Another example – I remember thinking, why would I ever write something freehand again, when electronic typing is so convenient? But it certainty has its uses.

Back when I were a gnipper

I remember I used to like writing everything freehand on a first draft. The moment I changed my mind was when I had to copy up an overdue essay for school. Time was precious, and typing the whole thing up was a real chore.

I vowed never to do it again.

Since then writing electronically has become more and more useful. All my drafts are done on a word processor (I actually use Writeroom so even the distracting clutter of word processor writing is gone); my blog posts are written on my iPod Touch, and some of my notes are too.

Yes the convenience of writing something and being able to change it and move bits around is invaluable, and now it can go everywhere with you. I can’t imagine writing out a full draft and then having to copy it all out again. I find it hard enough to get things done as it is!

But you’ll notice I said (wrote, whatever), “some notes” earlier and not “all notes”. Yes, there are still some things that just don’t feel natural to type.

The freehand list

Freehand is still good for satisfying red pen action!

1. Editing. This is a numbered list because editing is the number one king of freehand uses. I have edited straight into my electronic draft, and I can do it. But I just love scribbling all over a piece of work, crossing great chunks out of it, writing notes in the margins. It’s just so satisfying, and it goes quicker too. Sure I have to copy up those changes again and that’s a drag, but it’s worth it.

2. Notes as you type. Some people use freehand for all their notes. For me it depends on the writing I’m doing. If I’m making notes to get me out of a hole, I like to write in full paragraphs, and I’m aware that I might use some of it later. That’s for the word processor.

   But I always have a notepad next to me when I write in case I need it. It might be a note on an idea I’ve had for later in the story; something I need to research; an idea for another story altogether. I don’t want to change what’s on my screen though. I don’t want to start a new document or swap out to another one. It feels distracting. Jotting down a freehand note with one hand somehow doesn’t.

3. Journalling.This is a slightly odd one, because it’s hard to put my finger on why I do this and don’t type them. I have a journal that is strictly for new story ideas. One idea per tiny page. I love journals, but I actually had to have a long think about what I would use one for!

   Writing these ideas down freehand in the journal makes them feel special, and the space restriction is useful too (there is literally no space restriction in electronic work of course). I’m also worried about losing them amongst a virtual pile of folders. Most of all though, our ideas are personal, and freehand is personal. It feels good to keep these initial flashes in as raw a form as possible.

4. Planning and mindmapping. I actually don’t use freehand for this, but it gets an honourable mention because I know many people do. For mindmapping I use Freemind, because I like to put useful links and images in my maps. Bt there’s no denying the freedom of scrawling on a blank page, and the least resistance we can put between our brain and the outside the better. It can also be useful to shuffle things around quickly and easily to see how they look, and there’s no better toolset than a pen and some post-its for that.

So there you go. Freehand is not dead, and never will be, so I’ll hear none of this freehand goo-goo or ga-ga. What I will hear more of however is your own uses for freehand, so hit the comments with your ideas!

Wheat and Chaff.

 
It’s good to sort out what you’ve got, and how serious you are about it.  While I am a firm believer that all writing is useful, there will come a point somewhere down the line where you discover that something you’ve written (be it a short story, a poem – if you’re primarily a prose writer – or an outline for something) doesn’t really fit with the rest of your work, and it may be time to – shock horror – abandon it.  This need not especially be because it’s crap, but because you may have other work which you can invest yourself in more easily, or because it isn’t as marketable as your other work. 

And now that you have your serious marketable stuff, you need to dive head first into editing. 

The Eternal Struggle

 
I have set aside huge swathes of time the past few weeks (easy to do when I don’t actually have a job) to sit down and get some serious editing done.  As Matt mentioned a few weeks back, editing does require a lot of time and focus if you want to do it well.  Editing isn’t something that can be done piecemeal.  And this is what I did. I went back to my most complete project and hammered out the editing for part one (first third of the book).  Now I’m not claiming to be some doyen of the editing process – far from it – but since we are massive list fans here, I thought I’d highlight some of the techniques I’ve used on this ultimate draft. 

