Tricks of the trade?

[bookwormprinces]

So, I still haven't touched "Leia's Story" since November, and I think I'm finally ready to see if it's salvageable. Since most all of you on my flist are authors in one form or another, I would like to hear your approaches to the first draft read-through

Comments

[faith_king]

I think it only fair to point out here that Kate's first drafts are usually about three drafts ahead of most other people's first drafts. ;-)

[bookwormprinces]

Why is that? :)

[faith_king]

She's just got good natural talents for pacing and plot-ironing in her head before she starts writing, is all.

[faith_king]

If it's been sitting a while, as you've done with this one, I would definitely give it a complete read-through. Personally, I never bother printing anything out until my plot structure is in place and I'm ready to finally start cleaning up the writing paragraph by paragraph. And I almost never bother correcting grammar, etc. until I know I'm close to being done. That's the accountant in me. Making a perfect paragraph you might cut down the road is just inefficient. ;-)

My five cents.

[bookwormprinces]

This sounds the most similar to what I was planning. :)

[laura_josephsen]

I try to read through it once on the computer once it's finished. If I notice little things that bother me (or big things that bother me) I work on fixing them on the computer. Then, when I'm again familiar with all parts of my story, I print it out and go to town in all aspects of everything.

But...since I'm also an editor, I have to learn to look for things and pay attention to EVERYTHING, and I've gotten a lot more experienced at getting things into decent shape before I print them out. (And even then, most every printed page ends up with gazillions of cross-outs and notes ANYWAY.)

So: I'd read-through it, work on tweaking things and re-familiarizing yourself with things, taking notes if you need to about plot points, and then print it out.

[bookwormprinces]

Hehehe. I need to make a list of all the things the editor in you pointed out about "Quest". "beginning/starting", my dialogue tags, people calling each other "baby" too much, etc. ;)