The Rewrite.

As a relative novice the term ‘Rewrite’ sounded quite horrific when I first heard it. It was spoken as if a writer took a perfectly good story and completely changed it. That is how it sounded and I avoided using the term. Without knowing it, ‘rewriting’ was exactly what I had been doing for some time.  I have heard differing opinions on what a rewrite is so I can’t claim my approach is better than another. What I think I can do, is quantify the drafting process in the hope your story stands out amongst the verbiage.

Rewriting requires motivation of a different kind.

I am the sort of writer that has the story quite clear before I embark (see The Notebook). Not everyone is the same. Sure I create twists and turns if I think it will add drama, humour or tension but not normally at the expense of the original story. They must add to the story in some way. What is clear to me now is that when you have a rough draft and you’ve written that final sentence, the champagne can be kept on ice another while. Now that I’ve finished a solid rewrite of ‘The Rugby Blanket’ I can say there are different approaches in the drafting process. Let me see if I can summarise how they appear to me.

The Reread – This is a form of editing done at almost reading speed. This keeps you in touch with your story the way an imagined reader would. Often in the reread you will make small changes; Minor editing, proofreading and perhaps the occasional changing of a word /sentence. What you should be left with is a good first draft and a sense of how the story flows.

Weeding – The next step I call ‘weeding’. Essentially it’s proof reading but at a slower pace carefully considering phrasing and how connected the narrative is. This is the perfect opportunity to create a rewrite document as you move along making notes of possible changes or uncertainty. A lot of the boring stuff like punctuation and indentation and paragraph breaking can be sorted here.

The Rewrite – The great thing about those first two is you end up with clean copy. You can then clearly see what lines, paragraphs, pages or even chapters can literally be cast aside. Often one line of well written narrative can replace three or more that existed in the first draft. Move through the work from start to finish and refer to your notes regularly to see whether you tended to them. During this phase you can give bland passages more life and send the irrelevant to the void. There’s nothing easy about this part but it is rewarding.

That’s it, in a nutshell. Any combination of these three will help refine your work and the opinions of others will help too. Proof readers and copy editors will soon tell you where they ‘lost the plot’. I’ve heard a figure of ten percent bandied about in terms how much word count will be shed but it depends on so many factors including how ‘clean’ the rough draft was. Just remember these two items and it will keep you from stressing through this laborious task: 1. You shouldn’t fall in love with that first draft but there is nothing to stop you keeping a copy for reference.  2. There is absolutely nothing wrong with remaining in love with the story – That’s why you wrote it in the first place.