1. Be ruthless.  And by this I mean really cut deep.  Down to the bone if necessary.  And when you’re done being ruthless, cut away some more.  I found this to be very useful.  I can meander a lot when I write.  I can be deliberately evasive and get myself into word spirals and just plain confusing at times.  And while when I first wrote it I thought it was ‘big’ and ‘clever’, reading it back now feels, I don’t know, forced and cocky.  If you set out with this mindset, then you are far more willing to go into editing and cut scenes, events, even characters as need be, which leads us to…
2. Streamlining.  I can get very convoluted at times in my writing.  In my defence though, for me it falls into the ‘show don’t tell’ category for me.  And as I was reading through my work I discovered a lot of extraneous scenes that showed what my character does for a living, but in doing so it sort of broke the flow of the narrative, and really, do you need to see the guy do his thing more than twice to really grasp it?  There was one chapter in particular that epitomised this.  The character goes to a club to meet one of his friends.  I spent about four pages just getting him through the door.  And a lot of the material was redundant.  So I slashed it down.  It can be painful, but you have to get used to it.
3. Shake it up.  Move huge chunks of text around.  If you’re not sure it’s going to work, then experiment.  Try switching two scenes over to see if the events work any better.  That’s what Cut and Paste are for.  Again, for me, I had two scenes like this, and the order they were in meant more convoluted back tracking.  So I switched them round and found that the scene worked better.  It was cleaner, flowed smoother and took less time.  As much as it pained me to have to rethink certain parts of it to make the new flow work, I do feel that it is now a much stronger piece of writing, which is the ultimate goal, is it not?
4. Extraneous for a reason.  Ok, so this one I’m not quite so on top of.  Yes, I do have a lot of extraneous encounters that really serve no purpose in the plot, but I throw them in to make the journey a little more noteworthy.  But going back to point 1, I was more ruthless than I have been in the past, and while I didn’t remove the scene entirely, I did streamline it and actually tie it in to a plot thread that comes up later on.  It may be a bit lazy, but as a counterpoint to this…
5. Make it work.  If you are so fond of a scene that you really feel the need to keep it in, then make it work.  I had to get really creative to make this scene work in the larger scheme of things, but in doing so I actually clarified massive areas of the overall plot that I’d kept deliberately vague before, because I wasn’t quite sure how it worked.  All because of this one page scene that I didn’t really want to lose!

So those are my personal tips for the editing process, and they’ve been working for me so far (especially the first one.  Always the first one!)  Of course, if you have any extra points to add, then drop them in the comments below.

First off though, I have not read the novels (George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series), so everything I’m writing here pertains to the recent TV series. This is finished on Sky Atlantic for a good three weeks now, but if you missed it, I would definitely recommend catching it if it airs again.

World Showing

That Game of Thrones has a well-developed and interesting world is clear. It is absolutely packed with rich backstory. Absolutely nothing exists in isolation, but is part of a complicated web of relationships and histories.

How do I know this? It’s because the series showed me through current action, and because I concentrated quite a lot whilst watching it (more on that later).

So what am I not talking about when I talk about “showing” in this series?

Well I’m not talking about long explanatory monologues to make sure everyone is up to date with what’s going on (the laziest form of backstory delivery). And I’m not talking about flashbacks either (the laziest form of showing).

In the Now is in the Know

No, this showing takes place as the current story unfolds, in a steady drip-feed of information that complements the current action. It’s in the set (the Throne itself, or the dragon skulls in the dungeons), the costume, the behaviour of the characters (the duplicity of the king’s advisors or the warrior tribalism of the Dothraki).

But it’s in the dialogue that the fine line between too much information and too little is trodden most skilfully, and it’s that I want to focus on. The reason it is so successful is because it is natural.

