So you finished your first draft... What now?
I sometimes see posts telling you what to do after you finished writing. Many of them focus on getting the sentences to flow nicely, catching typos or making sure the grammar is sound. For me, there’s much more work to be done before I can get on with word choice and grammar. I want to tell you about the different stages of editing I’m planning.
I’m working from big to small, because it’s no use fretting over synonyms in a scene you’ll end up cutting out later.
Check. You’ve gone that. You got the first draft on the paper. Congratulations! You rock!
You’ve probably heard that editing is cutting. “A second draft needs to be shorter than the first draft, because you cut out any unnecessary words.” Yes and no. I agree you need to cut them out, but not yet.
Read through your entire story first, noting if anything needs to be added or cut out. Scenes where you were telling and you needed to be showing: rewrite them, add more words. For example: “And then they fight.” No, show me the fight. Scenes where you repeat yourself: cut out the repetitions if they have no function.
Think of pacing. Pick it up for the exciting scenes and then give your reader some breathing room. Pick it up towards the end. Add a small filler scene to change a regular reveal into a cliffhanger.
This is also the draft in which you fix any plotholes and rearrange scenes if they need to be in a different order.
If you finish this draft, you completed probably 80% of the work needed on your story. *high five!*
3. Group the scenes into chapters
A chapter consists of several scenes. If you have not grouped them yet, read through the entire story and place the chapter breaks where they feel right. If you have written your story into chapters, read it through to make sure that the chapter breaks are where they supposed to be.
Make sure there is a hook, big or small, at the end of each chapter to make the reader read on. If there isn’t one, add one or put the chapter break somewhere else.
4. Are there darlings to be killed?
You know your darlings. Scenes, characters, ideas or sentences you don’t want to cut because you really like them, but they serve no purpose in your story. Or worse, you rewrite a good plot into a mediocre one to make sure the darling doesn’t need to be killed.
Knowing myself, any darlings in my story probably involve random mentions of space and dinosaurs.
How to spot darlings: read through your entire story and ask yourself honestly:
Is the story structure still working? (Plot/pacing/…)
What’s the function of this chapter? Of this scene? Of this paragraph?
If it serves no purpose, kill them.
Notice I’m still not telling you to check the grammar.
By know, you really know your characters. You know how they should react, how their thoughts sound, and if they have any quirks. Read through your story and make sure all the actions and dialogues are in character. Pay extra attention to the first part of your story, because you didn’t know them as well as you did at the end.
You can do this for all your characters in one go, or go through your story for each character individually, whatever serves your story best. I will go through my story four times in this draft, once for each of my four major characters.
6. Optional genre-specific draft
I’m writing something funny, so I’m dedicating an extra draft to make sure there is enough humor in it. If you write a romantic story, check for romantic details. If you write horror, check if you need to add extra creepy details. Add foreshadowing if that makes your story richer.
Yes. I’m finally telling you to check the grammar, synonyms, tenses, unnecessary words, adverbs, variations of “said”, commas versus semicolons and all the other stuff you want to check. Go wild.
8. Extra things publishers and agents like
Make sure your first sentence is spot-on. Make your first scene brilliant. Make your first chapter a perfect chapter.
Rewrite the first and last alinea of every chapter. The goal is to make people want to gush to their friends, “I’m reading this book and you NEED to hear this paragraph, let me read it to you because it is the. best. ever.”
I know it can be difficult to see your mistakes and not tackle them immediately. For me, it works if I signal them to future-me: I write “bad writing”, “research this” or “why????” in the margins and I put a squiggle under weird paragraphs or words. The reason you want to tackle it now is to make sure the idea or the mistake doesn’t escape you later. By signaling it, you make sure it can’t escape, but you’re not losing time with micro stuff when you still have macro stuff to do.
Note that I will probably only change like 0,1% of the story each time I go through it, especially in the later drafts, but this way I won’t get distracted by other to do’s. If I try to do everything in one or two drafts, I can’t possibly see or do everything.
And now you’re done, you magnificent unicorn of a human being! You deserve the highest of fives!
I hope this is clear! You can always ask me if you have more questions. Follow me for more writing advice.
Tag list below, people I like and admire. If you want to be added to or removed from my tag list, let me know.
janainaart
izzy806
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
dededos
kianamaiart
