What does your first draft look like? What kind of revisions do you do for a second, third etc? Do you drafts change a lot or a little between each?
*waves enthusiastically*
Happy STS!
Ok, in my phone so apologies for Things.
First draft is literal brain vomit. I think it, I write it. I mean...I do try and structure the mess as I go, sometimes go back to give myself some help if I've thought of something. I guess it's chaos of the highest order in regards to plot And ideas. I never know what the hell a character is gonna do when I hand them the plot but half the time it's more interesting than the idea I had marked down, so... First draft is unhinged, uncontrolled chaos.
Revisions is usually more like rewriting in my case 😅 I read through it again and again and make cuts or rewrite scenes, expand explanations, one time I cut a character completely and made up a new one in the shot and worked him in and it made the whole thing better. I whittle and define. And usually this goes on through several more runthroughs as I clip and add and basically my revisions are the time in my WIPs life that I break the entire things and build it up again but Different and Better.
Firstly, I'd like to say your stories sound amazing and I wish you all the best with them! Secondly, you might've answered this (or it might be difficult to answer) but how do you go about just starting a second draft? I've got a few first drafts scattered around and I'd like to edit them but... there's just so much and I have no idea where to start and then I just end up not doing it because it just seems like an insurmountable task. Help, please?
this went into my drafts with the idea that i would work on it next weekend, but,,, it has since been several months’ worth of weekends, and i’m only just getting to it 😅
Starting Second Drafts
For me, the second draft is less about editing what I’ve written, and more about refining what happens. You’ll probably find your own way of working as you redraft more of your stories, but here’s six key points that have really helped me:
1) PRINT IT OUT & CHANGE IT UP
(I’m assuming here you’ve typed your first draft; if you wrote it longhand, ignorethese next two paragraphs)
Most of writing is just playing mind games with yourself, and there’s nobetter way to do this than change the font and/or text colour from one draft to the next. It gives your writing a new look and tricks your brain into paying attention again, which helps when you’re reading through the first draft and deciding what’s going to happen to it.
Printing it out is a large part of this – having your story in a different format lets you look at it from a different angle, both literally and figuratively. It alsomeans you can make notes and cross out chunks directly on paper, which is avery satisfying process (and as writers, we need to take our satisfaction wherewe can!).
2) SCRIBBLE ALL OVER IT
I think that the reason the second draft seems so daunting it because there’s this pressure to Make It All Perfect, and attacking your first draft with coloured pens and post-it notes alleviates that somewhat. It doesn’t have to be neat; it just hasto make sense to you.
Don’t try to filter your ideas, either – if you think of something that could change, or that you want to add, write it down, even if it conflicts with what you’vealready got. Keeping all your options open will help when you get to later draftsand revisions, and want to look back see how else scenes or plots could playout.
3) FOCUS ON THE BIGGER PICTURE
Following on from the last point, it’s also important to remember that the second draft isn’t about making your prose nice and clean, or about finalising those littledetails like what houseplants your characters keep or what the café they eat atis called. The second draft is still very much Bigger Picture territory, i.e.,getting plot events in the right order or weaving through character growth and subplots.
Here’s a picture of what When Dealing with Wolves’ first draft looked like when Iwas working on it:
[ID: a printed-out manuscript, headed with the titles “Second Draft” and “Chapter One”. I’ve messily written all over the text in red pen, circling large chunks and indicating changes with arrows. /End ID]
And here’s one of draft two/three, for comparison in the editing style:
[ID: a second printed out page, this time with more detailed notes correcting grammar and rewriting sentences. Lots of words and lines are crossed out in thick black pen. /End ID]
In the former, the focus is on moving around scenes or details so that they made more sense; in the latter, I was paying more attention to sentence form and prose, as well as restructuring.
