Editing How the Heck Do You Find Motivation to Go Back and Edit Your Chapters?!

Szaku

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i think it has more to do with your motivation for writing or putting out chapters in the first place..

if your goal is just "putting chapters out" you dump em and leave em and likely forget about them.

if you are motivated or care enough about your work to make corrections, changes, and proofread to keep things consistent or w/e, you'll probably mull over it more from the start, and be open to your readers pointing out mistakes. if its a huge glaring gamebreaker type mistake you'll want to change it naturally. if its not that big of a deal, you wont.

and like a few people before me have mentioned, if your goal in writing is just to get views and votes, i hardly believe 'editing' is in your vocabulary from the start. you're likely the type to put out whatever garbage you come up with for 15 ~ 50 chapters and if its not reeling in viewers you'll dump the story altogether and start something new (if at all)

tl;dr - it seems the motivation to do better comes from within. unless you're literally writing for a living, where your motivation is "don't want to starve" or "need to pay rent", that strong sort of inborn motivation can't be artificially called upon by casual/hobby writers.
 

TheOneWho

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no, no... it just show that you are too much into grammar.... take a break.... and maybe be into Procrastination? I heard Pro has a beach house in Miami...
Yea, your right I should go back into my reading addiction and read one of the hundred stories in my to-read list.
 

TheOneWho

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It actually is... that is a pirated version, though... was stolen from WebNovel... xD


But still really good!
kk, will read it on web novel, I have the app and read lots of stories there. One of my fav is Chrysalis, which can also be read here:
 

Ediav42

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I’ve heard a paycheck helps. Could also reward yourself with an icecream or some kind of treat after?
 

Agentt

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I’ve heard a paycheck helps. Could also reward yourself with an icecream or some kind of treat after?
.....we are gonna get diabetes if we reward ourselves everytime we do that.
How about this, you become so perfect, that you don't...like edit them...at all..
 

skillet

a frying pan
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If I do edit, it's only waaay after I first write it, when I've become more indifferent to what I wrote, or right away, when what I've written doesn't fit what I wanted. There is no in between.
 

Ruyi

༺ aureate sect ༻
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do you mean chapters as a whole, or individual chapters?

for example, after i post a chapter i like to read it on SH because the different formatting/font helps me look at it with fresh eyes. then the sense of fury and shame i feel upon catching a typo or some other nonsense spurs me to go back and revise it right there on the spot.

but uh, editing and rewriting whole story arcs and multiple chapters at once? can't be bothered to do that until i finish the entire story. tooooo much work and everything's too interconnected to make big changes, so it doesn't make sense for me to tear down the foundation before i finish my blueprints for the house, you get my drift?

generally speaking tho, i would say the motivation is a matter of personal pride and/or dignity. i can tolerate anything from bad grammar/typo/misspellings/minor plot holes in works i read if i'm having fun, but if it's something i made myself for the public? god forbid but i better make sure it (and by extension me hohoho) looks good.

writer's ego, i call it. it makes you your own worst critic but it also forces you to do the dirty work when nobody's there to cheer you on. "if i know i can do this better, why not make it better?" especially if it's self-indulgent stuff. personally i find joy in editing something to be the best version of what it could be--there's only so much you can do with the human language, so better give it your all to paint that perfect picture in the reader's mind amirite~

(on the other hand, all that righteous indignation flies out the window when i'm lazy or tired =u= i don't even bother with caps for forum posts nowadays, i just save my grammar for my fics hahaha)

(on the other other hand i'm kinda being a hypocrite because i don't edit my stuff on SH that much, i'd say they're more like 1st draft content with 3rd draft flair~)
 

cud-b-better

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Simply because I always want to improve my writing. I constantly look back at some of my chapters and think to myself: Did I really write this trash? I probably spend more time editing than writing, and yet it still looks bad.
 

BackWoodsJ_ACK

Birbs, dog, and burbers
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Sep 24, 2020
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Meh, I just use grammarly and check to see if the sentences are flowing smooth. If I overlook a typo, I might fix it.
 

Sylverius

Old name: Sylphias
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@Motivation come here. People are looking for you.
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