Multidrafting! (Or the Most Insane Fun you can Have With a First Draft)

I have never looked forwards to a blog post with more anticipation. Here goes.

This is how I approach the topic with multiple drafts - generally with much dancing and skipping around in happiness. This approach may turn some people green, but it is how I do it.

The first time I ever wrote an entire, original novel, I approached writing like this: write what ever comes to your brain, fix it afterwards. This is all very well and good, as long as you don't mind at least 6 total rewrites (I kid you not. And by rewrite I mean starting from page one on a blank sheet of paper).

Another method I have devised, which seems to work better for me involves three stages: Planning, writing, and fixing.

Planning, for me, consists of knowing what happens at the first major turning point, knowing my characters, and that's it. Nothing more - otherwise it just kills the story for me. It must also be noted that I do a lot of "percolating" before hand, where I think about the story and the characters non-stop for about a month. Some would call that planning in the head, but I think that's different. Planning requires structure, and there is no structure to my thoughts. They just... are.

Then I sit down, and write to the first turning point. I know what this turning point is, and I don't worry about the quality of writing to start off with (this is we the other drafts come in later). I don't really worry about world building either - if I have something fantastical/out of the ordinary that I have to describe, and don't know how to, I'll do something like this

(Insert description of slum here).

I do this because I know any attempt to describe it will be crap, unless I take a significant amount of time and put a significant amount of thought into writing it. There isn't place for that in my first drafts - it slows me down, and it makes writing hard.

After I reach the first turning point, I stop, and think about my second turning point and end. By this stage, I know my world and my characters, so I think about where I want both of them to end up. I think about potential conflict between characters. And then I sit down and write. And write, and write, and write. I don't describe anything that's too hard, I do a terrible job of the show don't tell rule, and my writing is generally atrocious.

But that doesn't matter - as long as the character motavations make sense, and the plot keeps going, all is good. (First time I wrote The Manda, I ignored both these things. Thus the 6 total rewrites)

Then comes the fixing : I look through the book, try and make sure I get rid of any plot holes, any character discrepancies. Large chunks, especially the middle, will be re-written. This is the second draft. I still don't bother with the writing all that much.

Now we're into third draft territory. This is where I sit down, realise no-one else is going to be able to understand this, and go through the entire thing slowly, chapter by chapter, filling in all the descriptions I left out, doing all the research necessary.

Then I leave it. And come back to it. This is the fourth draft - it isn't a rewrite like the others, but a revision. I strike out all the descriptions that hold the story back, rewrite the ones that don't work. By this stage, it's about ready for Beta readers.

They will find a heap of problems with it, I'll go and fix it, and the whole thing will start over. By the end of the Beta revision, I am done.

And that, for me, is multi drafting. Each draft has the possibility of extending into multiple versions of itself - for example, I may have three second drafts, each for a major plot hole or character inconsistency.

But for me, multi-drafting presents me with an immense amount of freedom. I can stuff up some stuff while I get the other stuff right. I'm only concentrating on one thing at a time (notice also that I start with the hardest things - plot and character - and work my way down to concise sentence building) It won't work for everyone, but I find it immensely helpful.

Enjoy creating~

Sian

Practicalities

Well, here we are. After a couple of hours of procrastination, I finally rewrote what I needed to, and have one last section to tackle. Admittedly, it’s a big one, but I should be done with it by tomorrow.
And then that's it. No more continuity errors, no more decisions that don't make sense. Kira's meeting with Marik is still slightly coincidental, but nowhere as near as coincidental as it was last time.
So I have a complete and utter manuscript, with only one small coincidence, and the rest of it relying on the decisions of the characters, even if at times we can't see them making the decisions.
Four drafts, each one written from scratch, and finally the thing makes sense.
And then we come to the practical side of things. I want to sell this. If I can't, so be it, but I want to try. If it doesn't work, then I'll just move on to the next book "Varrick" and if that doesn't work, onto "NKFH". Eventually something will work. Even if it's ten books into the future, something will work.
But a certain amount of coldness is needed if I'm ever going to get this thing published. There are certain actions that have to be taken.
1. I have to read the entire things through on the computer, from start to finish, and not any irregularities
2. I have to print the entire thing out double space, with no overlapping chapters. Then I have to put them in plastic pockets, pick a chapter at random, and edit my little heart out
3. I'm going to make the series four books, not five. It will mean getting rid of some subplots, but it'll be a hell of lot easier to sell: this is the first in a four book series.
4. Plan out the other four books
5. Write a synopsis and query letter.
6. Put the entire thing away/get others to look at it.
7. Write something else
8. Edit my little heart out all over again.
9. Send it out.
10. Hope and pray
Should be fun… yay. Sarcasm intended. :P

Varrick Plan

Well, I finished plans for one book. The Sci-fi one that I was talking about earlier. It's very brief, not much in the way of how things are going to go or how anyone is going to solve a problem, but it's better than what I started with. It has a start, a middle and an end. It's going to be rather long. I also have a faint and not very happy feeling that after I write it once, I will have to add a heap of detail and thoughts. Then I get to edit and cut things out.
Going to take a while, I think.
This is good though. It's nice to think about something else other than: The Manda, and Varrick had a nice way of coming into my head. No plot, but characters pretty much full formed.
I also realised something else. A lot is going to happen, but the overarching story won't have any hidden mechanisms behind it - no grand conspiracies or anything like that.
However, I have characters that all have substantial things to hide, which should provide more than enough in the way of plot variation.
Now, I just get to write the thing. And edit my way through The Manda. I split it into four sections today - I plan on editing the four sections, one a week, and then send it round to whoever will look at it, and ask them to comment on where they think it's weird.
Then, I might as well send it to someone who, if they're insane enough, will publish it. One can only hope.
I have been slightly more productive, but I keep twaddling off to uselessly browse the internet or sleep, or do something else. I like the fact that I have two things going on at the moment. If I line edit for more than an hour, I start screaming. Being able to switch to the more creative side of things will be nice.
Tomorrow, before I go out, I will write. Some would argue that I should be studying Chinese, but I get a fair amount of study out of it simply by living here. And Chinese is not my favourite language in the world. It's just a language of necessity.
So, I plan to do something productive with my remaining two and a half weeks. Must concentrate...

