Stop Tweaking. Start Over.
By Jillian Schedneck
A third-year political science student sits across from me; her brows furrowed in apprehension. She has a B+ average and a full draft that doesn’t address the essay task. The student was assigned a reading response on two articles about election reform but has written an argument about how elections should be reformed. When I gently point out that she needs to focus her writing on the articles, the student deflates, sighing deeply. She sees instantly that her essay has gone off track.
Then she brightens, asking, “How can I change as little as possible and still meet the assignment requirements?” She wants to be led down a magical path of least resistance. Unfortunately, I don’t possess that kind of magic.
I know the last thing my student wants to hear is the truth: that changing a few sentences, rearranging some paragraphs, might help slightly, but only in a superficial way. I understand her unwillingness because I feel it in my own writing. We all have limits on our time, and we resist anything that makes the next step forward feel like a few steps backward. Sometimes, I get so caught up in wanting to feel productive that I conflate finishing a draft with real achievement. I can talk myself into believing that salvaging what I have is better than starting over.
When I met this student, I was working on a piece of short fiction set on another planet. The story begins with the nosy main character trying to find out why her neighbor’s husband abandoned her to live with the alien race. But the main character’s instinct to gossip comes across as cruel, and when the neighbor divulges the truth about her husband, the reveal falls flat, reading like a dull monologue.
So, I reworked the opening scene so that the main character is more likeable. I revised the part where the neighbor shares the truth, turning it into a conversation. But those small fixes didn’t address the real problem.
Upon reflection, what originally excited me about this story—beyond the setting—was the character’s arc of change. By the end, I wanted her to decide against spreading gossip about her neighbor and realize that she had so much more to learn about the alien race. To reach that level of character growth, I needed more than a revised opening and a conversational reveal. I needed to rethink the story at the scene level so the character’s change could actually be felt. I needed to rewrite the whole thing.
It’s easy to figure out when a student’s draft needs a full rewrite—they haven’t followed the assignment instructions. For creative writing, it’s a tougher call. For me, I know a rewrite is required when I can see that I never fully understood the character’s arc of change, or I’ve gone off track from the arc I first envisioned.
When I discover that tweaks aren’t enough, I take a step back and map what I have written, noting what happens in each scene. Then I map the ideal character arc and compare it to my current scenes. I know my scenes don’t work when they aren’t creating the tension or escalation needed to force the character’s change. Once I diagnose the problem, I map new scenes that better match the character arc I’ve decided on. The next draft isn’t perfect either, but it’s closer, and the next time, closer still.
Rewriting isn’t a failure. The previous draft was not a waste of time. The only way to reach clarity, depth, and precision is by writing the drafts that come before. In my example story, the first draft allowed me to build the world, understand my characters better, and glimpse the real story behind the husband’s disappearance. While I had hoped the idea would fully reveal itself on the page in my first draft, the character arc wasn’t clear enough in my head yet.
The more practice I get, the better my first drafts are likely to be. Still, if I keep pushing myself beyond my creative limits, I’ll need this willingness to rewrite from scratch. Like the student in a higher-level class, or the one taking an elective in a new discipline, it takes time and effort to reach our new aspirations. We must be willing to scrap everything and start over from a place of better understanding. Rewriting is clarity, not regression.
The student sighs, reluctantly accepting the work ahead. We shape a new argument focused on her response to the articles. We define a new main point and supporting arguments. The student is looking a bit happy, and a bit resigned.
I reassure her this is the most efficient path to her goal of a strong paper, even if it seems like I’m asking her to go back to the drawing board. Really, she’s not. I can’t give her the path of least resistance, but I can clear the way so that she sees that a rewrite isn’t a setback, but the next inevitable step in discovering what she actually needs to say.
Jillian Schedneck writes speculative fiction and memoir. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Tahoma Literary Review, Brevity, Redivider and elsewhere. Her memoir was published with Pan Macmillan. Her work has been chosen as a notable essay in the Best American Essays series and won multiple Solas Awards for Travel Writing. She lives in Canberra, Australia, with her partner and two children. Her website is jillianschedneck.com.