Simply put, if two characters are talking and some point of history, recent or otherwise, is relevant to their conversation, they will mention it. Apart from that, no one goes out of their way to mention things that have happened or people they’ve known. That’s where the drip-feed comes from. After an episode finished, my wife would often complain that nothing had happened. But although most episodes lacked action set pieces, each one was packed with nuggets of information and what interested me when the credits rolled was not what had happened, but what I had learned about the world. Despite the many comparisons to big-budget movies in the media (largely due to the series’ phenomenal budget), it felt a lot more like watching a novel than a summer blockbuster.

The message Game of Thrones sends to writers then is to let their characters do the talking. As a writer, you know what the history of the world is, you know what each character knows and how they behave. Let them talk, or think or act, and the important parts of the backstory will come out by themselves. Don’t stop to worry if the reader is keeping up.

But is it as Simple as That?

Almost certainly not. For a start, dreaming up such a complex world is not simple in the first place. And I’m probably doing everyone involved a great disservice by saying that the world will reveal itself, as if it takes no effort on the writer’s part at all.

The truth is probably closer to dedicated crafting – taking out large chunks of explanatory dialogue or subtly adding bits over many drafts. I for one will be taking the approach of letting my characters show the backstory, and only adding more if my testing with readers shows it’s needed.

And it’s a fine line, isn’t it. Game of Thrones takes an unusual approach to that line. Normally you expect TV shows to err on the side of too much information, terrified of an audience becoming confused and switching off. Game of Thrones errs on the side of too little. If you are not familiar with the world, you will be confused at multiple points in the series (or per episode) – the raft of characters and relationships is just too much to keep track of.

But I would rather be occasionally confused than patronised. I trusted the writers to reveal the most important information, and I’m grateful they trusted me to keep up. I had a thoroughly intriguing and enjoyable time watching Game of Thrones and I for one can’t wait for series 2.

Ringing the changes

There are a couple of activities you might go through when editing – types of editing you might say. I’m perhaps oversimplifying here, but you could call them tweaks and rewrites.

Say you’re basically happy with a chapter of your story, and you’re just reading through it for polish. You change the occasional word, fix some spelling or grammar, and maybe move a couple of sentences around – nothing major.

This is obviously what I’m calling tweaking.

Then there’s that chapter that never quite sat right with you. The character behaves unconvincingly and you always vowed to come back and make him perform some other action here instead. Well you’ve just thought of a way to do it that doesn’t impact other events in the book. Phew, eh? This does necessitate a rewrite of the chapter though.

Then there’s that pesky middle ground (there always is isn’t there). Maybe that character action isn’t such a momentous change as to require a whole chapter rewrite, but it does need several tweaks across 3 pages.

So, fiddle or rewrite?

I came across just such a change this week. It seemed relatively small but I realised it permeated through a longer section.

My instinct was to go through in the tweak fashion, adding a sentence here and there to emphasise the character’s feelings, and foreshadow the choice they were about to make. This would inevitably lead to action on their part, which would need two or three paragraphs extra.

But it was a nasty stop/start process and I knew that I couldn’t make all the component parts mesh convincingly. There are two or three things going on in the story at this point, all interwoven. It worked well, but now I was adding one more. It needed to happen, but it was difficult.

I would keep adding a sentence, then taking it out again, or try moving elements around to make a gap where the new parts could live, but it was like wading through treacle. The problem was I liked it the way it was. I was right to make the change, but the way the piece flowed without it was good.

So tweaking was out, and a rewrite was in. I rewrote the section. Without the existing text (it sounds rather self-important to call something I’ve written a “text”, but there you have it), I was able to write the new bits without distraction and that shoe-horning feeling.

I have yet to try and put it together so we’ll see how that goes, but I was wondering – has anyone had a similar experience where you can’t get going with lots of small changes? Perhaps you always rewrite instead? Any really successful editing stories or techniques would be most appreciated!

I guess that comes as no real surprise, and I knew it already. But I had never felt it as acutely as I did on Sunday.

Half hour hiccup

Due to various things going wrong throughout the day, my juicy two hour window of editing had shrunk, shrunk and shrunk again down to half an hour. This upset me quite a bit. I was now down to the equivalent time I would have on a train journey home during the week.

