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May 30, 2018 by Fiction Editor Beth Hill

last modified June 4, 2018

The next article I had lined up focused on a grammar issue, but I was reading a thread in a Facebook writing group and wanted to weigh in on the subject.

Contributors to the discussion were debating the pros and cons of “perfecting” chapters and scenes before writing the next chapter and scene. My wholehearted suggestion is that writers not try to polish early chapters before finishing a first and often a second draft. There are multiple reasons but the main one is that you don’t know what the opening line, opening paragraph, opening chapter, and even the first act should ultimately include until you’ve written the full story.

Trying to isolate a section of text and make it shine without reference to the rest of the story is often a waste of time. The word choices, tone, focus, pace, and maybe even something as fundamental as the viewpoint character in any one scene is likely to need a change once the complete story is written, so taking time to tweak word choices, sentence structure, and rhythms before the story is fleshed out serves only to delay finishing the first draft.

You may realize that early chapters and scenes don’t accomplish what you’d intended for them to accomplish, so certain changes should be pursued. But think in terms of changing the big picture rather than polishing the fine details.

So if you get to chapter 7 and discover that the story would be more meaningful, present a few more emotional jolts, if back in chapter 3 protagonist Max was betrayed by his former lover rather than by his best friend, make the change. But if you find yourself fussing for hours over the wording choices of the same three paragraphs in chapter 3, move on. Sometimes the simple act of putting the text out of your immediate thoughts will be enough to lead to a breakthrough. But most of the time you should be moving on anyway.

Writing a first draft (and often the second and third) is about getting the story down. It’s certainly not about perfecting scene details and phrasing. Perfecting at the paragraph or word level shouldn’t be a consideration of early drafts. You may create some fabulous and perfect phrasings, of course. But working to create them shouldn’t be the focus at this point of writing a piece of long fiction.

Yes, I know that it’s sometimes difficult to keep writing when some element of any early chapter is gnawing at you, demanding a fix. But there’s no need to let a demanding scene, paragraph, sentence, or word derail the forward progress of an early draft. There will always be time to rewrite and polish once all the major elements are in place.

Trying to polish and edit before the story is complete is like decorating a cake before it’s baked, before all the ingredients are mixed in.

So very much changes between the penning of the first version of the first chapter and the sixth or seventh version of the full manuscript that there’s almost never a good reason to pick at details of early chapters before the whole story comes together.

Writers who plot out their stories to a great degree before writing may be closer to polishing than are pantsers, who end up doing a lot of trial and error in early drafts. But even plotters shouldn’t try to polish before the story has come together. Too much will change. Why take the time to make paragraphs and scenes perfect when there’s a good chance that the paragraphs and scenes will need to be changed based on where the story ultimately finishes up?

When you’re tempted to polish and rewrite, hoping to perfect a scene or section of text (especially for the earliest scenes you write), remind yourself that the underpinnings of that text are likely to change by the time you finish the first draft. You may find you no longer need a particular scene once you start shaping the story, once you start narrowing the focus.

To give you an idea of issues that may force rewrites and major changes to early scenes, I’ve included an abbreviated list of story elements that may well need adjusting once latter scenes and chapters are written. A rewrite or two will be necessary to ensure that the story that is begun in the earliest scenes and chapters matches the story produced in the last scenes written.

• plot—events, order of events, causes of events, reactions to events

• opening scene, opening hook, inciting incident

• the story’s starting place

• scene focus (for each scene)

• scene tone or mood

• scene purpose

• scene pace

• scene conflict level

• scene viewpoint character

• character responsible for scene events

• characters in a scene, characters absent from a scene

• number of characters

• scene setting

• importance of a scene’s events, need for a scene’s events

• emotional impact required of a scene

• links to subsequent events

• foreshadowing

• extended or additional character reactions to earlier events

• character motivation for a particular behavior

• rhythm, pacing

• amount of dialogue, amount of narration

• point of view

Tell yourself that your time is valuable, that there’s no way you’re going to spent time perfecting text that is likely to change more than once or be cut altogether.

Stories can change dramatically from a first draft to the fifth or the eighth or the twelfth. The focus or mood of stories can change appreciably from the writing of the first chapter to the writing of the sixth or seventh chapter, especially if it takes you, the writer, a while to get into the swing of writing and into the rhythm of a particular story. Reminding yourself that a scene isn’t in a fixed state when it trips off your fingertips will help your efficiency as a writer. Wasting time polishing an unformed scene, a scene with holes, or a scene that will get a major rewrite once you resolve a key plot issue is pointless; don’t do it. Understand from the start that a first draft of any scene or chapter is going to be incomplete until you make all the necessary connections that link each scene to the others and to the story as a whole.

No one scene or chapter is ready to be “perfected” until the entire story is fleshed out.

Once you work through multiple manuscripts, taking them through rewrites and maybe through the editing process with an editor, it’s likely that you won’t bother to try to polish and perfect early chapters. You’ll know from experience that so much will change that polishing at an early stage is a true waste of productive writing time.

For those working through a first or second manuscript, I hope you’ll accept my advice in lieu of that experience—don’t waste time decorating your early scenes and chapters before all the ingredients have been added. Once you work through the full manuscript, you might discover that your creation needs a lot less of chapter 3 and a lot more of the second scene in chapter 4. You may discover that you need to move scenes around, giving them much different introductions and transitions than you’d originally written for them.

Make scenes as full and complete as possible as you write your first draft, but expect that some items will be missing, items you haven’t yet dreamed of because thoughts about them won’t come to you until you introduce a new character in chapter 15. Expect that you might discover a new bit of back story that speaks to a character’s motivation while you work through the scene right before the climax, a detail that you can then weave into the early chapters. Expect changes of every kind at every level.

Expect to make major and minor changes to all scenes once you’ve completed the first draft and again after you’ve worked through plot and character problems in the third or fourth draft.

Polishing and editing are necessary, and they will need all your skills and creativity. But editing and polishing follow multiple drafts and lots of rewriting. Skip the polish until the full project takes shape.

Tags: first draft, polishing Posted in: Beginning Writers, Writing Tips