After NaNoWriMo: Rewriting Through Iteration
National Novel Writing Month has ended, and writers — many of whom have just, for the first time, finished drafting a book — are flocking to forums and social media groups to ask “Now that I have finished a whole draft, do I need to rewrite my story?”
“Rewriting is the path to great fiction” is one of the most evergreen concepts in the literature sphere. Everyone from Stephen King to Francine Prose to Kurt Vonnegut seems to share this idea.
To grow quickly, beginning and intermediate artists should finish projects rapidly rather than strive for perfection.
However, manuscripts should not be considered “finished” after one draft. Rather, rewriting is a powerful tool to finish projects for maximum output and growth.
What Is Rewriting?
For today’s purpose, rewriting means, “An editing framework which examines a whole draft and then improves it.” Rewriting does not refer to throwing out a first draft and starting again from scratch.
A common response: “How does rewriting apply to rejecting perfectionism and instead completing many projects?”
The goal is “good enough,” rather than perfection.
Finding the Right Standard
Many writers idealize a story experience in their head, but cannot replicate this on the page. They hold a useless standard in their head, one they can never meet.
Rather, writers should create a standard of quality based on several traits.
- Audience — Stories are written for readers. Writers must serve their audience before themselves.
- Genre — From romance’s Happily Ever After to thriller’s final showdown with the villain, a text belonging to a genre has a responsibility to fulfill the expectations of that genre.
- Mechanics — A writer must apply proper paragraphing, punctuation, spelling, and dynamic voice both in narration and dialogue.
- Shared Human Experience — People read stories to learn what it is like to be another human being. Universal experiences and emotions drive every story. Writers must be careful to give them the narrative spotlight.
- Structure — A story’s pacing and particular story beats are as integral to keeping a reader’s attention and interest as well-maintained roads are to a city’s functioning.
Iterative Revision
Once a writer has created a standard, they can rewrite.
Iteration is key to rewriting. One should apply several editing passes to a manuscript, correcting large-scale problems (e.g., story structure) before making finer-scale changes (e.g., character voice).
Under this model, a writer examines the entire story at once before any other step.
The perfectionist alternative to this model often involves a writer moving through one chapter at a time, making structural, character, and copyediting changes based on their intuition from scene to scene.
Under this model, writers might edit a paragraph to have beautiful language, only to realize later that they must cut the paragraph. Not only have they wasted time editing, but the effort and the paragraph’s beauty may convince the writer to keep it despite its harm to the story.
A writer’s revision standard not only gives them a target to reach but also a point at which they know to stop working. This is crucial to the goal of finishing one project and beginning another.
Efficiency in Quantity
Consider a writer who creates unlikably arrogant protagonists. If they write ten stories in a row, editing none of them, they may add the same problematic character into many stories. If they instead fix the issue in revision, the writer will err less often in future projects.
Such issues are hard to detect during drafting, but become clearer with distance from the project. Craft books recommend putting a manuscript away for a while after drafting, so the writer can separate themselves from it and see it more objectively during revision.
There are other (and sometimes more efficient) ways to achieve this goal. If possible, writers should join or create a community with others of at least similar skill and exchange writing criticism.
When Perfectionism Works
Perfectionism can serve advanced artists, those whose audience will eagerly wait for near-perfection that may be years in the making. These authors have often already proved themselves with phenomenal books. Independent writers will unlikely achieve this, nor keep an audience via a perfectionist’s languid writing pace.
Conclusion
Iteration is an elegant, effective path to improving the writing craft. It allows a writer to fix craft problems while completing projects from beginning to end. It allows them space to experiment and grow while adhering to standards of professional quality.
Creators who revise and iterate surpass those who agonize over one paragraph at a time, and surpass them rapidly. If you have recently finished a story’s first draft, use this advice as the next step in your writing journey. Iterate, fix your flaws, and then write another book that is even better.