Now, I can write in half an hour. In fact I find it difficult to concentrate on writing in longer spans than this, possibly because I have become so used to my train writing time. Editing though is a completely different barrel of eels.

This is the speed at which editing does not go! Image courtesy of Richard Taylor on Flickr

Concentrate!

When edit, it means I do a lot of reading, then trying something, then more reading, then mulling it over, swapping some words around, adding a bit, taking it out again immediately… I’m in the work, but I’m pulling and tugging at it, working it into a shape I can be happy with.

It is as laborious as it sounds (if that sounded dynamic and exciting, I apologise – it was a dirty lie), and it requires concentration. If you’ll allow me the indulgence of metaphor, then writing is drifting off to sleep and editing is struggling to stay awake.

I therefore need some time to get to that level of concentration before I can get some serious work done. And I need space for my mind to play with the fragments. Diving in for shirt spells just isn’t cutting it!

wasting away

It has got to the point where I feel like even trying to edit in these short spells is a waste of time. I am conscious when i start that I will not get enough done to feel satisfied and that nagging sensation that I should be doing something else will begin to take over.

Worse, this bitesize editing might be counter productive. I can imagine a scenario when, having gone through my whole document in this way, I finally read it all through and realise I have a lot more work ahead of me. Much of my editing may be missing the point because I’m not giving the process the room it deserves.

So on Monday, after my failed editing attempt of the previous day, I opened my laptop on the train and thought, “I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be writing.”

The write environment for the write task

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m drawing a line right here. No more editing sessions on the train. It’s not right for me.

So, the plan is broadly similar to how it was in the first place, but slightly refined, and with a dedication to apply it to all future projects. Setting aside time to edit a project and get it finished stays. Editing in little bursts goes. From now on when I finish a draft, I set up some time to edit it later, but immediately start something new on my train journeys.

BOOM! Never knew I could be so decisive did ya?

I don’t know why, but it seems the end of a project – that final rearrangement into what you hope is the last draft, seems to take a lot longer than anything else. Okay, perhaps that’s not the case – it just feels like it. And, alright, I do know why. It’s because editing a project I know feels a lot safer than starting a new one.

But still, it’s a problem. I’m currently finishing a story – adding some extra bits to flesh out certain aspects. After that, I’ll put it all together in the right order and go through for a final cutting/correction session.

Will it be STOP or GO? Image courtesy of R/DV/RS on Flickr.

But it feels difficult, and so I catch myself time-wasting. I’ll daydream, or read over what I’ve done to get myself in the mood, or as if I’m mulling over my next move. That’s all crap though. I only write within small windows of time, and what’s actually going on is I’m wasting just enough of it to convince myself to stop. Oh, look at the time, I’ll think. There’s no way I can possibly get enough done now. I’ll just read a book. Reading is a GOOD THING for a writer to do.

Know what else is good for a writer to do? WRITE! And bloody finish something once in a while!

So I’m wondering who has a similar problem and what they do to get around it. Oh, and look! I’ve made a list! These are the approaches I could take to get the bloomin’ thing over with:

1. Just carry on – it will get finished eventually.
2. Set some time aside, grab an energy drink, and just go at it until it’s done.
3. Put it away for a while, to return to it when I feel more motivated.
4. Start another project and do the two alongside each other. One of them is bound to get done!

Right, they were in no particular order – just numbered for easy reference. Looking at them now, number 1 looks silly, if I did number 3 I’d probably never come back to it, and a second project would no doubt take over completely. Which leaves 2.

But what do you think? Have you ever run out of steam at the end of a project, or does it get you all fired up? If you struggle to finish, what helps?

Well, as fun as it is throwing ideas around, developing plot lines, characters and making endless amounts of notes, there does come a time when you have to stop procrastinating (though in this case it was somewhat useful, trying to get everything sorted before the real work began) and just get down to it. 

So yes, this week saw the birth of the first draft of the actual script.  Joy. 

