The quintessential rewrite?

[ElenaV]

I suppose this question has been addressed here multiple times before, but since primitive attempt at searching the forums revealed very little, I turn on to you folks.

My story is not much different from many of you, probably.

Wrote a few chapters for fun, after all what is there to loose, it is just a relaxing activity without any obligations. No commitments, no promises, no deadline and no stress. And then slowly, there were a few views, few but still the numbers gradually rose. One day, the alert appeared. Someone left a chapter comment, just four words "Thanks for the chapter". Just like that, as if ejected from the mundane reality by a mysterious force, a new perspective dawned. You realise that you have been living under a darkened sky and those four words parted the dark clouds, and it felt like the descent of a radiant angel through the parted clouds.

And with every chapter the comments slowly trickled in. Some kind stranger at another corner of the world, with a tap on their keyboard, motivated me, motivated us, to write better, to deliver more. With that, what started as a no commitment, no promise, stress-free activity became an unspoken pledge to an unknown stranger.

You devour all the help thread and stickied posts in the forum, beg for feedback from the writing titans in discord, consume all those tutorial videos in youtube, tolerate those 15 sec annoying ads. All to fulfill a silent oath.

Months pass, and just as it happend to me yesterday, you read the first very first chapter that you posted and realise that it is sub-par at best and cringe worthy at worst. Like the 4-th grade love letter you wrote to your catechism teacher level cringe worth.

The only answer "rewrite".

Now I am struggling, trying to make a decision, should I rewrite or proceed further with the story as it is.

Pros of rewriting:

• Better story telling, grammar and characterization.
• New readers may stick around for long.

Cons of rewriting:

• Obviously, I stretch myself thin, few releases or none at all.
• Without a rewrite, I can marvel at my progress.
• Will the rewrite be fulfilling? will the urge be satisfied with a single rewrite? Or would i recursively rewrite every few months?

I shall ponder more.

Please, oh mighty penlords of SH, provide me your guidance.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I would only rewrite the whole story after ending it. But every now and again, I do tiny rewrites to fix the grammar. I do these rewrites without changing the story, even though the story is terrible.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

If it truly is that bad, then you do have to rewrite, but not now, when you finish. If it's bad to the point where you've written the plot of your story into oblivion and there's no turning back, then you should rewrite.

Alternatively, you could just make some edits to your first chapters, nothing too time-consuming, but enough until your satisfied. Set something like 1 edit for every 3 new chapters

Edit: Oh, and I made a thread asking a similar question kinda recently, perhaps you've already seen it but I think the responses here can answer your question just as good.

What do you consider enough for a rewrite?

So, 90k words into my web serial and I've been feeling like rewriting it because the magic system had a plothole that I've created through the latest chapters. Anyways, I'm not gonna ask for feedback on that since I doubt anyone who sees this has read my story or cares. So instead, I'll ask...

forum.scribblehub.com

 

[AKnightWithaKnife]

Usually most people do a soft rewrite. Let’s say the original chapter is 200 words long and rushed. a soft rewrite however would maybe triple the word count and keep the orgianl fell of the story intact

 

[KiraMinoru]

I suppose this question has been addressed here multiple times before, but since primitive attempt at searching the forums revealed very little, I turn on to you folks.

My story is not much different from many of you, probably.

Wrote a few chapters for fun, after all what is there to loose, it is just a relaxing activity without any obligations. No commitments, no promises, no deadline and no stress. And then slowly, there were a few views, few but still the numbers gradually rose. One day, the alert appeared. Someone left a chapter comment, just four words "Thanks for the chapter". Just like that, as if ejected from the mundane reality by a mysterious force, a new perspective dawned. You realise that you have been living under a darkened sky and those four words parted the dark clouds, and it felt like the descent of a radiant angel through the parted clouds.

And with every chapter the comments slowly trickled in. Some kind stranger at another corner of the world, with a tap on their keyboard, motivated me, motivated us, to write better, to deliver more. With that, what started as a no commitment, no promise, stress-free activity became an unspoken pledge to an unknown stranger.

