Going all the way

The new spin I thought up for my story is working better than the one I had to replace. (See yesterday's post, if you're curious.) Now the thing to do is push on through to the end of the story. A wonderful writing teacher taught me to avoid too much rewriting until a first draft is finished. Then you know the story. After that, you can rearrange, add and subtract, and work on the language. If you try to rewrite every chapter until it's perfect, you tend to never get finished. The most important thing about a story is--duh--the story. Many readers will put up with bad writing to read a good story. (Think, John Grisham.) Relatively few readers will put up with a bad story to read good writing. (Think, Raymond Carver.)

Writing all the way to the end before extensively rewriting also seems to help keep the tempo of the story upbeat. You end up with fewer paragraphs of ambling description, and more paragraphs of movement, action, and in erotic fiction, fucking.

If you read my last post, you've probably noticed how deeply I'm contradicting myself. Yesterday I wrote about going back to the start of a half-finished story to add a spin. Today I'm talking about the importance of pushing straight through the story to the end before rewriting. So you were expecting me to be logical? Stories are driven by emotion, not logic. The same should be true for writing.