Anyone can write fiction. Most people have likely written a short story in school. The question is, was it any good? The answer is, likely not.
One of the main differences between a cruddy telling of a story and a beautifully written best-selling book (at least to me and probably many other fellow authors) is re-writing.
Anyone can come up with a story and transfer it from their minds to paper (Which, in my opinion, is one of the funnest processes of writing) but a lot of the beauty in great books come from re-writing.
You may have heard the quote “Writing is re-writing” or something along the lines of that, and it’s true. Most successful authors will tell you the first drafts of their books were as cruddy as can be. Then they had a not-so-cruddy second draft, and a not-bad third draft, and a pretty good fourth draft.
The point is, if you want your story to be considered art or great literature than writing one draft and stopping is definitely not the way to go. And I don’t mean just going through it and fixing spelling mistakes and typos (though that’s good too) you have to re-word things and find the best way to say each sentence, you might need to cut some scenes out or add some in, apply character development and world building.
I feel that the importance of re-writing isn’t as pushed as much as it should be, especially to new authors who are working on their debut.
Sea of Trees, my debut novel, is something I am very proud of and happy with, but I do wish I had worked on it a bit more than I did, a little more character development, a little more world building, and a couple more drafts.
I know it seems like a lot of work, but you just need to take it one step at a time and you’ll be fine. Just be warned that you may regret it if you have a closed mind about re-writing or getting outside input when writing your first book, I can speak from experience and I can guarantee that I’ll be doing a lot more work and a few more drafts on my current project.
Comment below and give your opinion of re-writing, and if you agree or disagree with me.
That’s all I have to say today, Bye!
RRRRAAAWWRR!!!!!