Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Paradoxical Question

This is topic Paradoxical Question in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003216

Posted by CoriSCapnSkip (Member # 3228) on :

I've found that sometimes it's better to make something completely new than to try to preserve or repair something old that's full of problems, but I've also found that it's better to have something to work with than start out from scratch. It's very confusing to know, if I start writing on a novel as soon as I think of it, whether that's good as I have more material, or that's bad as I end up with a lot of stuff that leads nowhere and doesn't actually belong in the story in that form, if at all.

Posted by pooka (Member # 1738) on :

Depends on whether you're talking about a car or a pie.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

It depends on how much "fixing" is left relative to the value of the final product. You can factor "material" into your cost equation pretty easily.

For writing, the material is essentially free. It's totally reusable as well.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Sometimes, when you've worked on a manuscript so long that it seems to have died the nibbled-to-death-by-ducks death, it's not a bad idea to put it aside and start writing the whole thing over again clean.

Remember one of the first rules of critiquing: "The manuscript is not the story. The manuscript is an attempt on the part of the writer to recreate the story in the reader's head."

If you've killed the manuscript by too much reworking, laying it aside and starting afresh is essentially going back to the story.

You will bring to the new manuscript all the things you have learned in the reworking, but you will (it is to be hoped) have left behind all of the things that killed the first manuscript.

What you produce has a better chance of being new and fresh than any additional reworking on the old manuscript can give you.

And because you've reworked the old manuscript so much, you can still say that you are working with something, even if it is only something in your head. The story itself has become clearer to you through your efforts to convey it in the manuscript, even if the manuscript can no longer do the job.

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

My only advice is that it's generally better to finish a draft before you start writing the new one. ie it is better to have one complete and another in progress than to have two incomplete manuscripts and the story never really quite told.

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited July 17, 2006).]

Posted by Corin224 (Member # 2513) on :

I find that in many ways writing a story is like writing a computer program. You start off with an idea in your head. The more complete that idea is, the better your story is.

Some people are better jumping right in a writing / coding without a lot of forethought. It can work in some cases, but I'd be willing to bet that deep down, they have an idea of what the final product is going to be like.

In the end, you're going to look at your manuscript and it'll be buggy . . . it'll be patched together in spots . . . you might have taken the entirely wrong approach in some places.

For example . . . one of my biggest problems is choosing the correct perspective to show events from . . . which character is goint to be the POV character. That usually happens when I haven't nailed down the events. I don't know exactly what happens. So I write the scene anyway . . . and it works, but not quite.

I come back at it to re-write it from scratch and now I KNOW what the events are, and I'm not worried about the details, 'cause I know them . . . and suddenly it's very clear what perspective I should be telling the story from.

That's the most obvious, and common reason for re-writing that I have. (as opposed to revising)

It would help if I could ever FINISH a story . . . gain a little more credibility.

Posted by TMan1969 (Member # 3552) on :

I can jump in with the first ten or twenty pages, but after that the "energizer bunny" needs re-charging and demands a clear plan. So intially I believe to let the story flow freely, then when it slows - read, re-evaluate and develop it.