meow

¹ i dont typically do brackets with instructions often, like "[WRITE GOOD TRANSITION HERE]". Instead, i tend to use them for points in-fic that im uncertain on, and need more consideration/research before i can commit. This does mean i sometimes go on hours-long information binges to answer my own curiosity before figuring them out tho 😂😂😂 im admittedly not very good at that "leave it blank and move on" method.

² this part is a little hard for me to explain. Im essentially taking the macro of the fic and honing in on the micro, picking apart each line from the rough draft and reworking them one by one, paragraph by paragraph-- and this time with far more attention to detail, purpose, imagery, grammar, punctuation, and literary devices. Every single word is considered extremely meticulously, and i do mean every single word. When i get to this stage of writing (aka my "fancy writing," aka "greebling," aka "editing," etc etc, i call it a lot of different things), im tracking each word i use for a sentence in the construction of said sentence, its placement in the overall story, and analyzing how i can shave off any extraneous words without sacrificing its imagery or coherency. A lot of people have commented that they can tell i put a lot of effort into choosing my words, and its honestly true-- i dont waste a single word in my edited writing. I'll even snip out articles whenever i feasibly can. This process can take hours just for like 200 words💥💥💥 its painstakingly involved, but its also fun because it feels like cutting out a bunch of puzzle pieces and then gluing them all back together again, so ultimately i really enjoy the process :]

To expand on that a little more tho, i mentally tally words into 4 different categories:

necessary (articles, functionally "invisible" words like "said," "asked," etc)

common (words that will generally appear in any piece of writing, such as those that denote motion: "run, walk, wave"; colours: "blue, white, yellow, etc"; facial expressions: "brows, cheeks, eyes"; and settings/props: "table, chair, sidewalk")

advanced (less commonly seen vocab words like "scintillate," "scorch," "converge," etc)

mythical rare (insanely specific words that often only show up about .01% of the time in the english language, such as. well. "quirled," "resipiscent," and "ictic"-- all of which happen to show up in chapter 12, oops<3💥💥)

As i write, i keep a rough mental tally of how often ive used any common, advanced, or rare words in a given piece, along with their position on the page to each other. My internal rules during rewriting are that necessary words are to be trimmed as much as possible, common words are to be mixed, shuffled, or replaced with advanced words where appropriate, advanced words themselves can only be reused after a certain amount of paragraphs written or in specific instances, and rare words can only be used once per piece (or chapter, then its fair game again).

For example, from chap 12 and with colour coding:

Around her free hand the air smears, blurs— a formless haze sneaking all the way up to her wrist. Speak. Within the mirage it flexes, forms an indistinct claw— — and withdraws, dispersing the filmy halation to reveal a plain leather bundle with its drawstrings quirled around her fingers.

Each "advanced" word is something im free to use again within the piece, albeit with caveats; words like smears, blurs, haze, flexes, withdraws, and drawstrings are words i'd feel comfortable reusing within a few paragraphs of each other depending on the narrative's context, although i prefer to search for alternatives as much as possible anyway. Words like formless, mirage, indistinct, dispersing, filmy, and reveal are the ones i'd only reuse very sparingly, since they're more specific than the others. The categorization in my brain is a mystery barely known to me either, but its definitely there 😂😂😂😂

Obviously, all of this is happening in tandem with my analyses of whats best for the overall image and atmosphere im trying to convey. I tend to build scenes from the ground up, starting with the scene's goals, imagery, and layering on various "set dressings" to provide atmosphere-- then filling in the actual actions and any literary/thematic devices i want to include (like wordplay. wordplay happens a LOT in my fics lol. Also, i like to use my word-colour synesthesia to literally paint with my own prose, which adds another layer of complication in picking and choosing words. Thats just a personal quirk though, since nobody else can see it 😂😂😂😂)

Graduating to the sentence level, i try to then approach each line from a new angle while preserving the original line's meaning and intent. My general rules for rewriting sentences are to avoid starting them with articles like "the" and pronouns as much as possible (its fine so long as i use them sparingly and deliberately), so i end up rearranging a lot of sentences to follow this internal guideline. For example, this rough draft sentence fragment³ in chap 12:

The rattle of a spoon against terracotta is his only warning before the blue mug descends into his peripheral[...].

has been rearranged and reimagined as:

Grian’s eyes fly open to the downy blue of a lost summer sky, preserved in glaze and belching vapor— the mug Pearl nudges toward him kisses the high of his cheek with a humid sigh, dampening his brow and threading warm fingers through his hair.

³ this is technically only half of the sentence written in the rough draft, which belongs to a paragraph of two sentences total. Several of the concepts explored in it have been carefully expanded on and split from its original paragraph, such as the line "The rattle of a spoon against terracotta [...]."

This line has been moved about 3 paragraphs above the line introducing the mug, and rewritten as: "A pocket of displaced air wuffs past his ears, trailed by the muffled clatter of wood on wood, rattling on ceramic; the rasping grate of clay on clay."

This is pretty typical for my rewrites, as i'll often find better places to split ideas and imagery so they lead into the next scenes much smoother than before. Rearranging the position of these sentences in the narration also means i can finetune the pacing of how each sentence and paragraph flow into and out of each other, which is essential to my writing style and how i want it to be experienced. It's also an excellent opportunity for me to add or expand on existing material, giving me space to focus on microdetails like a "zoom in" of the setting to convey tone and character emotion, or sensory details to ground the reader further into the scene.

In practice, this means one rough draft paragraph tends to turn into three edited paragraphs during rewrites though. I can always reliably expect my wordcount to triple between the rough draft and the edited version rip 💥💥💥💥😭😭😭😭

I know theres other stuff i could cover but honestly ive spent all day on this, and its the most detailed ive EVER gotten in explaining my process-- theres literally SO MUCH going on in my head during my editing phases that its hard to articulate skfhskfhdkd so hopefully all this explanation made even a modicum of sense.

To answer your other questions tho, i do tend to have rough points i know i wanna hit in a longer piece, usually denoted by scenes or dialogue snippets i keep tucked in my brain. But i personally prefer to write chronologically and not skip ahead, so i can use those scenes as a tantalizing little carrot on a stick to keep my motivation up 😂😂😂😂 (there are SO MANY of these scenes in hunger au its not even funny, i have so many important moments i wanna write for yall!!!) On occasion if i feel really inspired i WILL write a rough draft of the scene and tuck it away for later, so i do make exceptions for this!!