Combatting Excessive Familiarity Of Writing
Since writing my last question, I've been able to write a handful more items and have tried to nail down some more specific items I can ask about improving my writing. This issue became readily apparent.
In writing programming code, I've found that it can be really easy for things to just wash together so you can't see what is there. I've found many times that something I struggled with one day was easily solvable by going back the next day and looking simply because everything washed together and I didn't see something.
I'm finding that in my writing, as well, especially if it has markup in it. I can write something and then put it away and come back about 2-4 weeks later and see stupid things like poor phrasing that renders the expressed idea into nonsense, grammar issues, and so on. Now obviously, I can't sit on everything I do that long without moving onto something else, but I find even that I don't see things in the next day or two because what I want to say is so ingrained in my mind that I substitute that for what is actually being said by the written word.
So how do you get around the aspect of your writing being so fresh in your mind that you can't see what is actually being communicated by it?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/6950. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Don't re-read your work immediately.
Just write. Keep yourself on track with your outline (you have an outline of some kind, right? Even if you're a pantser, you have some idea of where the story is going) and don't look over what you did for however long you need to lose familiarity with it.
If you need two weeks, then write for two weeks and don't look at anything you've written until 14 days have passed. In fact, you could even try starting each day with a fresh document and not allowing yourself to look at anything less than 14 days old (date each document).
You don't want to stop writing, but you can stop re-reading. Or as SF. notes, try working on two things at once.
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For something book-length, just don't do your re-read immediately. Don't Write chapter 1, re-read and update chapter 1, write chapter 2, re-read and update chapter 2, etc. Instead, write chapter 1, write chapter 2, re-read and update chapter 1, write chapter 3, re-read and update chapter 2, etc. When you're done with the whole book, then go back and re-read the whole thing and do more updates. By the time I finished my books I must have read every word at least four or five times.
Also, get someone else to read it and tell you what they think. I've had a few times where I had a chain of logic that made perfect sense to me, than I showed it to someone else and she said, "Wait, how did you get from step 3 to step 4?" In a novel it might be more like, "Wait, why would Sally suddenly decide to call her brother?" As the writer you have all sorts of information about the characters or the subject in your head that may never make it to the paper. Sometimes this leaves gaps for the reader that you just can't see because you're too close to it. (Like, "But Sally and her brother are very close. She always calls him when she's in trouble. Oh yeah, I guess I never mentioned that in the story, did I? And I cut out the two previous references to her brother because they were slowing down the plot, so now this just comes out of nowhere ...")
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6964. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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