need to use what works for them. I agree wholeheartedly with you on these points. I had meant to mention that writers have different methods for getting stories on the page and into the best condition possible, but apparently that never made it into the article.
When I write fiction, I typically read through the previous day’s work and “fix” anything that jumps out at me at the start of a new session. But I don’t imagine that such will be the last time that I rework that section of text. It’s not only the perfecting of the word choices that I know I’ll come back to. It’s the strengthening of links. It’s the addition of nuance. It’s the change in balance from one element to another. Keeping track of the story line is definitely a necessity for a novelist, yet there’s so much more that will need attention once the bones of the story are put into place and then fleshed out.
When we write scenes or chapters or sections, we get a sense of that section of text, but we often don’t see or feel the big picture at the same time. We can’t tell if we’ve got too much dialogue in three chapters in a row or if the pacing is off or if it’s time for a change in mood or tone. This isn’t a weakness in writers, just a function of focus. Once the full story is framed out, we can better see what’s missing or what we rely on way too much. We see repetition and gaps and weak areas. Any scene or chapter on its own can be marvelous. But if it doesn’t fit the work as a whole, doesn’t add as much as it should or serve the story in the way that it should, that scene needs reworking. And it needs to fit not only the whole story but what comes immediately before and immediately after it. Polishing word choices in a scene might strengthen the scene, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean that the story as a whole is any stronger.
I would definitely suggest that you follow the path that works well for you; if it works, it works. But at the same time, don’t assume that polishing the fine details means that you won’t have to do a fair amount of rewriting and restructuring too. I’m not saying that you personally would make such an assumption. I’m just trying to find a way to say this for anyone else who might read this thread. Polishing doesn’t replace rewriting. And rewriting typically comes first.
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As for style or plot being more important, that’s a topic for another day. But not everyone will agree with you. Some readers do read for plot. Others read for character. Some, like you, read for the beauty of the prose. Others focus on the fictional world. This is a matter of taste and preference, and there are plenty of writers writing plenty of books to appeal to every taste.
Thank you so much for sharing your views. They’ve added greatly to the discussion.
I appreciate that your advice isn’t prescriptive, we are all well aware that there are no two writers who work the same way. I edit and polish as I go for the simple reason that when I have tried to redraft, I get bored and find the process less effective because then I skip over things that if I were writing in a no draft version, I would stop and correct.
The idea of doing a sixth r seventh draft of one book fills me with horror, the idea of going back over what I wrote yesterday or the day before, before I start writing today, doesn’t 😉
I guess, as ever, it’s each to his or her own.
I totally agree with you. This is pretty much an individual thing. I edit as I go. I couldn’t do it any other way. I wouldn’t be able to finish a piece, specially a novel-length one, that’s full of mistakes and inconsitencies. It’d be too overwhelming for me to go back and edit a mess.
Editing as I go doesn’t make my work-in-progress become a perfect first draft. However, editing as I go has made my story telling and writing more cohesive. When I start a new scene, a new chapter or whatever I have the rhythm and tone in my head and can continue on in a connected way.
Maribel, editing one scene before jumping into the next is a great way to maintain that rhythm and tone, as you’ve said. Keep doing that as you write. But as you can tell from other comments here, there’s a lot more to crafting the full work. I hope that you’ll also consider reworking the entire manuscript once you’re finished the first draft. As I told Graham, there’s a lot that you can’t enhance or rework when you’re focused only on small sections of text. Some changes can only be made once the full story is together. It’s hard to see gaps or some kinds of repetition or even unnecessary scenes and characters when you’re looking only at a small part of the picture.
Graham, you’re so right that writers work in different ways. I hope, however, that I can convince you that completing multiple drafts is a very good thing, an endeavor that will produce results that make every moment worthwhile. Can I challenge you to give multiple drafts a try with your current project? I think that you’ll be more than pleased by the result. Because of the scope of a novel, there’s a lot that can’t be strengthened by polishing sections or single scenes. In a comment to Marisa, I mentioned a couple of items that need to be reworked after the story comes together in a complete first draft. The overall tone, the sense of rising action, the changes in pace, the overall focus–all the big-picture elements need to be considered in ways that can’t be done by polishing scenes. Unfortunately, having a series of polished scenes, no matter how perfect in themselves, doesn’t guarantee that a novel will hang together well.
