One of my (and one of Joe's, I believe) favorite authors, Patrick Rothfuss, has a blog. On this blog he posted a reply to a fan that detailed his process of revising his current book, Wise Man's Fear.

http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2010/08/fanmail-qa-revision/#comments

So now I'm curious about what the authors here do when revising their stories and how they compare to someone writing an epic-length original fiction. I know Wastelands had was over 300k. So, do tell.

 

Most of my fan fiction has been in the ~200K range. I'd say my revision process is somewhat similar to what Rothfuss describes, except obviously not as extensive or time-consuming (since he's doing it for a living). But yeah, I actually spend way too much time going back over chapters I've already written and tweaking them, sometimes a word here and there and sometimes an extensive rewrite.

Most professional authors recommend that you just push forward and get the first draft down on paper/hard disk, and then go back and start revising. I often get bogged down revising the last chapter I wrote rather than writing the next, which is why sometimes I'll end up spending a couple of hours working on a manuscript without significantly increasing my word count.

 

Sounds like this is what Rothfuss himself did as well.

As fanfiction authors, we often don't have a completed work when we start posting chapters (at least I don't). Some authors write several chapters ahead of time, but personally I post things as soon as I finish them - my betas have even bugged me from time to time, yelling at me that I should reread things before I send it to them.

I also doubt Joe wrote his 300k word epic before posting the first chapter; its a luxury that professional authors can enjoy.

However, I do know that Jim Butcher tends to send his book to his betas a chapter or two at a time; he probably likes more immediate feedback, which is more in style with how we as fanfiction authors operate. Personally a compliment on my story from another author I really respect and/or like (most of whom reside on DLP) is the greatest impetus I can get to continue my story.

 

Actually, I'd say it's a necessity for professional authors; for fan fiction authors, it's a luxury to be able to post chapters immediately and not worry about whether you're going to realize you left a gaping plot hole in your story ten chapters earlier.

I finish my Alexandra Quick novels before I start posting them (or send them to betas). Hogwarts Houses Divided I was still writing as I posted it. (Usually I'd written 2-3 chapters ahead of the one I posted.) I prefer the former method, but the gratification of immediate feedback is an understandable temptation.

 

You may see it as a luxury, but for a large majority of fanfic writers, it should read a curse. For me, when I write, I find that my ideas about where the story is going will change. This means revisions are necessary. It seems stupid to me to post things I know will need changing.

 

I used to post as I went but recently have adopted a write the whole thing, revise, then post approach.

Partly because I hate when an author makes changes to a story many chapters in, when I've already read the chapter in question.

That's part of the reason (along with being very busy irl) that I haven't updated any of my stories in awhile. Nor have I posted my HP/Percy Jackson story despite being more than halfway through it.

If I see an issue with one of my plot lines not working out, I can go back through the story and work it all out without having to force readers to re-read the chapters again. Also when I do revise it I can read through the whole thing as a reader would, which I thinks helps to get a better feel for the pacing of the story and how it flows.

 

Being gripped by your need to revise before plowing on is probably the biggest reason most aspiring writers don't get anywhere.

This is easily mitigated by simply planning out the story completely before going on. Too many people just start a story off an idea and run with it (me included) and think it's cute that they are 'going where the story takes them'.

That's nice and all, but I've been 'writing' for five years now and only managed to finish one fanfiction. The frustration and complexity that comes with writing an unplanned story and dealing with consistency is often too much for most authors to handle.

Once I realized this I became enormously productive - I'm now on my second book of an original series I hope to publish someday. I've since taken a break on that because I ran into an overarching problem - planning a goddamn series of books. If planning a story is hard, try planning multiple ones that all dick around in the same world.

So now I'm back in fanfiction and looking over my unfinished stories, writing up a storyline of bullet points and managing all the unraveled threads into the fabric of a complete story.

 

This. While I've never written a long fanfiction, I've written a few long(10-15 pages) research essays and narratives.

If I don't have a concrete plan it often takes me 3 or 4 times as long to finish the work, and it is often disorganized or erratic in pace.

Planning stories allows for greater organization, efficiency, and a more consistent pace.

 

I think the other part of that is them not editing enough. They write the story, spend months clapping themselves on the back, then read through it a few times and send it off for rejection.

Personally, I read once or twice when finished with a story arc, but him going through and taking 12 hours to tweak the novel, assuming he does it often as hell, is really telling the difference between published authors and those trying to get published.

I mean, when I read books, there's this level of polish there that helps immerse me. When I read fanfic I know that polish does not exist and can compensate. Rarely I find a few gems where that level of polish exists. Wonder how many times he goes through it like that? Hundreds? Also, it sounds like he has several people helping him. They may add more time going through it.

 

"To outline or not to outline" is one of the biggest questions authors face, and ultimately it's a matter of personal style. Some writers swear by outlines, others just wing it. Stephen King is one of the latter (though to be honest, it shows in some of his books).

I have to have a rough outline at least, but I never have everything planned out completely before I start writing.

Ah, well, research papers and essays are quite different from fiction. I can't imagine a well-written academic paper that hasn't at least been bullet-pointed first, and really, to have a hope of publication it should be quite thoroughly outlined.

 

Stephen King's writing/revision process.

 

Stephen King does seem to fit the "winging it" side of things. The Dark Tower series, which I still love, is a good example: it'd be hard to count all the promising threads from early in the series that got left by the wayside in the end, or were handled in a disappointing way. IMO, if you're writing something as big as a seven book series, outlines and notes become rather important (not that I'd know from experience).

The other extreme, apparently, can be seen with sci-fi author Vernor Vinge. Vinge was a computer science professor (now retired) by profession, who happens to write some intriguing books on the side. This is the rough draft of his current WIP; the dude's rough draft looks like fucking source code:

Absolute insanity... Only the two large paragraphs starting on the eleventh line are actual story draft text - everything else is notes to himself, complete with abbreviations that resemble programming language syntax. In full disclosure, Vinge is good for coming up with and implementing concepts, and not quite as good for characterization (though he's gotten better at that over the years).

 

What is this I don't even.

Seriously. I've been working on a rough draft for a while now, and, while my story summary reads like a short story (Read: way too long and detailed) I've got nothing on this guy.