Who generally gets it right on the first shot?

The answer to this question may depend on how pre-calculated your story is and how complex your storyline is.

I've written some things that were nearly publishable on the first pass. Generally they were less complex, and straight ahead.
However, I'm finding with a complex story that I'm forever re-writing. In fact, I'll go paragraph by paragraph on some parts and I can waste twenty minutes restructuring a single paragraph to get it correct. On some pages, I won't have a single paragraph that I was satisfied with.

I'm thinking of novel length works here. But if you write smaller pieces and want to comment feel free. When you normally edit, do you feel like:

A) You want to pat yourself on the back for being so particularly good that you can scarcely find a flaw?

B) Feel like you are gloving up to perform major delicate surgery?

C) Feel like you are giving birth to a child who just won't come out, whose been stuck in the canal for nine months?

D) Wonder if you are really cut out for this sort of work, because you birthed a Frankenstein that you just can't fix? Every fix just makes it uglier and uglier.

* Obviously, your answer may just depend on the project at hand. Without a doubt I've been on every end of this spectrum with things I've written. On my current project I can't determine if it is B, C or D?

Ah, the obsessive, perfectionist writer who just can't let his/her prose go, eh? Hmmm, that does sound familiar.

I used to do that, for the first half of my first novel. That's why it took me over 16 months to write the first 50K (and alas! in my final draft I cut the first 20K or so -- so my net gain for those 16 months, in terms of word count, was less than 30K... what was good, however, was that I gained a lot of insight into my characters). I wrote the last 40K words in about four months -- without obsessing over them. And the second half was stronger.

Now I simply write. I know I can and will fix it later. When I think something doesn't work or something needs editing, I'll just put a note in the ms. I don't ever want to lose momentum again by obsessing over a plot point or a piece of dialogue or narrative or sentence structures or whatever. The editor in me keep bugging the writer: "Fix it. Now." The writer keeps saying: "Forget it. Let's get this draft over with first." It can be a struggle sometimes, but I'm getting better and better in letting the writer win.

On a first write, I can write like the dickens. And on short pieces I can finish them off without much fanfare.

However, jumping into Fantasy Genre requires speaking "Fantasy".

Fantasy is not just story telling in the conventional sense. Let's say I was writing a novel about a murder, I'd just write something straight ahead in my writing style.

"Harry couldn't believe that he actually picked up the loaded gun and pointed it at Mary. It felt cold and heavy, like clutching the steely handle of a coffin. But he could no longer help himself. He felt completely detached, like a third person watching on as something or someone else possessed his body, wondering what it would do next.

Mary wasn't concerned. She was sure that he was bluffing and proceeded to taunt him...."

I wouldn't mind an editor picking away at a straight ahead paragraph like that. But I wouldn't obssess over it either. They'd like it or dislike it, but if the core story was good, they could just suggest a better way of phrasing it.

With fantasy, there is so much more to consider. Because you are inventing words and concepts, an awkward descriptive paragraph can empty the meaning, or weigh down the ride like rectangular wheels made of stone. (Flinstones anyone)

You are constantly balancing between too little and too much, not only in every paragraph, but in the story as a whole. There's a new world, new concepts, new language.

And frankly, I think there is a safer way to go, and build upon already known concepts in which you have educated readers, who know dragon lore, magic, and the retelling of Atlantis.

Although you will see previously seen concepts in my story, a good deal of them are completely new. Perhaps it is a mistake, but I decided not to go with the conventional "Ages-Eras and Epochs." Well, now you have one more thing to define, and you may have to create an entire scene just to explain your construct of Universal time. And that one chapter can make or break the entire story.

Multiply that by hundreds, and you are weaving in an education in your world at the same time you are telling a story.

In fact, I should have gone with a conventional "Boy finds a dragon egg" and been done with it. But I've already gone this far, and hopefully one day I will be doing posts explaining why it was worth every bit of the sometimes dreadful toil.

Every book I write is different. After so many I don't even try to analyze it any more.

Nothing I write, complete, or publish is as good as it could be. I had to let that go to or I'd never move forward.

<img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif" />

My first draft stinks. My second draft is mildly odiferous. The third is getting there. But then, I pay very little attention to flow and form in early drafts. I'm just trying to get the story down and work out the subplots.

I tend to interweave subplots into the main storyline, and it takes a great deal of planning and head-scratching and hair-pulling, but when it all comes together, it is soooo satisfying!

However, jumping into Fantasy Genre requires speaking "Fantasy".

Click to expand...

I don't find this is necessarily so with speculative fiction. The most successful stories are those that use a universal language and reach a wide audience. Consider Neuromancer, a terrific book. But ask anyone who doesn't read SF if they've read it -- or even heard of it -- and you'll find it has a narrow audience, possibly because of its tech-speak. Then look at the Harry Potter books. They aren't so littered with "fantasy-speak" that a wider audience loses interest.