Is it Drafty in here?

This did however throw up a debate, which got me thinking.  My first sprint through gave me about 15 pages of script in my first session, which I then sent to my collaborator.  I’ll be honest here, while I think it’s going well, a lot of the dialogue is questionable.  But hey, first draft script, it’s meant to be, right?  That’s what redrafting is for, isn’t it? 

Yes, it is drafty in here! Image courtesy of Sharon Drummond.

My collaborator read through it and agreed that it was going in the right direction, but wanted to stop and work on the dialogue, especially in the two scenes which I found most troubling to write.  And here is where we hit the debate. 

I personally want to plough through to the end, get the first draft finished, and then go back and work out the kinks.

He wants to work out the kinks as we go, just to have a more solid ‘first draft’. 

So which is the right way to go? 

For Sake of Argument…

 
Well this is writing of course, and there aren’t really any right or wrong answers.  It’s all about what works for you.  But let’s look at both sides of the discussion. 

If you do stop and toil on scenes, getting them just right (or at least to a very high standard) then you’re obviously going to feel better about how that first draft turns out.  You don’t have to do so much fretting about redrafting (which we all know is a pain in the arse anyway).  You get a clearer definition of what is going on, and it can feel more ‘finished’. 

Not wanting to take sides, this isn’t how I personally write (though my own methods are probably pretty flawed anyway) I err on the other side. 

I want to sprint through to the finish, get to the end while I still have the drive and the impetus to do so.  Hell, I know it’s not going to be perfect, in fact I know there are some scenes that I’m going to have to rewrite (and I spend some time working on that in the back of my head) but as I’m sure you’re aware, I am a serial drafter.  I don’t want to stop and go back and agonise over the details of a scene unitl the end, because I feel it breaks the flow.  My collaborator feels that there is no point in leaving scenes behind, and having wooden characters and stilted dialogue early on, so why not perfect it now?  Well, I should say ‘deal with it’ now. 

Counter-Intuition all over the place

 
He feels it is very counter intuitive to do this, while I feel it is counter intuitive to do the opposite (and so a healthy working relationship is born!)  While I do understand his point, and where he’s coming from, I come from a more prose-y background.  Writing a script (while far from easy) doesn’t feel as heavy as writing a book.  As I said, I got through about 15 pages of script in a little over an hour.  How long would it take me to write 15 pages of prose?  Significantly longer, I feel.  While I do tend to go back and redraft more while writing prose (if for no other reason than as an avoidance tactic to delay writing new stuff) when scripting I prefer not to.  The way I look at it is, it doesn’t matter how ‘perfect’ you think you might get a scene, by the time you get to the end, there is a good chance you’re going to have to go back and change it all anyway. 

Looking back at some of my other work, particularly my scripts, there is very little material remaining from my original draft.  Even what I thought of at the time as golden, just capturing the essence of what the scene is, and needing no changes… Well, yes, I had to go back and change most of it. 

It is like this for most writing, no?  It’s a wonder anything gets done. 

I’m not saying that I want to completely ignore everything once it’s been written. Even during the first draft, I will go back and do little tweaks here and there. But I don’t want to get bogged down with just one or two particularly problematic scenes, when there’s the rest of the script to get through. 

So now I turn the discussion over to you.  Which course of action do you follow, or do you feel is most effective?

Image courtesy of Markus Rödder

Lists are good. We like lists. They keep things simple and to the point. So, bad reasons for not showing your work:

1. Someone will steal my ideas. You know what, you’re right. If you don’t show anyone your work, no one can steal your ideas. But you may struggle to complete it, or make into a great piece. And let’s face it, you want people to read it, don’t you? You’ve got to show it to someone at some point.

   And if I may make another point on this, if you’re showing people for feedback, and you’re worried about them stealing it, you don’t trust them. If you don’t trust them, you probably don’t trust their feedback either. So you shouldn’t show it to them. But don’t let that stop you from showing it to someone else that you do trust.

