This may seem like an unusual question, but perhaps it will help others.

I have finished my first draft on my novel and for the last few months have been working on my revision/rewrite etc.

When I wrote the first draft I always approached my day’s writing period by trying to be ‘in the story with my character.’ I was emotionally attached to the main character and living the story with the character.

Now that I am working on rewrite/revision, I am not sure how to approach my work each day. Part of me says I need to be emotionally ‘in the story’ to rewrite sections of the novel, and part of me says I need to be coldly objective for revision.

If I become emotionally involved with the rewrite, I will probably write better, but I will miss errors. If I approach it objectively as if it were written by another writer, I will see more errors, but my rewrite will probably be stiff.

Anyway, you get the idea. Should one go through the whole book first and work on nothing but rewrite first, and then go through it a second time for revision? Can a write do both? How should he/she approach it emotionally each day?

Thanks
Azel

Hi Azel,

i suppose it depends on how you organise your rewrite.

If i need to change a character or add a chapter, for example, i will do that as emotionally as the first draft.

I may then do a rewrite/revision going through the whole script checking grammar, sentence structure etc - so this will be more detached.

I will then go through eg checking that each line of dialogue is in keeping with each relevant character - again, in a relatively detached way.

Then maybe i will go through checking plot lines and time lines etc, checking consistancy - so again, detached.

Then i might check chapter structure of the whole thing - once more, detached.


The final read through/revision will look at the whole and this will be emotionally involved.

I'm not saying that this is how a rewrite should be done, but it works for me!

good luck

Casey

I'm not at the stage of doing this with a whole novel, but based on how I did it with shorter pieces I feel there are two different sorts of rewrite/edit:

1. the right-brain rewrite, where you need to be emotionally involved
2. the left-brain cold-hearted edit, where you look for errors.

Personally I would do the two separately.

Deb

Yes, I think it's useful to think of yourself as wearing either a writer's hat (emotional, involved, right brain) or an editor's hat (detached, logical, left brain).

I think as you get more experienced you get better at switching between the two, or even more-or-less wearing both hats at once, but until then, deciding which you're doing before you start the chapter is a good thing.

Emma