Line Editing

There are some things in life, that when you start out doing them, you think: Oh yeah, this will be fine. Then, after you've done it for a while, you realise it will be the bane of your existence.
Line editing is one of those things.
First, to differentiate. Editing, or more commonly know by most as either revision or rewriting, is when you look at your manuscript, go : that's crap, that's crap, that's crap, delete it all, and get to make up new stuff to go in its place. This is fun. Because you get to create stuff to go in its place. I love creating stuff, be in characters, plots or small and big events.
I know some people who despair at this destruction of a manuscript. I am not one of them. I rewrote (as in deleted the entire file and started again) this "thing" ( my MS) four times. I have one last thing to correct before it works itself out plot and character-wise in this draft but still, that's a lot of words.
I also wrote the next three books in the series, then came to terms with the fact that they were unusable simply because they relied on a quirk of character that would never actually happen. It just wasn't realistic.
I think those three files exist on my family's computer somewhere. My mum also has the first draft of the "thing" printed out and hidden away.
I will never use any of that again. The only thing similar between the first draft and the last one of this particular book is several characters (although some have changed so much it's uncanny) and the Manda.
Everything else was crap, so I chucked it.
After all the tearing and shredding and starting over, I think I have a workable story. Whether anyone will buy it is another question, but I think it's good. I could live with it.
So after you correct the characters (motivation matches up with personality, actions match up with motivation and personality and so on) and plot holes (wtf did she do that? There is no reason for that to happen other than I want it to) you come to the writing.
And here is where it all comes undone for me.
I read a lot of books in my childhood, and teenage years. I'm pretty sure it was part of my family's makeup that I would receive a 300 page book for my birthday, then have it finished before we went out to a restaurant for tea. I remember one particular incident where a classmate said she would give me ten dollars if I could read any book in one night. We agreed, and she handed me something twice the size of the last harry potter book. I finished it. The little brat never gave me any money because we hadn't "shook" on it.
The point of this spiel was I picked up certain major things when reading, but not others. I read every word, but they stayed in my brain was the information from them was processed in .5 seconds. As such I read really fast, and knew a lot about characters and plot by the time I sat down and wrote my first book at 12.
But. I didn't even realise that the writing had to be good. Never, ever, ever did I come to that realisation. Never, during my childhood did I stop at a sentence in one of the thousands of books I read and go - well, isn't this nice.
I wrote two books before I realised language actually mattered. In the charming way that 12 year olds have of thinking they are the world, I was all set to publish the second book. Then I read John Marsden’s "everything I know about writing" and realised - wait a moment, the words have to be pretty.
Not pretty in the "look at me" kind of way either. Pretty in the "I'm only here to tell you what goes on, deliver theme, atmosphere, character voice, author voice, and a thousand of other things in as little amount of words as possible” kind of way.
To make writing do that, you have to line edit. Which means going over every single word and asking "why the hell are you here?"
I don't hate it for any emotional reason. I know some people who have the same reaction to line editing that they do to "big" editing - they feel as if they are ripping out their souls.
For me, it just takes a bloody long time.
You sit there, for four or five hours, yes, hours, with three pages of text. For me, because I never realise anything about language when I'm reading normally, I have to approach it analytically. Which means :
Rewrite any passive sentence into an active sentence. Compare the two. Challenge every single word in each. Sometimes go through all that just to let the original one pass ( I hate rules that aren't context specific. Every change I make is context specific, so why shouldn't the so called: rules of writing, be?)
Challenge every adverb. Could you use another verb? Sometimes, no, you couldn't no matter how much people will say you can't use adverbs without being weak.
Next come the adjectives. According to some, adjectives are just props for nouns. If you are using adjectives, you're not being specific with the nouns. Can someone please describe a grass tree to an American without using adjectives? Good luck. Sometimes, however, you should be choosing different nouns.
Then we get on to the poetic writing. Does it make sense. Does if give theme and atmosphere. If not, why is it there?
Why doesn't this sentence have any theme and atmosphere? Can I put some in? If so, then I have to go over every word in the new sentences, making each one justify why it's there.
In the end, you end up rewriting three pages so many times its unbelievable. You have to learn to trust instinct. If you follow rigid rules (stunk and white anyone) then you end up murdering any type of originality. But you don't want your originality to make people groan either.
It just takes so long. You spend at least five minutes over every word, more when things don't seem to be working. I hate it.
But hate it or not, it has to be done. Because if I don't put the effort into making it readable, no one will want to read it.
(By the way, all hail Maria, who is kind enough to tell me when my style is crap, when I should get rid of my abundant comma’s, and who corrects my grammar. Many thanks to her, otherwise this would be a longer post bitching about grammar correction as well)

That's her with her stylistic and attacking Sian's crap writing knife too, by the way :P