The Magnetic Attraction of Old Words

One of the most difficult things in a rewrite is actually making serious changes. You know the existing text isn't right, but is it enough to just  make a few little nips and tucks here and there, or does it need a complete reworking from the ground up?

And even when you do, you'll often find that you're going right back to the same old phrasing, especially if you're looking at the original text as you're rewriting. It's so bad that some writers have even suggested that you should put your first draft aside, then summarize it from memory and write the new text afresh.

I'm noticing this problem myself as I'm rewriting The Steel Breeds True yet again. For instance, there's a scene that now happens in a different place than in the earlier version of the story. I was trying to just rewrite it line by line, but as I re-read the new version, I'm realizing that it's just not working this way. And as I keep struggling with it, I'm coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the only way to fix it is to write a completely new text. A lot more work than just changing wording here and there, but the only way to make the changes that need to be made.

Like Grains of Sand

It's said that a few grains of falling sand can set an entire dune face into motion, even create a catastrophic slide. And similarly, a relatively small change in a novel can have enormous effect as they percolate through the storyline.

As I've been rewriting The Steel Breeds True, I did a little tweaking related to the majors of several of the key characters. At the time I didn't think it would have much impact -- but as I've been working on it, I keep discovering places where I have to rethink whole scenes, including the rationale for those characters to be present at a given place.

As a result, it's turning out to be a lot harder to rewrite this thing than I'd expected. I'm starting to wonder how much longer it's going to take.

Just a Slight Shift in Perspective

I'd been stuck on a meeting scene in Chapter 7 of The Ballad of Katie Hart for ages. When I tried to move it forward, the dialog fell so flat that even the character in question commented upon the leadenness of his words.

And then I realized that the whole first part of it was solitary introspection on his part, which meant that there was no really good way to switch gears to interaction -- and it was made even worse by the first interaction being a formal address to the group as a whole, rather than interaction with any one individual.

Finally today I had a chance to sit down and rework it. After several false starts, I finally got a good beginning conversation going, and from then it was almost astonishingly easy to keep things moving forward. It also helped to have another character in the meeting scene burst out with a question, so that everyone started chiming in instead of politely waiting for the meeting leader to speak.

It's not perfect, and I need to see how it dovetails with another scene. But at least I think I finally have something I can work with.