If my novel gets published, it may be someone's introduction to the fantasy genre. I don't want to turn them away. Personally, my goal is to get rich by writing stories people want to read.

>>Multiply that by hundreds, and you are weaving in an education in your world at the same time you are telling a story.<<

I hear you. This is one of the major challenges of writing fantasy. But I think every writer faces it to some degree. Everyone has to establish context, even if it's an ordinary everyday context.

Turning the issue around, the dilemma is not just what to explain and how, but what NOT to explain. How much about your world does your reader actually need to know? One of the potential traps of fantasy world building is making a world so complex and complete that you feel driven to shoehorn every bit of it into your story, whether it's really relevant to the story you set out to tell or not.

Of course every writer's method is different. For some fantasists it's important to know every tiny detail, to invent languages, etc. For others the big picture suffices, with bits and pieces of it elaborated as the story requires. There is no "right" way of doing this--just as for some people, it's right to edit as they go and for some it's not.

- Victoria

I can waste twenty minutes restructuring a single paragraph to get it correct.

Click to expand...

I know what you're getting at, Nate, but if you get it correct, the time was not wasted.

First novel: kept backtracking. Ended up doing at least half a dozen revisions, and it shows. It's a mish-mash.

Second novel: much less backtracking. Even after a relatively quick second pass through the manuscript, my beta's feel it is a much better book than the first.

Third novel (in progress, 1st draft finished): almost no backtracking, and is probably the best writing I've ever done. It might even be good. :b

I think I've reached a point where I can trust myself to write reasonable prose the first time around, then polish it up in a subsequent draft or two, then call it done.

I hear you. This is one of the major challenges of writing fantasy. But I think every writer faces it to some degree. Everyone has to establish context, even if it's an ordinary everyday context.

Turning the issue around, the dilemma is not just what to explain and how, but what NOT to explain. How much about your world does your reader actually need to know? One of the potential traps of fantasy world building is making a world so complex and complete that you feel driven to shoehorn every bit of it into your story, whether it's really relevant to the story you set out to tell or not.

One of the traps I've fallen into is never quite being satisfied with a beginning. I actually wrote the story, and quickly found in the first re-write that it was far more than one book.

At first I had the story alludes to backstory in various places. But the story began far too much like a fable. You have none of the Giants, little people, and other do-hickies. You have a fifteen year old who forgot his birthday. And it is very much like a fable of old.

The problem began when I thought of how I'd sell this to an agent or fantasy publisher. I began with a variety of attempts to add back story and tried three versions.

To make a metaphorical parallel, I didn't want to write the Silmarillion before publishing Lord of the Rings.

Making up a creation story is so difficult to do without sounding contrived, or like you are simply re-writing Genesis with a metaphorical twist.

But after a virtual wrestling match, I've caved in, and now I'm beginning with the beginning, which means not only writing new material, but significantly editing the existing materials.

I found myself in the same virtual trap that Tolkien found himself in. In trying to make everything consistant, you tamper with the old, and have a ripple effect.

You wind up with several variations of the same chapter.

No doubt there are easier ways to write a fantasy. But I took on a grand fantasy world with separate interacting realms, a long history, and an elaborate theological framework. What was I thinking?

For nonfiction, I edit about five or six times.

For fiction, some parts don't get changed at all, they come out "right" the first time. Other parts get changed twenty, sometimes even thirty times but, on average, my fiction probably goes through about ten drafts.

--- Mya Bell

My work comes out right the first time. I have had to change very little to any of my published works. Nothing more than eclipses or commas just small stuff.
That is how it works for me.

What I'm doing now with my WIP is beyond revisions. I'm doing a complete re-write of everything I'd worked up in 2004. This is to avoid what C.C. has mentioned on a few threads about the mish-mash he made of his first novel.

I wrote half the novel in 2004, but I was on a very steep learning curve as far as my style and approach to the story. Long about October, I began to get the true feel for how I wanted to write this WIP.

I spent NOV and DEC attempting to revise the oldest chapters up to the standards of the newest. By Christmas, though I knew I was on the right track, I also knew that the revised chapters were this mish-mash. So as of JAN, I'm simply re-writing the WIP so far.

I don't consider last year a waste of time, because I know so much more about the story and the characters, that this time around it's really coming off well. I don't think there will be much major revision to what I'm writing right now. There will definitely be tweaks, but no major overhauling.

Nate, to address a different part of your observations, I'd say I chose to write my story as 'Urban Fantasy' prescisely to avoid all the complications involved in world building, etc.

The example you gave, with the man picking up the gun - this is more or less the style I'm writing in (mine is maybe even more bare-bones). It's a modern style, which is fine for me because my fantasy is set in a modern world.

