Jumping in just to say that from a writing teacher's perspective, I'm right in line with what most people have said. We teach that writing is a process, and revision (the big changes like does it make sense, it is in a logical order, etc.) always comes before proofreading.

How do you actually help someone improve characterization or plotting? I'm pretty good at it, but, well, it's just something I can do. I don't know how I do it. How do you teach someone a new way of thinking?

I was about to try to tackle this and decided it's too big. ("Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.") It's National Teacher Day, so I'm just going to feel good about saying that I think teaching these types of skills is wonderful blending of art, science, and experience. Someday, I might feel like I have a handle on it. Eight years in, I'm still learning.

This is educational. It never would've occurred to me before today that anyone didn't want to hear about the grammar/stylistic stuff right away.

(blinking)

Really? Because to me, that's more "welcome to English 1.01, today's class will focus on prepositions" stuff. I'm fifty years old, I know my language, and I've been out of school for a good long time now.

And honestly, ask yourself this: If you send people a tense new scene between Jack and Anna, are you really asking for, or expecting, comments like "please learn the difference between "than" and "then""?

It never would've occurred to me before today that anyone didn't want to hear about the grammar/stylistic stuff right away

Nope. There are levels of edit; in general, you fix the big structural stuff before you fix the small stuff. After all, if an entire paragraph needs to be deleted because it's extraneous, there isn't any point in fixing the commas and subject-verb first.

I would prefer structure-before-grammar edits, because I don't want to be so focused on a sentence that might get thrown out altogether if the whole scene is garbage. In fact, Lawrence Bloch calls it "washing garbage". If the germ of competence is there, then knocking off the worst crusties of misspellings and twisted sentence structure can help it shine, but if it's "Mary Jane gayzed in open-mothed adorration of studly Dirk", then it's pick up the tongs and move the whole icky thing time.

Or, what Betsy said.

Wow. This is educational. It never would've occurred to me before today that anyone didn't want to hear about the grammar/stylistic stuff right away.

What always sticks in my mind is from Anne Lamott. First, there are Shitty First Drafts, 90% which might never see the light of day; you generally revise those yourself ("revise" might be the wrong term; a Shitty First Draft serves to get all your ideas out of your head, and something truly wonderful is likely to show up on the page, and you can toss the rest).

Then comes the Down Draft -- you're just getting it down on paper (or electrons). It's not concerned with particulars of grammar and punctuation, because whole sections might be excised.

The the Up Draft -- you're fixing it up. That's where grammar editing comes in.

Finally is what Lamott calls the Dental Draft -- where you go through it one last careful time, checking each tooth to make sure there are no weak spots.

I, personally, can't abide someone giving me grammar/punctuation feedback on a first draft, especially when I specifically asked for content/big picture/coherency feedback.

I agree with the writeristas--I think of feedback as something entirely different than copyediting. One is dealing with the story itself and the other with the vehicle of telling that story. Feedback is about the route and copyediting is about tuning up the car.

And we're right back to the salty goodness of having people specify what they want from feedback. I'm huge, huge fan of that.

Tep, I generally do my editing chapter by chapter, as I write it - I write the first draft, I go back and read immediately (which I don't think I'd recommend for a lot of writers, but which works for me because it really is purely visceral and I first-pass edit my own stuff best when the gut punch of having just written nine pages is still fresh), and as it happens, I read it out loud. Certain things ping me - shit, I used "echoed" FOUR TIMES in that one section, change that - I fix them.

I then ping my online beta readers, those who are interested get the section, I get feedback - which includes commas, missing periods, typos, etc. I mull over feedback, fix and incorporate what is needed.

That's the draft that gets read at my writers group. By that time, it's fairly polished, so most input are of the tweak variety.

Sometimes, though, I finish the section the day of writers group, and they get the first draft. Poor babies.

In a departure from a lot of advice, Lawrence Bloch (I can never remember if that's an H or a K, oh, well) is a fan of having your fiirst draft pretty much in your head, and he dislikes the idea of "just type whatever, don't worry if you're being sloppy about typos, the first draft doesn't really count." He says it just teaches people to be sloppy writers. For me, having a typo in the sentence above is like having a rock in my shoe. It gets worse and worse, and eventually it obsesses me until I remove it. He likes the idea of going back a few pages or paragraphs whenever you sit down to do new work as a means of priming the pump, and it's a good time to fix egregious typos and punctuation problems.

Sometimes, he says, the first thing you type is good enough to stand, after the basic typos etc. are fixed. Sometimes it isn't. I liked being freed from the idea that you were going to have to go through three or four revisions of something. It gives you the freedom to be a good writer off the block.

I liked being freed from the idea that you were going to have to go through three or four revisions of something. It gives you the freedom to be a good writer off the block.

It comes down to personal styles, in the end. Writer A may want a whip hand over their characters, and rigidly adhere to certain personal rules. Another writer may go freeform and whittle down later.