Editing

How much you edit what you post? How many drafts do your chapters go through? How many times do you rewrite the entire story?

Entirely depends on the story. Most of my stories at least one or two chapters would be rewritten, even after I posted it. For instance, Foul Play's first chapter has gone through three revisions now (the newest version I haven't posted here yet but I plan to soon). The other chapters will go with some form of revision too.

I have some backlog, but after US/UM looks like the second half of the story needs to be entirely rewritten haha.

I at least try to at the minimum have one person proofread. As for myself, I re-read it and edit at least 3 times after first draft (which contains its own amount of re-reads and all)

For editing, there's:

-the first draft, where the story is gotten out as fast as possible. Nothing is really checked in terms of mechanics or anything more than basic research.

-the second draft, where the story is copied over word-by-word. This copying is done with the opposite method that the first draft went through. If I typed the first draft, the second draft is written down in a notebook. If I wrote the first draft into a notebook, the second draft is typed to the computer. Usually only basic edits are done. Unless one character is changed from a main character to a minor character and another character goes through a complete personality change between drafts.

-the third draft, where we read through the story again and make sure that everything is okay. We've...never gotten to this point yet!

How many times do you rewrite the entire story?

Click to expand...

So far, once. When it was discovered that the story started during the wrong week of April. That threw off the entire timeline, and it was easier to just start over.

I've recently discovered the Hemingway App (here), which will highlight things like too long sentences, adverbs, passive voice, and purple prose, in hopes it will make your writing clearer.

So for Shine Diamond, I start by writing out an episode like I always do, then copy it into the Hemingway App, then go through and try to fix as much of the material it highlights as possible. (interestingly, it flags the Pokemon name Starly as an adverb).

I may go back and edit Moonlight Silver this way.

I very often edit my posts and texts, because I always try to get the most correct and better to convey my thoughts to the audience. Often, I kind of "catch up" some kind of thought and I can rewrite some sentence or a whole paragraph. This is normal, since you are always in a state of constant learning and improving your writing skills.