2. What if no one likes it? Well, you’d rather know wouldn’t you? Seriously, if none of the trusted people you’ve asked for feedback like it, there is likely something very wrong with your story. They can help you find that out, and maybe even fix it.

   There are many variations on this theme, by the way. If you’re worried your story’s too “out there”, that people won’t “get it”, that your main character is unlikeable (and on, and on), see above.

3. It must be perfect first! And you want your book to be published when exactly? It will be a long time before anyone sees anything you write if you wait until all your work is perfect, especially if you’re doing it on your own. The vast majority of us need help to make our stories the best they can be.

   And what’s perfect, anyway? What seems perfect now might not tomorrow, and you can’t put it off forever. Of course we should strive to be as good as we can be, but if you love your story (sheds tear), you have to let it go.

So if you’re sweating over whether to show your work to someone or not, stop and think. Ask yourself what you’re afraid of and whether that’s really a valid excuse.

Additions to the list are welcome, so pop them into the comments for discussion. I’ll add ones I like to the list above (with credit of course).

I started to do some work on it, then left it alone, to work on other things.

But as I said, recently, I dug it out again. Scrapped pretty much everything I’d developed for it and decided to start afresh. New back story, new direction, shed those excess characters. In doing so, I found a new freedom. And this was in some ways… terrifying.

Facing the Fear

Lets be honest, writing is a daunting process. There are times I look at the book I’ve written, wondering how I ever managed to write the whole thing. I look at the book I’m writing, and wonder if I’ll ever reach the end (based on my current productivity rate, I’m going to say no). I believe it was David Mamet who once said something along the lines of “Ninety percent of your first draft will get scrapped”. Which makes things even more daunting. Not only do you have to somehow motivate yourself to get through a project, but you have to do so knowing deep down that only about ten percent will make the final cut. Tough odds.

This is kind of what I did with this project I went back to. This is a screenplay though, so it doesn’t have an excessive word count, like most of my writing. I’d split it into three parts, just to make it more manageable, and looking at it, parts two and three are terrible. Like, how could I ever even think that this was good writing? And what I had left I’d changed to such a degree that I have been reluctant to work on it because frankly, I have no idea where I’m going with it. While before I had a group of characters working towards a roughly common goal, now they’re all off doing their own thing. And I know exactly why this has happened. I have been subconsciously influenced (or perhaps inspired) by Mass Effect 2.

Image courtesy of Abulic Monkey

Fractals

Which leads us onto fractal writing. I felt that this is what I’d done with my script. I’d taken each of these characters, and really, what I could do is write each of their stories separately, and the choice could be made to follow one character’s path through the narrative, or another. Fractal writing like this has already been done, to a very limited extent. Remember Fighting Fantasy books? You’re in Scorpion Swamp and you can choose to go east or west? Well, each direction results in a moderately different story. The same (albeit on a (seemingly) more advanced scale) is apparent in the writing of video games, especially RPGs. You can make choices, which influence the way the game unfolds. Or at least you’re given the illusion that the choices you make have a huge impact on the turn of events. In reality, it wouldn’t be possible to provide an unlimited number of outcomes (it would require far too much in terms of both writing and programming), so while on a small scale you can be given far more options, in terms of the big stuff, it’s essentially yes or no, good or bad. I was given further food for thought on this topic when reading about the fourthcoming release of L.A. Noire, which has a script that runs up to 2200 pages. People who know me and my writing will look at this figure and think that’s probably just a normal script for me. But since video games are becoming a more mainstream form of entertainment, and they are becoming bigger and more complex, then you do need more options in terms of dialogue, and that is where the writers come into it.

So how do I relate this back to more ‘regular’ writing? Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who has written something, and then during the drafting process, made a small change which has resulted in a whole different branch through which the story can unfold. So which way do we go? Well, naturally, since we writers can be a lazy bunch, we tend to try and stick as close to what we’ve already written as possible. This is what I was trying to do with this project. Only thing is, as we all know, it sucked, so a change has to be made. I guess I feel I’ve gone a little overboard with wanting to follow every path though.

