For the chaptered story I'm working on my, I had, oh, 5 or 6 20-30 page Word files, dating back 8 years, with various rambling drafts of various scenes and chapters, assorted copy-pasted chatlogs and email excerpts discussing various scenes .. and no clear scene sequence.) It was a freaking mess, and for a while I felt like I should just toss everything and start writing from scratch again (which certainly would have been a valid option), but I knew I had good stuff buried in all those pages (Sometimes several different re-writes of the good stuff :p)
Rather than do a line-by line comparison, I just set up an index card/heading virtual bucket for each piece, and then went through the files and everything I saw that related to "the scene where the old crush shows up" or "scenes where people threaten the villain" I just copy-pasted it out into Scrivener. After a while the underlying structure of the story started to merge, and as it did I started moving the "index cards" for the scenes around, adding notes, refining the scene title.
(I think a lot of this technique works for me because I approach writing stories as if I'm making a film. I like storyboard; I don't mind shooting/writing out of sequence; I'm willing to cut entire scenes for pacing ( but I still keep them "just in case" :p) and some of the story is built in the editing process.)
Whenever I've gone through this process I feel like I have a much clearer sense of the skeleton of the story, and having an "aerial view" also helps me articulate to myself "what is the purpose of this scene, what does it accomplish?"
All this probably sounds painful and boring, but I find this ordering and organizing activity very calming sometimes, especially when it seems that my enthusiastic concepting of a piece will outstrip my ability to follow through.
(It also makes me appreciate those very rare stories that blast out all in one sitting.)
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For the chaptered story I'm working on my, I had, oh, 5 or 6 20-30 page Word files, dating back 8 years, with various rambling drafts of various scenes and chapters, assorted copy-pasted chatlogs and email excerpts discussing various scenes .. and no clear scene sequence.) It was a freaking mess, and for a while I felt like I should just toss everything and start writing from scratch again (which certainly would have been a valid option), but I knew I had good stuff buried in all those pages (Sometimes several different re-writes of the good stuff :p)
Rather than do a line-by line comparison, I just set up an index card/heading virtual bucket for each piece, and then went through the files and everything I saw that related to "the scene where the old crush shows up" or "scenes where people threaten the villain" I just copy-pasted it out into Scrivener. After a while the underlying structure of the story started to merge, and as it did I started moving the "index cards" for the scenes around, adding notes, refining the scene title.
(I think a lot of this technique works for me because I approach writing stories as if I'm making a film. I like storyboard; I don't mind shooting/writing out of sequence; I'm willing to cut entire scenes for pacing ( but I still keep them "just in case" :p) and some of the story is built in the editing process.)
Whenever I've gone through this process I feel like I have a much clearer sense of the skeleton of the story, and having an "aerial view" also helps me articulate to myself "what is the purpose of this scene, what does it accomplish?"
All this probably sounds painful and boring, but I find this ordering and organizing activity very calming sometimes, especially when it seems that my enthusiastic concepting of a piece will outstrip my ability to follow through.
(It also makes me appreciate those very rare stories that blast out all in one sitting.)