Rewriting Perils

 

I have a backlog of rough drafts that, if they are ever to see the light of day, need total overhauls. This means rewriting.

You’ll maybe remember that I did that. At the time, the broken version had gone through several major drafts and polishes before I recognized how very broken it was.

Having so many drafts and knowing the story so well in some ways worked for me. Creating a sense of place is hugely important to me, and my early drafts inevitably lack in that dimension. Having the earlier versions helped me to know exactly where my characters were – what they heard, and smelled, and felt. I’m curious to see how the revision process will work with that layer more or less in place.

A big danger for me, however, with rewriting a story several drafts in, is divorcing the old version from the new version. There were times I didn’t question why my characters would go somewhere and do something – if it made sense for them to visit this place, to reveal that bit of information. I just sent them there because that was in the old version, and because I hadn’t really thought about it yet.

Hint: whether your characters know it or not, there should always be a why for those things.

This confusion led to me not really knowing my main character – now a first-person narrator. I knew when I was writing that her character was inconsistent, but she evened out after the first five chapters or so (with plenty more smoothing to do in revision!) and I promptly forgot.

Until my writing group took a crack at it.

Hint: get a writing/critique group. Get a good one. Because mine is excellent and so worth the pain.

Now I have a lot of work to do.

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