Editing

Bardothren said:

How do you go about editing your stories? Do you ask around for advice, or do you prefer to make the changes yourself? Do you wait a while before looking at the story again, or are you already plagued with the need to change details as you're crafting the story? Do you allow yourself to change as you go, or do you lock in everything until the story's finished?

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1) Editing varies, but I usually do it by myself. While I would like someone for Grammar, punc., and sensible purposes, I have to admit that editing something like "Shattered Crests" for a person not familiar with pokemon in general would be vvvveeeerrrryyyy annoying for that person. I live with a pokemon interest lacking fam (Still love them do death though).

2) Again depends, but it ultimately depends on my feels on the chapter and arc if you will. Short arcs aren't usually to needed for multiple browsing and edit unless I wrote that bad, however longer stories or bigger arcs do require me looking over it a lot and tweaking the writing around a month or more sometimes. Changing things I need to or think would work and juggle between the necessity and results from such an action.

3) Not really plagued with changing things. If anything, I'm plague with the urge to rush to things I really want to write about. It's an unfortunate problem in focusing on current events, however I'm doing okay in dealing with patience.

4) I have no 100% story at all. I can make stuff as I go and it pays off sometimes. The whole game's story subplot thing in PMD #2 would be a much bigger percentage of the actual story if I didn't toss and turn thinking about immersing the culture/atmosphere of the place. I ironically didn't delve into creating that which I've dubbed "Winthrobax" nor it's cultural differences till I though about other works and Shattered Crests and how they would play off it. While tying stuff is tedious at times, find not exactly having a course set be an effective method for my style. I know the end game, certain plot points, and the beginning but not every detail. This aids in tying stuff in one story to another one and/or linking things in my world building I added to later works to reflect in my current one. Plus my better character are made usually when I'm already invested and think of other plots/arcs to do.

I tend to first write as I go and not make the big changes yet unless I thought of a better idea and my brain goes, "OK CHANGE NOW". Since I often sent my work to others before I post them, sometimes they suggest changes and if I feel their suggestions will benefit my story then I'll do those. Same thing goes if I'm stuck on something, then I'll go for advice. For proofreading like for grammar and expanding description/details, I usually wait a bit but sometimes I can immditely think of how to word this certain sentence better and such.

Once I finished writing something, I read it through again to pick out the grammatical and spelling errors. I don't really need distance to fix those mistakes. I do take a break from the story after that. Fixing awkward sentences and story problems is a lot easier to me when I have some time to do some other things first.

I edit myself, because I don't think it's realistic to expect anything else. Even professional writers need to do a lot of their own editing. Fixing grammar and spelling is really the writers own responsibility, I feel. I share my stories when I feel they're at a place where they'd be readable. Any feedback I get about it the story elements I get I'll work in from there on. If it's a big story, though, that's probably 2nd or 3rd draft. Sharing the first draft is something I don't tend to do. The problems in a first draft are usually very apparent, and feedback on a first draft therefor feels a lot less useful to me. I need feedback on problems I cannot diagnose myself, but in a first draft, the attention'll be drawn to the glaring mistakes and the plot inconsistencies.

I'm terrible at editing, so after going over something I've written a few times myself I'll then largely rely on other people picking up errors.

I have a terrible habit of just posting whatever I write as soon as it's finished. I dislike reading back through my own writing because I know it can be bwtter, but if I make the changes personally then it tends to start tearing apart the story because one change leads to another and then I'm replacing entire plot points with something else. And the people who I would ask to read over what I have would either blow smoke up my ass about it's quality or ads just too busy to thoroughly read it.