You devour all the help thread and stickied posts in the forum, beg for feedback from the writing titans in discord, consume all those tutorial videos in youtube, tolerate those 15 sec annoying ads. All to fulfill a silent oath.

Months pass, and just as it happend to me yesterday, you read the first very first chapter that you posted and realise that it is sub-par at best and cringe worthy at worst. Like the 4-th grade love letter you wrote to your catechism teacher level cringe worth.

The only answer "rewrite".

Now I am struggling, trying to make a decision, should I rewrite or proceed further with the story as it is.

Pros of rewriting:

• Better story telling, grammar and characterization.
• New readers may stick around for long.

Cons of rewriting:

• Obviously, I stretch myself thin, few releases or none at all.
• Without a rewrite, I can marvel at my progress.
• Will the rewrite be fulfilling? will the urge be satisfied with a single rewrite? Or would i recursively rewrite every few months?

I shall ponder more.

Please, oh mighty penlords of SH, provide me your guidance.

One man’s cringe is another man’s treasure. That’s the motto I live by these days.

 

[Deleted member 42060]

Finish the story first. Then write a new novel. Rewriting is often insidious—but, you can still do some editing to improve the grammar of your story along the way (editing and rewriting are different). If I were you, I’ll finish the story without worrying about rewriting it (but I still edit a little bit), then move on to the next novel. And when you finish your next novel, you can come back to your previous novel and see how much you’ve improved.

I live by the motto “Done is better than perfect.”​

 

[greyblob]

Months pass, and just as it happend to me yesterday, you read the first very first chapter that you posted and realise that it is sub-par at best and cringe worthy at worst. Like the 4-th grade love letter you wrote to your catechism teacher level cringe worth.

try rewriting the first chapter and leave it at that. wait 1~2 months and return to it - you'll most likely want to rewrite it again. focus on finishing the book first.

 

[tounokenja]

I started out writing horribly paced 1,500 word chapters with a glaring lack of descriptions in a dialogue heavy novel. Slowly as I grew more accustomed to writing, those chapters bounded into 2,000 then 2,500 and kept going upwards until a regular 4,000 word chapter was being produced in about the same time. My descriptions got better, my dialogue became clearer, and my reader engagement grew as I grew. There is no doubt my initial fifteen or so chapters needed a rewrite when I finished, and I've done so when I revisited it months afterwards. Yes, it was cringe, but knowing where things end, what plot holes you may have left untied, and what you want the beginning to look like now that you have the experience of taking your novel to the end (whether it be merely the current volume end, or the completion of the novel in it's entirety) is the goal when you are ready to publish it, not just throwing it up as a web novel. I mean, you are welcome to look at so many light novels that started on sites like Narou or Kakuyomu. They were true cringe at times, but they had tons of engagement and support, because people are willing to overlook those things in order to have a good time, and a web novelist gives the reader a good time by putting out content instead of second-guessing and suffering turmoil over things like: Was this cringe? Could I rewrite it better?

I'll answer that for you. Even for "big boi" authors, it's still often the case that the early part of a webnovel will always be that way. At least until the rewrite after.

That doesn't mean you can't administer corrections or fix grammar if it's pointed out. By all means do so. But the most important thing is forward momentum. If you really feel the need to do so, write more, then when you have a few chapters in reserve, you can slowly begin to use the time you created to go back and do minor edits, but always keep in mind that changing a little thing can have a cascading effect in later chapters.

Just some advice from a well-known, but not yet famous author.

Hope it helps!

 

[Agentt]

Meh, don't worry, you are fine, just keep writing, and then start a new series, rewrite is an exhaustive and tiring process, and honestly, quite boring

 

[Jemini]

I am someone who actually has done a re-write, so I can speak from experience for you here. I've given this advice a few times, but here it is again.

For the most part, I agree with the notion of finishing the story first before a full re-write. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule.

