Writing Craft
Revision can make a character sound better and less like themselves. Useful, obviously. Also a bit grim.
The first draft often has the odd little hesitations and stray phrasing that make someone feel alive. Tighten too hard and you can sand off the wobble, which is usually where the personality was hiding.
I’m not against clean prose. I’m against the version of clean prose that leaves everyone sounding as if they were edited by the same sensible committee.
The first draft often has the odd little hesitations and stray phrasing that make someone feel alive. Tighten too hard and you can sand off the wobble, which is usually where the personality was hiding.
I’m not against clean prose. I’m against the version of clean prose that leaves everyone sounding as if they were edited by the same sensible committee.
Sometimes the wobble is just indecision wearing a clever hat. I’m not sentimental about first-draft roughness for its own sake. If a hesitation tells you something about the character, keep it. If it only tells you the sentence wasn’t finished yet, cut it. The hard bit is knowing which is which, and revision has a habit of pretending it knows.