When Renewing Your WIP

No work is ever "lost" per se. It can always be used as raw material for the next draft.

It sounds like you're making some significant changes but don't want to do much rewriting. I encourage you to view it as an opportunity to apply what you've learned over the past couple of years and improve your old WIP.

Good luck.

I just have to read over anything that happened after the change and edit anything that needs it. I probably wouldn't change a character's whole personality. That would require too many global changes.

Make use of Save and Copy & Paste as necessary.

I don't really follow what your issue is here. And can you explain what you mean by '...without losing the work you've done so far..' because I don't understand the problem there either.

ManInBlack said:

This is something that I (and many others, I'm sure) used to do too often, and even still find myself forced to do from time to time. In this case, I am returning to a WIP that I did most of the work on in late 2013. I want to complete the broad plot that I established, but there are some key changes that must be made to the early chapters for me to continue properly.

For those who have successfully done so, how do you approach this? What is a good way to make serious changes to the story without losing the work you've done so far?

If I may speculate before anybody answers, I may simply rewrite key scenes: for instance, for a character that is being taken in a completely different direction than I had originally intended, I may just rewrite their introduction, any key scenes that HAVE to be interjected, and then finish the first draft before returning to any less important scenes.

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You're the only one who has read the manuscript, so you're the only one who can answer your questions. You need to do whatever the manuscript requires, and you can't worry about work lost. The worry is about how good the finished novel is, and nothing else.

It sounds like you're resisting wielding the knife on this draft. Understandable when you've invested a lot of time and emotion in it. But sometimes words you've written have to go. Either you need to write a new version of the scene from scratch, or that scene or chapter or whatever, just doesn't belong in the story any more.

There is no way around this. If those words have to go, then they have to go. The interests of the story override everything else. Don't do either a half-arsed edit of a scene when you should have rewritten from scratch. Don't leave something in that no longer fits because you spent hours writing it, or because it's the very first scene that came into your head and inspired you to write the book, or whatever reason you're using to talk yourself into keeping it.

Bite the bullet and be ruthless. It doesn't mean you wasted any time or words. It's all part of creating the final version of the book.

If I do have to rewrite a scene basically from scratch, I'll go through it, usually on paper, and use a highlighter pen to mark any bits that might still work in the new scene and then incorporate them (or more likely, an edited version of them) in the new scene. Similarly for scenes to cut. I'll highlight things in that scene that I do still want to get into the story somewhere, and figure out where they'll fit. I call this my "stripping it for parts" method.

I've done something similar twice... Once, the work needed only minor revisions, and once it needed a major overhaul.

Both times, I saved the existing draft as a separate document so if I hated everything I did, I could revert back to the original.

When it was minor changes - I simply rewrote the sections that needed work. In a few instances, I deleted the old text and put a placeholder in to come back and fill in later (usually with some key notes added in). Then completed the work as if it were a first draft.

When it was major changes - I found it easier to copy and paste the bits I wanted to keep then write the new material around those bits.

You could also take the approach of not doing any major rewriting now - just make notes of the changes you want to make and how they impact the rest of the story. Finish the work so you have a complete first draft, then go back and make your changes in the first revisions.

Everyone is different. Find what approach works for you. But unless you delete the entire original file, or don't save the original as a separate document (and rewrite over what you've already done), you will never "lose" the work you've completed.

I agree, finish the draft. You might discover other changes you want to make in the process. It's probably easier to include N changes in one rewrite than to do N rewrites with one change each.

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I definitely think that you can and should re-use scenes from your first draft- but only if it's going to work with your story.

Re-writing something from scratch is obviously very difficult and time consuming, and I can see why you are wanting to keep pushing forward. You want to keep that momentum going. I think it's great that you're self-aware enough to understand your tendencies and want to work around them. However, echoing what others have said, I think you should be willing to do a more thorough re-write needed.

I would go back through your beginning chapters, as you're doing right now, and make the deep changes that you're talking about. I know you've said that you want to keep the latter part of the WIP, but after changing the first part, you may find yourself heading in a slightly different direction, so don't be afraid to accommodate that for the second part of the novel. You can still keep some parts of the older scenes- I would recommend setting up your computer screen with two windows, one with the first draft, and one with your new draft, both visible at the same time- and just doing some copy pasting where you see fit.

I just caution you on being too hesitant in this process. The more thoroughly you re-work the novel to create a better, more cohesive piece, the better it's going to be. It may take a lot of upfront work now, but it's going to pay off, for whatever you end up doing in the future with this particular novel. At the very least, you'll have some experience doing a full gut with a novel.

Good luck, and keep us updated on your progress! <3