A New Thread by Miss Mouth, DarthBreezy: How often do you revisit/revise?

An older fic? What makes you do so? Do you think your writing skills have improved and you want to polish up an old fic? Find a missing scene? Or do you let sleeping Rancors lie?

 

I haven't touch a viggy I first wrote for these boards but I go back and forth and fiddle w/ an epic I wrote. I'm slowly working on re-editing the whole thing to one day repost.

Why? I am most definitely a better writer now than I was back when I started it. Also I never plan my plots of my stories- so now that I know how it all ends, I can insert breadcrumbs into it. Also I know the characters inside and out- so I can better explain their motives, and emotions, since I know how they'll behave later down the road.

Course I'm only like 6 chapters in a like 90 post story- so I've got a longgggg way to go

 

Let sleeping Rancours lie.

I know if I touched a lot of my older stories I wouldn't stop. They work at the moment because of the time when they were written and the feelings and friends that I had when I started writing them. If I touched them now I would pervert them from what they were originally written from. Although there are many bits in some of my older stories that I would love to change, I'm not going to. They are their own piece of history to me. From my experiance published authors who rewrite or revisit old stories often come out with scripts that are far worse then the original. Somewhere in the rewriting the original magic has been lost. Although this isn't the case for everyone and every story I think it's what really puts me off.

Now revising currently written stories...that's a different kettle of fish

Kithera

 

Mmmmmm, kettle fish.


Unless I'm planning on submitting the story somewhere else (like the Archive) I don't mess with my earlier works.

I figure there's no demand for "Special Editions" of what I write.

 

I have the same opinion as Kit regarding this. Changing one thing will probably make me want to change alot of things...

Also...I tend to leave stuff the way it is...not very good with change-be it my hair, my dress sense or my fics!

I still peek at my first fic from time to time to see how it differs from the ones after it...

And yes...if I was submitting it to an archive I might work on it a bit to polish it up and ensure it's factual accuracy...but that's about it.

 

I let sleeping rancors sleep. I edit my stories to death as they are being written and my readers complain that I don't post often enough as it is. I tell them that I can't even leave one sentence alone (which is true)! So if I started rewrites, I'd never write a new story again!

As for polishing them up for submission to the Archives, they're already polished when I post them on the boards. I have my betas look them over but they don't usually find anything wrong (other than typos). If I do get rejected, it's usually for pacing or narrative style - both of which are already deliberate and inherent in the fic. It would take major rewrites and destroy the work so I just give up and move on.

So I guess the longwinded answer is that I don't.

 

Depends on the story. Strangely, the first story I completed here appears at the archive in mostly its original form, with the exception of a scene added because my betas thought that some plot point needed a little more explanation. However, the next story I wrote here is heading into its third incarnation. It's about some fairly difficult topics, and I keep looking back at it about every six months and thinking that I can do it a lot better now.

I'm in the slow process of revising a monster story I finished a year ago. It took me a year to write, and that was probably one of the bigger periods of writer growth for me thus far, so the difference between the beginning and the end is phenomenal. And before I can start working on the next story in that story arc, I need to get this one polished up--as it stands, it's very, very messy.

Of course, my initial posting is almost a hot-off-the-presses kind of thing--I don't edit endlessly before posting because if I did, I wouldn't ever get around to posting it. My motto in such matters, to quote Sache8, is "Draft? What is this draft you speak of?"



So in short, I edit a story when it needs it. And then I hope I don't have to come back to it again and again and again...

Mel

 

I revised my very first fanfic and reposted it, making a few minor changes having to do with AOTC being released (finding out that Padme was "Senator Amidala" rather than "Senator Naberrie", for example). Other than that I don't revise...I have my fics beta'd once and I make the changes then. Like Kit', if I went back to my older fics and started making changes, I'd never stop. I'll admit that I have written some grotesquely mooshy scenes that would put Harlequin to shame, but I just chalk them up to naivety rather than making changes.

 

Or do you let sleeping Rancors lie?

Definitely. By the time I finish I story I have completed whatever plot bunny or feeling I was trying to get across. I am ready to go on to the next story.

I just cannot linger on the longer stories because I am no longer mentally in the same place I was when I originally wrote them. It would no longer be the same story if I tried to do anything to it.

Vignettes and recent short stories, I am a little more willing to rework but only if I am going to try to get them archived. Otherwise, they are what they are.

 

Hi, my name is Reihla, and I am a revisaholic.

Seriously, I'm one of those who would change things in my story constantly if I could. I write a section and read it, fix things, re-read it, fix more things, and post it when I get so sick of looking at it that I can't see straight. (Note the majority of changes aren't content. They seem to be word changes and sentence structure reordering).

I haven't always been this way. Back in the early 80's when I wrote most of my fanfics I didn't revise anything. Of course, I wrote in longhand back then and revising meant recopying whole pages. Definitely too much work for my then 14-year old lazy self. It is worthy of note that I never finished a story back then either.

With the advent of computers and word processing I'm finding that I have to make a conscious decision to stop editing my stuff and just post it. In fact, that is really why I posted my latest fic here. I'd been working on it for several months and figured if I posted it I'd be forced to stop editing and continue the story. It worked. Aside from spelling corrections I have yet to go back and edit anything I've posted. The true test hasn't happened yet, though, since - aside from a few challenge vignettes - I have yet to sit on a finished story here.

I admit that progressive formats make me very uncomfortable. I'd much rather finish a story, edit it to death, then post it in its entirety. Lots less pressure that way. Unfortunately, in the perfect catch-22, it is likely that without the pressure I'd never finish. I guess you could say that I'm doing writer's therapy here on the boards when I force myself to post what I've got and then continue with the story.

 

As I was putting my large story on my site I changed a few things. But I'm banning myself from making any further changes (even to edit spelling) so I do change anything before I complete the next story in the saga

As I have major block in writing that I'm focusing on writing scenes through the Laboratory and DB's Nookie workshop, hoping I'll get some inspiration to continue.

 

If it's a completed story I don't mess with it, but if it's one of those unfinished ghosts haunting my hardrive, then I just can't help going back on rare occasions and seeing if I can resurrect some spirits. LOL, guess I'm not over Halloween yet.

 

The stories I write are written with my heart, all that I hasve, and to some point I love them.

Therefore I polish them, to get them even better, from a rough gem to a polished one.