Comments on: Dance of joy!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:02:41 +0000

I used to write disjointed plot free stories that were 106,000 words. Now that I know how to plot, I finish at about 80,000. Now my challenge is to take the MS and flesh the details out so I dont have my readers saying “Great scene, where are we?” Making sure everything is contracted, (it’s) and taking out the extra that’s removes ALOT of words from my rough drafts.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:29:03 +0000

I like the idea that “I try not to beat it to death once it’s as good as I can make it.” Once you get to the point where you can’t tell if your changes are making anything better, it’s probably a good time to stop .

By: Carol/Careann

Carol/Careann — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:23:03 +0000

One of my biggest problems is not knowing when to stop tweaking. I usually leave it for a few weeks while I work on something else — and then come back to read through it again with a fresh outlook. I learned from someone else not to do these later read-throughs on the computer but to print out the ms single spaced. It reads more like a book that way and it’s easier to notice any residual mistakes and the trivia that could be axed — the words and whole scenes that I’m tending to skip over that don’t really move the story ahead. The urge to re-read and keep tweaking never quite leaves me, but I keep remembering that an agent and/or editor will undoubtedly have more suggestions so I try not to beat it to death once I think it’s as good as I can make it.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:28:42 +0000

Yep, that’s how I did the first few passes. This last time I was working on clarity and decided to change some things in the subplots. I also went through to make sure each scene had a scene goal, which I think strengthened it a lot, too.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:09:50 +0000

I usually reread the entire thing, cutting words here and there, rephrasing things and deleting whole scenes. I know when I’m done when I can show it to someone else feeling pretty good about the work as a whole.