Just because the book is bad doesn’t mean someone will come to your house and arrest you
Dean Wesley Smith takes on the great myths of rewriting.
Passive Guy predicts you will disagree with something Dean says, but also that you will learn something about writing you never thought of before.
Excerpts:
So, to make sure we are all speaking the same language, let me define a few terms that Kristine Kathryn Rusch and I have used for a long time now, and I will try to use in this discussion.
REDRAFT: That’s when you take the typing you have done and toss it away, then write the story again from your memory of the idea. When you are redrafting, you are working from the creative side of your brain.
REWRITE: That’s when you go into a manuscript after it is finished in critical voice and start changing things, usually major things like plot points, character actions, style of sentences, and so on. When you rewrite like this, you are working from the critical side of your mind.
TOUCH-UP DRAFT: When you run through a manuscript fixing small things, things you wrote in notes while writing, things your trusted first reader found. Often very small things or typos. This draft takes almost no time, often less than a day for a full novel, sometimes only a few hours.
SPELL-CHECKING DRAFT: Since so many of us work with our grammar-checkers and spell-checkers off, we need a spell-check draft, often done before the manuscript is given to a first reader. This often takes a an hour or so for a full novel.
Now, let me say right up front here that I am a three-draft writer. Most long-term pros are “three draft” writers that I have talked to in private. Not all, since we all work differently, but a vast majority of the ones I have talked to use a process very near mine.
. . . .
So, what’s the great myth about rewriting?
First, our colleges and our training and New York editors and agents all think that rewriting can make something better.
Most of the time this is just wrong, flat wrong when it comes to fiction. It might be right with poetry, or non-fiction or essays, but with fiction, it can hurt you if you believe this completely and let it govern your process.
Secondly, it makes writers think there is only one “right” way of writing.And that if you don’t fit into that way and rewrite everything, you are doing something wrong. That kind of thinking kills more good writers than I can imagine, and I can imagine a great deal. And have watched first hand it kill more than I want to remember.
All writers are different, so sometimes a writer works with a ton of rewrites. Sometimes a writer just does one draft.
. . . .
Follow Heinlein’s Business Rules
I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.
I want to always be a writer, so I have, since 1982, followed Robert Heinlein’s business rules. And those rules have worked for many, many of us for decades and decades.
His rules go simply:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it.
5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.
Link to the rest at Dean Wesley Smith
While I understand his perspective, I differ hugely on the definitions. As a lingophile, the idea of reWRITing not being WRITing is just ridiculous. He calls revising rewriting. What he calls redrafting is rewriting. To rewrite is to “write again” or “write over.” It’s elementary, my dear Watson, inherent in the English language. But no reason he has to use terms correctly. And I do agree with the points.
Megs – I think Dean is trying to communicate the philosophy he believes a professional writer needs to have. Everything is focused on getting something salable as quickly and efficiently as possible.
As is commonly said sometimes, the perfect is the enemy of the good, particularly when the perfect is impossible or enormously time-consuming. I expect if we could bring Jane Austen back to life, she would have a lot of ideas about how to improve Pride and Prejudice after thinking about it for a couple of hundred years.
:giggles: Yeah, I bet she would. And I hope I made it clear that the ideas he presented were fabulous. I just disagree with his terminology.
Yes, they’re all forms of rewriting, but his problem is also that the term “rewriting” is too general. There are kinds of rewriting. And when most authors use the term “rewrite” in the situations he’s outlining they’re using it in a manner he’s trying to discourage.
If I may…it depends. According to Smith’s definition, I NEVER rewrite. That’s because I’m a planner. I work out the plot points and character actions before I even begin writing one word of the actual novel. In that way, I minimise the Sagging Middles, Gaping Plot Holes, Inconsistent Character Actions, and so on. As a result, I also write faster.
What I do do (ha ha) is go through my first draft and add clarification. I do this BECAUSE I’m a relatively fast writer and my first drafts are jagged. Very very jagged. So I need to smooth things out. But the story itself is already there. The characters are there. The plot points are there. I’m not changing any of them. I’m merely…SMOOTHING. And, by gods, my writing needs it! So, if it’s not anything that Smith defines above, what exactly am I doing?
Kaz – Why don’t you ask Dean about it on his blog?
My sense is that he believes a lot of authors overwrite and that the point when rewriting doesn’t improve the story happens earlier than most people believe it does.
But I could be wrong. Ask Dean.
I agree with PG. One of Dean’s other maxims is that there’s no one way to write. Lots of authors do multiple passes over a work. But there’s a difference between going over a passage once or twice and going over it forty or fifty times.
Traditional artists have this concept called “overworking” a piece. It’s when one area bugs them so they erase and redraw. And again, and again, and again, and again until there’s a hole in the paper and the paper is horribly nasty. Or until they’ve added so much paint that they have an inch of muddy mess in one spot.
A lot of creative writing teachers recommend this process. A lot of young authors believe this is how it must work. And generally they just get an ugly mess.
[...] never heard of Heinlein’s Business Rules before. Thankfully, I read The Passive Voice, who pointed to this post by Dean Wesley Smith, wherein he mentions aforementioned rules in a post [...]