Making a Good Story Great

[queenoftheskies]

After you've written that rough draft and you set about revising/editing it, do you find that you usually keep strictly to the same story? Or do you find that your story has evolved to the point it needs major overhauls once you've finished.

What type of rough draft to you write? Does the style take major changes when you're done?

How do you set about making a good story great? Or do you feel that you generally have a great story to begin with?

Comments

What is this "Rough Draft" of which you speak?

[seawasp]

I generally just sit down and write. Then I'm done. The only time I do noticeable tweaking is if I come back to a story after the passage of several years, and find that the universe requires adjusting. Or if I'm collaborating with someone else, where I have to adjust what I wrote to fit their material, and also adjust theirs to fit with mine.

[antonstrout.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm a good judge of writing or even a good judge of my own, but I find that when I finish something, I end up going back and clearing out the plot elements that never developed more than changing the story drastically.

For instance: I started to develop a brother character subplot in my last work early on, but then the real plot kicked in, along with several other subplots. When I finished, I realized that the brother stuff never really came up again, and would be great in a sequel, but really wasn't right for this book. I tend to write with a strong sense of plot but no characters first, though, so I find the structure stays mostly the same for me, but the details throughout change and polish up as I revise a first draft.

[shawn-scarber.livejournal.com]

I normally stick to the same story, but that's mainly because I'm a pretty big pre-planner. However, one of the things I'm learning, just recently, that is a big problem with this is I tend to overlook story telling flaws. I have a short I'm revising now that three different alpha readers have told me has a weak beginning. During my own revisions, I didn't even notice the flaw, but now it's glaringly apparent. I'd like to learn how to really see story flaws in my own work the way other people can.

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

Me, three! Suggestions, please!

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

depends on the project and the process. usually when i just wing something, it needs major overhaul after the first draft is done. this is because i am a very weak plotter and it often takes me several passes before i find all the layers in a story.

if i have an outline i'm working from and it's a well-considered outline with a strong plot, i usually wind up with less overhaul.

normally i overhaul a lot because i wing a lot.

: D

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Which is to say--I've done both. I've have revisions that just involved a pretty light cleaning up/strengthening of the plot, and I've have revisions where I've trashed 75% or more of the novel and pretty changed the story as well (one particular example was my first one--I'd learned more about challenging my characters and subplots once I got back to it, so I kept a few major scenes and rewrote around it to keep things from being so easy and linear.)

[mark-west.livejournal.com]

My pattern, for what it's worth, is that I note the story almost to death and then crack through it (I didn't used to plan, but I find it allows me to be more creative since I know where I'm going to have to end up, so I can enjoy my writing more within each scene).

I've only ever had one novel where the ending was changed, but that was only a couple of chapters and the revised version made far more sense in relation to the story.

My rough drafts are just that - full of spelling, grammar and continuity errors, not to mention weird little notes to myself where I need to either research or figure something out later. But most of the style is there, I think and I just refine it on the redrafts.

How do you set about making a good story great?
Ha! Never been a problem for me.

Seriously - you work at it until it hums sweetly and you can't find anything else major to either add or take out (there'll always be little naggy bits, but we can't do much about them). Then send it out.

Also - I have a little troupe of "first readers" (both writers and non), who read my 2nd drafts and, generally, give me excellent feedback (brutal and honest is the way I like to go).

[lanyn.livejournal.com]

Usually my story/plot does not change from rough draft through revisions. (There is one drastic example where I finished the entire novel, then threw it out, all 130,000 words, and started over with a different plot. The second version I'm happy with, though, so it was worth it.) Minor subplots may be dropped or expanded depending upon the ultimate needs of the main story, but those are usually small. The rewrites I do are to tighten what's there and mostly stengthen the language and the telling of the story. My style doesn't change either, from rough draft to completion.

Good to great? Who knows... you have to tell the story the best way you know how with the tools you've learned/acquired. Worrying about anything else just brings on headaches. :-D

[canadiansuzanne.livejournal.com]

My first draft is always a bit of a race. I scream through, trying to get the plot on paper, lost in the excitement of the story.

Editing is always about two things for me.

1. Refining the words -- taking out the cliches, the repetition, and the fumbly words

2. Adding detail -- because I tend to skip the senses, the location, the atmosphere in the first draft while I'm caught up in plot.

Editing is more of a chore for me than writing..

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

For me it's a process. I'm not sure I've ever written a great story, or that I ever will but I've written stories that have entertained others so I'll take those as the benchmark.

I tend to have an atmosphere rather than a story in my mind initially, something that I want to evoke, and that will stay with the piece until it's done. The actual plot is very much subject to change. My current Novel In Waiting (the Antoni thing) got to 70k, then I started again because it wasn't evoking the atmosphere I wanted it to (and the plot had ceased to make sense!). It's making better sense now, but I'm only at 10k on the rewrite :P

Rough draft vs. 2nd draft

[vg-ford.livejournal.com]

I've noticed (now that I'm on the rewrite of my second novel) that my rough drafts tend to be a longer version of the outline. It's the second draft that I go through and make the major changes. I am a very methodic, linear writer. I need to see what I have written before I can make changes.