Experimentation

Fractal writing need not be such a bad thing though. It is obviously hugely experimental, that’s for sure. While those Fighting Fantasy books were very limited, they did at least provide different paths to unfold (albeit to the same destination). I know Matt has tried various writing experiments over the years, some involving branching narratives, but has anyone else tried? And had some degree of success? I remember back at university reading 253 by Geoff Ryman, which is probably as mainstream a fractal book that I’ve read. The major problem of course is the sheer volume of writing you’d end up with. And of course the number of different endings.

I wonder if it can work in any other medium than in video games. Obviously the degree of interactivity means that it is certainly the most forgiving medium for fractal writing. Does it have any place in the others though? In literature? Or cinema?

Has anyone else experimented with fractal writing, taking different paths, different narratives within the same story? I’d be interested to know.

Showing early

So, for the sake of argument, let’s say you show people early; as early as you can in fact. We’re going first draft reveal people, hold on to your ego!

Show your work before this happens? Image courtesy of Sharon Drummond.

Advantages

• Maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with your story. Perhaps the idea’s been done, or just plain doesn’t make sense. If the advice you get is “dump it and do something else,” and you end up agreeing, you’d rather not have wasted any more time on it.
• Similarly, your structure or approach, or chosen perspective might be so far off that you need to rewrite the whole shebang. Again, knowing sooner saves you time.

And that’s all I’ve got. It basically boils down to “you get to fail quickly,” which in this hectic, time-strangled time we live in, is no bad thing. But here’s a list of things that make me pull a face when thinking about sending people first drafts.

Disadvantages

• My first drafts are abysmal, and apparently I’m not alone. Quite apart from the embarrassment, I don’t hate anyone enough to make them read through that. These people are doing me a favour after all, and it would feel disrespectful to make them waste their valuable time on it.
• I often know there are problems with my first draft. Therefore I have a fair idea what’s going to be in the feedback I get, and finding out what I already know is a distraction. True, there is a chance that someone will spot several things that I didn’t, but it’s slim, and when I know there’s going to be another round, I’d rather get fixing and ask them later.
• There’s a chance of being put off for the wrong reasons. If you get truly awful feedback, along the lines that have already been described, you could get put off the project altogether. That may be a good thing. But the dark side to the advantages above is that you may be tempted to throw away something of worth. Of course, this depends largely on who you choose for feedback and how you deal with it.

Showing Late

So from this we can infer the advantages and disadvantages of showing your work later – at the 2nd or 3rd draft, say. You get arguably more useful comments, and you don’t waste people’s time. But, if a project is truly not salvageable, you’ve wasted your own (technically not true I suppose. It’s highly unlikely that during that “wasted” time you’ve learnt nothing, for example).

But there’s another problem. When does late become too late?

Everyone else thinks your book looks like this.

This might differ from person to person, and I guess there may never be a “too late”. Imagine an example whereby, having hit an impasse, you abandon a project. It is never too late to revisit that project, work on it, an then show it to someone.

“Too late”, then, is never. But as it’s impossible to reach that stage, we need a better line in the sand. For a project that is worth saving (one that is important to you, and you wouldn’t want to shove in a drawer and forget about), when does it no longer become useful to keep it to yourself? Let’s do another list.

You’ve waited too long to show someone a project when:

• You are no longer learning anything from working on it yourself.
• You are no longer improving the work. Maybe you’re just shuffling bits about, or tweaking.
• You’ve been at an impasse for longer than you’re comfortable with. Sometimes we all need a little help. Often, in getting someone else to look at a problem, you arrive at a solution yourself.
• You’re sick to death of the project. This might be the time to shove it in a drawer. But showing it to someone else might rekindle your affection for the story.
• You think it’s finished. It probably isn’t.

Over to you

So, when do you show people your work? Have you been stung by showing something too early? Is a project languishing because you won’t let it out? And where do you think the sweet spot is? Answers on a postcard, please! Or you could just use the comments section.