1st. When you need to change something dramatic in the story, such as entire world mechanics or entirely different critical events in an earlier point of the story, and this massive change in the story that you plan to make is relevant to the next place you want to go with the plot.

2nd. When you have absolutely written yourself into a corner and would need a story-breaking ass-pull in order to get the story back on track. For the record, writing yourself into a corner does not mean you're out of ideas. It means pretty much what I just said up there. It is when you write your characters into a situation where only ass-pulls and deuce-ex-machina solutions are capable of resolving the current situation you have your characters in.

3rd. If your story is planned to go super long-run anyway and you still critically need the story to be different in order for things to work out, and you have figured and planned out EXACTLY what you want changed and where you want to bring the plot after the re-write. You have to have it VERY well planned out for scenario 3.

If you do not have any of those 3 scenarios, then I say just keep writing. However, if you have decided you're bent on a re-write, then let loose and just have fun with it. Stop straining yourself to make the story good THIS time around, and instead focus on using your story to info-mine for ideas that can improve it the next time around. Keep going until you have either finished the story or triggered one of the above 3 scenarios (hopefully scenario 3.)

 

[Zirrboy]

With all your pathos about commitment to readers it might also be worthy to keep in mind that a continuation is a service to your current readers while a rewrite is for new ones.

If the beginning is the worst part and they have already read through that, the quality of the early chapters are of little concern to them.
So unless there are problems caused by the start that persist even further in, it's negative to them.

Edit: It seems greyblob likes my hypocrisy.

 

[Layenlml]

I suppose this question has been addressed here multiple times before, but since primitive attempt at searching the forums revealed very little, I turn on to you folks.

My story is not much different from many of you, probably.

Wrote a few chapters for fun, after all what is there to loose, it is just a relaxing activity without any obligations. No commitments, no promises, no deadline and no stress. And then slowly, there were a few views, few but still the numbers gradually rose. One day, the alert appeared. Someone left a chapter comment, just four words "Thanks for the chapter". Just like that, as if ejected from the mundane reality by a mysterious force, a new perspective dawned. You realise that you have been living under a darkened sky and those four words parted the dark clouds, and it felt like the descent of a radiant angel through the parted clouds.

And with every chapter the comments slowly trickled in. Some kind stranger at another corner of the world, with a tap on their keyboard, motivated me, motivated us, to write better, to deliver more. With that, what started as a no commitment, no promise, stress-free activity became an unspoken pledge to an unknown stranger.

You devour all the help thread and stickied posts in the forum, beg for feedback from the writing titans in discord, consume all those tutorial videos in youtube, tolerate those 15 sec annoying ads. All to fulfill a silent oath.

Months pass, and just as it happend to me yesterday, you read the first very first chapter that you posted and realise that it is sub-par at best and cringe worthy at worst. Like the 4-th grade love letter you wrote to your catechism teacher level cringe worth.

The only answer "rewrite".

Now I am struggling, trying to make a decision, should I rewrite or proceed further with the story as it is.

Pros of rewriting:

• Better story telling, grammar and characterization.
• New readers may stick around for long.

Cons of rewriting:

• Obviously, I stretch myself thin, few releases or none at all.
• Without a rewrite, I can marvel at my progress.
• Will the rewrite be fulfilling? will the urge be satisfied with a single rewrite? Or would i recursively rewrite every few months?

I shall ponder more.

Please, oh mighty penlords of SH, provide me your guidance.

I did some when I felt like it, pretty much when I was making circles on how to progress with the story...

The start usually doesn't matter that much as long as new chapters comes out so I would leave it as something secondary that you keep in mind but don't focus on.

 

[TheHelpfulFawn]

Depends on far you have gotten along in the story. 30% through? Yeah go ahead. Who gives a fuck? 70% almost done? You should probably finish the story first then re-write.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

I recommend writing a new story and then going back to see if your old one is still worth a rewrite. Also . . .

 

[Lloyd]

I love rewriting. I've technically done it like 4 times on my current story.