As far as making a good story great - I need to add details in the 2nd draft. I write VERY lean in the first draft.

Just my .02 cents.

[db-writer.livejournal.com]

My story process is pretty much:

Idea-story treament-outline, so I know the basics of my plots. It helped that my first novel had an outline written in college to go back to.

By the time I finished the first draft I knew I had better stuff towards the end than at the beginning. In the second draft I re-wrote a major opening chapter from two people having a drink in an empty lounge to hundreds of people having a full dinner in on a cruise ship type luxury liner. The essence remained the same though, a conflict between two characters. This lead to new chapters, dropping one, a new intro for the villian, all of which were much better.

Also, I wrote this book "linearly", chapter 2 following 1, 3 following 2, etc. I did this (and it was painful) mainly to discipline myself to be complete, fearing a bit irrationally that otherwise I'd only write "the fun stuff".

I'd never do that again. For the next book(s) I plan on outlining, doing the major threshold chapters, and any others that I have firmly in my mind, the go back and fill until complete.

I guess this is all a long way of saying I have considered a complete re-do of the story, but usually I'm so deeply involved with the original idea I find little desire to change it.

[mark-west.livejournal.com]

If I think that there's a problem, I tend to abandon them early on.
I used to do this a lot, which is another reason why I tend to note things to death now. I have two projects, pretty much all there, with just about every scrap of information relating to them noted in a huge essay (about 15k words each), just waiting for the right time to pounce.

If you do abandon though, how much of it do you carry over to other/new projects? I seem to always use an old idea with every major piece of work that I do - even if it's just something small and throwaway.

[mark-west.livejournal.com]

(I friended you, btw...I hope that's ok!)
Not a problem at all, I've friended you back!

My noting tends to start off with trying to capture everything that feeds into the overall project (I love to write afterwords to all of my stuff and I don't want to rely on my memory as to why I started on this tangent), which then leads me into different subplots, characters and a whole variety of things. Using these notes, I then do a couple of plans and that's about it. I tend to do very few notes on character and prefer for them to create themselves as I write.

Why don't you think your stuff will ever be complete?

[mark-west.livejournal.com]

Hi


How do you know when one of your projects is done? (I'm nosy - sorry!) :)
Generally, because my wife tells me to leave it alone! To be honest, I'm not sure that any of my projects are ever really done - I've published a fair few short stories and I can look at them now, even the ones I "revised" for the collection and see bits that I'd like to change. I think that there has to come a point where you realise you can't do any more - you're just fiddling and, essentially, putting off the action of allowing other people to look at it.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I'm not an outliner. I start with an impulse and sometimes it becomes more. Sometimes it becomes something entirely different from what I started with, so I have to rework a lot.

If I'm writing something longer (a novel), I eventually start to see where I'm going with it, and the new stuff will need less plot-level reworking (though individual scenes will sometimes get murdered in fifth draft--see below). Sometimes I'm lucky and that happens with a short story, too.

In those cases (i.e. I know where I'm going and I have to write it), the first drafts tend to look a lot like scripts in prose form. Lots of dialogue, a bit of stage direction, but almost nothing about the scenery or specific references to the characters' internal workings except for fight-scene blocking or the ocassional internal monologue.

Second draft is for filling in plot holes. Often the holes are very, very large and it becomes like "First Draft 1a."

Third draft is for painting the whiteroom and explaining character motivation.

Fourth draft is for reconciling all the new scenery and character motivation with the plot again.

Fifth draft is for deleting every extra, useless word I can.

Six draft is the same as fifth draft, because I know I missed a bunch the first time through. But on sixth draft I am allowed to put some other words in if I happen to spot plot holes, unpainted white spots, or sagging characterization. Which I will.

Seventh+ draft is what I do if I'm bored and still like that story and want to reread it again. I'll find something to tweak, I'm sure. I have certain punctuation that I change regularly, swapping the same period for a semicolon and back again every other time I read a particular story.

The time from first to seventh draft is anywhere between a year and a decade.

I write an outline before I sit down to write so.......

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

my story is essentially 'finished' when I sit down to write it. I only have to write it. It's all in my head. I pretty much keep the same story. I do tweak the lines though, every now and then.

[tamlyn.livejournal.com]

fter you've written that rough draft and you set about revising/editing it, do you find that you usually keep strictly to the same story? Or do you find that your story has evolved to the point it needs major overhauls once you've finished.
- that really depends for me. If the plot is solid, then it needs minor work, when it isn't, I do a complete rewrite.

What type of rough draft to you write? Does the style take major changes when you're done?
- do not know what you exactly mean by that. I just write, write a lot more, and only worry about spelling and continuity until it is finished and I can polish :)

How do you set about making a good story great? Or do you feel that you generally have a great story to begin with?
- I usually fatten up the story by adding details and descriptions. I usually focus on moving the plot forward, and the interaction between characters in the first draft.

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

If it's going to need major overhauls/plot changes, I tend to just start from scratch. Or just shove it back into the computer for a while, set up a SEP field around it, and move on to something else.

Needless to say, this is not a procedure I'm actually reccomending.