The number of drafts vary from writer to writer!

I noticed that.

What does it consider style in terms of a story?

:thinking:

Stylistic choices can mean a lot of things - PWA doesn’t care about stylistic decisions, or ā€˜errors’ that are done on purpose. It operates based on standard style guides, so flags these things as errors.

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Understood.

Well, I still have the Chrome extension. I doubt it can help me fully.

I have to understand that Red Reign is a draft that is slightly edited as I write. So, it will not look that awful in whatever the final stages are.

I’m not there yet.

Eight. Eight drafts. I dunno that’s what I’ve been told takes at minimum to produce a text. I don’t count, and determining what’s ā€œeditingā€ is hard since I, like many others here, edit as I write.

I don’t ā€œbraindumpā€ when I’m working project; I do that beforehand as a writing exercise. On the few occasions I do rewrites, it’s usually a rewrite at the beginning to refine the original thought and initial passages. And from there on I continue.

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Eight? Eight drafts? And you write as you edit the story?

In between those drafts, how much time away from the story do you give yourself? Like a breather before you get back into it with fresher eyes?

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Yeah eight minimum. I go over every sentence when I finish writing it. Then every paragraph, then the whole chapter. My editing process comes down to selecting the right order of words in a sentence, and the flow from one sentence to another. My primary concern as a writer is the language I use as opposed to, say, ā€œplotā€, ā€œpacingā€, ā€œsettingā€ or ā€œcharacterā€. I think focusing on language allows a more effective expression of all these elements.

Most of the time I return to a sentence or paragraph the following day. Sometimes a week. For academic stuff I’m on tight deadlines so I can’t obsess about it too much (I use narrative in my research). For fiction I could go on for months refining and reconfiguring sentences.

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When you say language, you mainly mean that placement and choices of the words? Focusing on the language over the plot, characters, pacing, or setting of your novel, is a means for you to understand how you can word a sentence or paragraph, in a way to understand how the story flows better?

I felt like I repeated, not sure.

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Pretty much. I approach writing as art. I think of it like painting; words are brushstrokes, and words layered upon words, in different sweeps and strengths, produce the image.

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I love how you word that!
You’re a poet and didn’t even know it!

LOL! :grin:

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6 or 7 and depending on the story it could be 5, but I would say 6 or 7 is a normal amount for me. But that doesn’t mean I always have a ā€œdraft 6ā€ file. Usually I work on maybe draft 4 or 5 multiple times because by then, I’m not changing a whole lot, so I don’t need to save many different versions.

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Btw, I don’t edit as I go. Pantser here. Draft 1 is just getting everything down. Draft 2 is fixing the flow and filling in plot holes, and fixing any inconsistencies, switching scenes around, cutting massive chunks out and putting massive chunks in.

Draft 3 is refining what I just fixed and maybe adding things to expand if I need. Draft 4 is more of that, just a more polished version. Draft 5 is where I start doing a kind of line-editing and often little filling in things.

Draft 6 and 7 is nearly the final step of self-editing before sending it off to an editor if I do choose to do that, or sending off to a beta reader. I’d likely look up crutch words like, for me I’d look for ā€œsmirkā€ or ā€œjustā€ or too many unnecessary uses of ā€œthatā€.

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I can’t do that afterwards. If I have to edit an entire draft over 100k without editing as I go, I will lose it.

Though the idea of finishing a novel that I don’t ever edit (unless I feel it’s worth it) once it’s done gives me delicious shivers.

I am a panster.

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It’s interesting how, despite we’re both pantsers, we come in different flavors :grin:

I know a pantser who can’t write anything until she makes a cover with a title which she then refers back to when writing the story.

Can you write a story without a title or do you need one?

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I can’t I genuinely cannot. I can’t even start a chapter without a chapter title. It gives me an unsettling feeling if I don’t, I cannot describe why that is.

I have to name something before I can start it.
Not sure if that is an Audhd thing or a ā€œmeā€ thing.

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I often see many others saying they need a title before working on a thing, so I don’t think it’s something really unusual.

I also need a title for the project, but the difference between you and me is that I can write a chapter without a title. In fact, I’m so in the zone that I can’t bother coming up with a chapter title. It would break my flow. Sometimes, after a writing session, I go back and name all the chapters I wrote. Sometimes, depending on the genre, I don’t and just use numbers.

But I would give a chapter a title if I come up with it while writing that chapter. Otherwise, chapter naming gets put on hold.

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I have to do this too. I have to give the project a unique name, not some random name either. It’s so weird.

I give it a number and a title; Like Chapter 1: Burying Shapes. Even if the title doesn’t represent the chapter, I have to give it a temporary name, until I find one.

I don’t get into the zone until I come up with a title, temporary or not.

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