Even still, I find I'm doing a heck of a lot of world building. I guess that's the name of the game for Fantasy stories. And it's a lot of work even in Urban Fantasy, so I can only imagine what you must be up against. :eek

I have plans for the story I'm writing to span into at least a trilogy, if not a series. There's more to tell than I'm covering in this single book, but even standing alone, I'd say it meets the criteria for an "epic" because of it's grand scope.

Still, I'm trying to keep the one book self-contained in the event no publisher wants a series out of it.

As grand as my designs are, yours are of a larger mangnitude, so again, I can only wince in sympathy and admire your conviction.

On my first attempt, I botched the beginning so badly I had to start over from scratch at the 25,000 word mark, scavenging bits and pieces where I could.

Second attempt was little more than a bunch of pivotal scenes, most of them landing on the proper haybale but not necessarily hitting the target.

Third attempt, with the aid of a proper scene-by-scene outline, the story finally started taking shape. Most of the time I hit somewhere on the target, but usually not a bullseye.

Now I'm working on the first revision. My aim's getting better, but I'm still not hitting bullseyes as often as I'd like. Some scenes need to be rewritten more or less from scratch; others (at least at this stage) only want a few words changed here and there. Hopefully I'm getting close enough that I'll be able to get the structure right in one more draft, but I know of one fairly major issue still waiting to be fixed, so I'm not always optimistic.

Oddly, some of those "right" scenes date back to that first attempt. Go figure.

I've published stories or poems that have fallen right off the end of my pen, and those I've had to rework and redraft and reconceive ad nauseum.

The easy stuff is rare. It's more common for me to have to labor.

It largely depends on what I'm writing, but I've seldom written a first draft that I didn't think was pretty good. Because of deadline pressure, I've sold first draft novels and short stories and articles. But only once have I written a first draft that I didn't think could be improved on. The editor never changed a word when it was published, and after fifteen years, I still can't find anything I'd change.

But that story was an exception. It was such a personal story that it almost wrote itself in only four hours.

Even a good first draft demands a second draft, and sometimes a third, even if it's only to get rid of clunky sentences and to improve the dialogue and tighten everything a bit.

When I do write a lousy first draft I can be almost certain that ten more drafts won't make enough difference to matter.

I simply don't like the idea of writing horrible first drafts and trying to turn them into great final drafts. Too much work. It's hard enough to turn a good first draft into a great final draft, and it gets harder every year.

If I get the opening right, the rest of the story is usually a snap. But getting the opening right can take a long, long time. As long as the rest of the novel.

I write slowly, I think about the sentences before I write them, and my intent is always to have a first draft that I could sell, if I had to, even though I know there's going to be at least one more draft of some sort.

I realize what I'm doing may not be unique, in that there are other Grand Fantasies, but it is very much an all or nothing venture. It will be a great story or a pile of garbage. There isn't much middle ground when you are selling a package deal. The trick now is making book one such a must read, that people will be willing to muddle through some of the stickier parts.

I'm not worried about people plagerizing this idea, because I can even give them an outline of every concept I'm using, and it would take them years to come up with their own version of it, and it would still be different than mine. They couldnt' even accidently write the same story, although they might share common elements. (Unless I'm deluded which is always a possibility- but I doubt it)

The biggest problem with my story was not the "Story", or the core adventure of the protagonist. You just set him on a journey, and give him adventures. The biggest problem is that there is what I call "a theological framework" in the story. Numbers mean something. Placement of items mean something. Names mean something. And the Goldilocks principle always applies. Too much information is as bad as too little. You have to find "Just Right".

You have rules that govern not just one universe, but essentially two universes, the second being a co-existing realm. And the basis of the story is that the races have no clue about the universal laws that govern their own world, let alone the coexisting realm. And of course, you have some beings from the other realm who want to exploit that. Don't they always have that obvious vested interest in destroying your species in these things? Yet, you always have the fools playing right into their hands, who are actually working to anhilate themselves unwittingly.

The protagonist has to not only figure out the laws of his own universe (Ancient Secrets), but the laws of a co-existing realm, because as you already guessed it, his world is in danger, and the people are absolutely indifferent to Universal laws, until of course, they begin to see their world being taken away from them.

Add to that three primary kingdoms, several secondary kingdoms, and a fourth leach-like non-kingdom that is seeking domination of all others. Throw in a beavy of characters, many who have secrets, who are not at all who they portend to be. And somehow, this one protagonist is a link that ties them all together.

Essentially, it's a chess game, where players and pawns are constantly switching places.

There is a tremendous backstory to it, and the last thing I wanted to do was to begin with the backstory, much less give a creation account.

Well, I could have let it all alone, but I decided, since other related stories in various stages of completion, share the same theological framework, that it was best to take and reconcile all of the parts, which meant extensive re-writes. And now, for better or worse, I have a creation story, which to me is a very complex and difficult thing to do well.

Instead of starting in what was the equivalent of the third age of this world, it is now beginning "In the beginning". Maybe that is all for the best. I don't know. Either I'm improving the story or mangling the snot out of it.