I’m at that point on my WIP where I know I’m going to make some edits to chapters I’ve already written that will significantly change a viewpoint character. I have to make the choice whether to go back and revise now, or to forge ahead and finish the first draft before revising.
Normally, I’m a big fan of revising first when this sort of thing happens. It’s hard to build on what came before if you don’t even know what that is. If I haven’t rewritten those scenes, their emotional content can’t inform what I’m writing now. I can’t make subtle references back to what happened there, or let the particulars of those key events drive how my characters act and make decisions now. I can’t refer back to those unwritten scenes in dialogue or internal monologue.
In this case, though, I’m going to forge ahead. Because this is a multi POV project and I’m trying to do some cool things with how the POVs play off each other, I already know there’s a lot of revising in my future. Anything I go back and revise now is just going to get revised again when I’m done, and the new stuff I write now is probably also going to get revised…maybe even completely rewritten. This is not going to be a “clean, awesome first draft” kind of book. It’s going to be messy before it gets pretty.
So I’m going to let go of perfectionism (for now) (at least a bit) and forge ahead, choosing momentum over continuity in this draft. Different books require different strategies!
I know I’m not the only one who’s faced this dilemma… I’d love to hear how others have handled it!
Melissa Caruso 