: Re: How can I edit my own, very old work? I have about a hundred pages of a novel I wrote in high school, I like the concept behind the writing but I'm finding it extremely difficult to go

@Carla500

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There are three aspects to consider:

The plot
The characters
The writing

If you want to know if the project is worth pursuing at all, read the entire thing from scratch. Furthermore, read it and try to pretend you aren't the author. Now:

Do you like it? Do you like the premise? When you're done, do you
want to know what happens next?
Do you like the characters? Do you care for the people you've been
reading about? Do you understand them? Do they feel real?
Do you like how it's written? For the most part, does the prose work?

If you enjoyed the story as a story, and not as your story, then it's worth fixing.

If you hate the construction (the writing), break it back down into an outline, save the few sparkling sentences, throw it out, and start over. Yes, it will be a lot of work. If writing were easy, people would take up poetry for a summer job instead of flipping burgers at McDonald's.

If you don't like the plot, write up detailed studies of your characters and find something else for them to do. Throw out this book and write a different one.

If you don't like the characters, figure out what the original purpose of the story was and tell it some other way.

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