If there’s something that you might skip over in a new draft, then do address it when you see it. But if you address only those items and never work through multiple drafts, you’re also skipping over other issues that need to be addressed.
And don’t let the number of drafts mentioned here and in other places overwhelm you or discourage you from tackling them. Not every manuscript needs 12 drafts. And many drafts don’t require near the time needed for the first draft. If the second draft requires moving scenes into a new order, cutting two scenes and adding one more, that doesn’t take months. Adding a new character and weaving him through the story might take longer than moving scenes around, but not all drafts require the time commitment of a first draft.
I hope you’ll give rewriting and multiple drafts a go. This is definitely where and when a lot of the heavy-duty work of crafting a tight and cohesive story takes place.
I do wish someone would’ve explained this to me when I first started writing. On the other hand, I’m not sure I would’ve listened. I thought my writing was great right from my fingertips. (Well, that was a difficult embarrassing lesson to learn.) Not until I finished and went back to re-read it, did I discover the whole front end of the book needed a rewrite (then the back end). Probably around the fifteenth draft I finally learned what you’re saying.
This is also the danger of hauling it to a critique group as soon as it comes off your fingers. I often cringe when someone brings a chapter to critique group and says, “I just finished this piece this morning.”
I think both the writer’s and the critiquers’ time will be better spent looking at the fourth or fifth draft.
BK, most of us had/have to learn the same lesson, so you’re definitely not alone. 🙂 Of course there’s a point when we think that what we write is perfect as it flies from our fingertips. We’re caught up in the flow and everything’s working and we know what many of our strengths are and we’re using them left and right. We’ve been writing for a long time or we’ve been honored for our writing or whatever else the case may be, so what we’re writing has got to be good. And sometimes some of what we write is perfectly beautiful and cogent. Such sections of text may make it into a final draft.
Yet maybe they won’t.
Beautiful writing in one scene doesn’t mean the scene fits the story that ultimately makes it to the page. And even the most beautifully written scenes must be cut if they don’t work with the rest of the story. Recognizing these truths for the first time is disheartening. Yet when we also realize that the story is better for it, better for cutting or reworking both the bad and the good writing that doesn’t serve the story, then we’re heartened again.
I agree that fresh scenes or bits of writing shouldn’t be critiqued. One of the few reasons to present a newly written section of text would be to ask about a certain issue, maybe something that had been discussed earlier.
Excellent insight. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Mitzi.
Such good advice! Sometimes too-early polishing leaves a book uneven. I’ve read several books lately where it seemed like most of the polishing came in the first chapter, and by the last chapter the author seemed tired and just wanted to get it down and done. I do have one question: How do you define “pantzers?” I’m guessing it’s writers who write by the seat of their “pantz.”
Yep, pantsers is them that write by the seat of their pants. Plotting vs. Pantsing
Dang, did I spell it pantzers in the article? I need to change that.
I’ve seen a lot of manuscripts with first chapters polished much more than later chapters, but I don’t often find that in published books. But first chapters do get a lot more attention from writers. Imagine if all chapters got as much attention.
A great discussion, everyone. I’ll respond to everyone, just not all at the same time.
Excellent post, Beth. I’ve shared it online and will bookmark it. Thanks for all you do to assist writers. Enjoy your week.
Now that I’m finished first draft, that’s basically what I’m going back and doing now. There’s really two areas that need more padding.
-The central characters whose backstories form a brunt of the narrative really only got one chapter to be developed early when it should really be 3.
-A particular and necessary chapter in the middle that takes the PoV of another character and delves into a completely fictional culture. I did like 5 rewrites during first draft before I skipped it, and now I finally decided how I want to go about it (the probably was mainly I wanted to come up with something that wouldn’t feel stereotypical, very unique)