A Writing Tip for Starting Over

This is advice I didn’t make up, but it’s something I’ve followed numerous times.

It’s advice you’re not going to like because it’s probably one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do with your writing. No, it’s not killing your darlings (although that gets significantly easier with this step).

Here’s the case for starting over. For taking your first draft or third draft or eleventh draft, setting them aside, and writing the story again from scratch. Yes, each line, each word, you’re writing as if for the first time.

1. You can only get so good at editing. You are still the writer. It is still the same brain that wrote the work and is now trying to spot the holes, fix the sticky phrases, find the flow. Rewriting the story is a way to trick your brain into seeing your words with fresh eyes. By painstakingly writing every word again, you will be able to catch things your brain was glossing over in previous reads. Your brain is always sorting information. It takes the bulk of the information you receive and refuses entry, allowing only the amount of info that you can handle in any given moment. Your brain is doing this as you’re reading. Only in the complete rewrite will you be able to sidestep this process and see the words for what they actually are.
2. You won’t be able to skip “the good parts.” Believe me when I tell you that as I edited, there were sections of my book that I just knew were crafted well, that were the best writing I’d ever done, that hit home in just the right way, that didn’t need to be touched. So, I’d skim read them. I’d get the gist and move on to the other parts of the story that I knew needed work. But here’s the problem with that: your writing isn’t static. There aren’t paragraphs that are ephermal, staying perfect forever. As my writing grew, as my plot shifted, as my characters changed, as scenes happened in a new order, these perfect paragraphs were no longer perfect. When you have to write every scene from scratch, you force yourself to confront your entire story, not just the parts you think are bad, and ensure that your flow is consistent. I first started writing Dance With Me in high school. I published it 12 years later. You don’t think my writing had changed in that decade? You don’t think my characters deepened? You don’t think I rearranged my scenes so many times? Without the complete rewrite, I had a hodgepodge of teenager, collegiate, and adult writing. When I started over from scratch, I had a new understanding of how the scenes needed to fit together. I still kept those fresh, unique, awesome pieces of writing, but now they complemented my story rather than mooring it to the bank.
3. You will have the literal space, not just the figurative space, to flesh out your story. Sometimes you really do need the blank, white space of the page to ask yourself “what comes next?”. Instead of rushing on to the next scene, rewriting allows you to take a breath and see where you can spend a little more time fleshing out your characters’ internal monlogue, where a bit more setting description is needed, where you could heighten the drama, where you could stretch the silence, where you could add more beats to the dialogue for added tension. It was only in the rewrite that I was able to understand the pacing of my story. I could see where I was rushing the plot, trying to force too much to happen in one chapter; or where the pacing seemed lethargic, like I was filling in the pages to get to the next big moment.

Do these arguments makes sense to you? I offer them only to share what has been helpful for me so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes as I did. I hope they help you be less resistant to the idea of starting over. If you have comments or rebuttals, I would love to hear them. You may be a fantastic editor and able to fix these issues in your novel without the complete rewrite. If so, I applaud you and would love to learn from you, you magician you.