4) REFINE YOUR NOTES
Once you’ve got this lovely scrawled-on mess, you’ll probably want to make some decisions re: what’s going to happen in draft two. Take your scribbled notes from the first draft and decide what you think will work best, thinking about:
Plot events
Character growth
Worldbuilding changes
Subplots
(How detailed these notes are depends on your writing planning style. Whether you do a few bullet points as a vague outline or plan each plot point meticulously is entirely up to you).
5) START FROM SCRATCH
Okay, not quite from scratch. You’ve got all those notes, and you still have your first draft to refer to as well. What “start from scratch” means in this context is “don’t just work directly onto the first draft document”.
What you want with your second draft is freedom to let the story grow, and you can’t get that if you edit straight into the confines of your first draft. Re-typingscenes instead of copy and pasting also makes you think about them,getting your brain to approach any problems in new ways.
And, last but not least—
6) GIVE YOURSELF SPACE TO EXPLORE
I’ve seen this said about first drafts countless times, but it goes for second drafts, too! If you want to write several different versions of scene, do it. Want tochange a character’s name for the sixth time? Go for it. I don’t consider theplot, or even the details, of a WIP fixed until I’m into the final revisions ofthe last draft.
The only thing to remember is always, always keep track of your changes, be that via an Excel spreadsheet, notes in a separate word document, or novel journal entries. That way, if you decide later that an old idea actually works better, you can go back and retrieve it with minimal fuss.
I'm really sorry for this question but I kinda need an opinion from a writer. Basically I've wrote this story and it's basically finished. I edited it, re-read it, polished it. Generally speaking it's finished: the story is consistent, the pacing is okay, the characters work. Everything should be fine, but I find lots of gripes with how it's written, with the style itself (except for a few scenes which I think are okay). So I want to ask: in a situation like this, would you rewrite the story?
Hey Nonny, there’s no need to be sorry! I am a writing blog, and I never mind giving advice :)
WHEN A FINISHED STORY FEELS UNFINISHED
Rewriting it again is one option - and if that feels right, definitely go for it! But a very real problem with writing is that everything exists inside your own head, and it’s difficult to work out how it feels to approach it as a reader. When I find myself in this situation, I like to follow one or all of these three steps:
rewrite or recreate your story in a different format
Take a break and work on something else
Seek out beta-readers
To expand on these points:
1) REWRITE/RECREATE IN A DIFFERENT FORMAT
Taking your story out of its original context helps you to get a new perspective on it, which is exactly what’s needed if you want to work out what doesn’t feel right. This can be anything from drawing a story-board to rewriting in a different medium. If I originally wrote the story by hand, I type it up; if I wrote it on a laptop, I rewrite it by hand. But that’s just how I like to do it. You could also try breaking down the scenes you’re unhappy with into a script or as a dialogue-only story. Since your gripes are more about style, this method might not appeal to you so much - but it gives you space to think about the story without worrying about your writing style, which is extremely liberating. Sometimes you just need to separate your storytelling from your writing style and that’s okay.
There’s also this idea that if you rewrite something, rewrite it entirely or not at all. This method has its uses, (I find it great for moving on to second drafts of longer pieces), but sometimes it’s only one section or one scene that you want to meddle with. Drafting several variations of the same scene is a totally valid way of rewriting - which is also why I like to use different formats when rewriting. Back when WDWW was just a collection of short stories, I re-drafted one of them as a flow-chart, because that was a versatile medium and let me work out what I wanted to change and what I wanted to keep without cutting into the story I had already written.
This is also supposed to be a fun exercise: you don’t have to recreate your story perfectly, you just need to get it down so you can see how it all comes together. You might make a sketchy story-board with stick figures and realise that the order of events is wrong, or you might write out the dialogue and realise it doesn’t fit with the action. Try different approaches and find out what works for you.
2) TAKE A BREAK AND DO SOMETHING ELSE
The key to a successful rewrite is a clear head. Period. You can’t force yourself to keep working on a story when you’re completely saturated with it and expect good results. This is particularly true of the finer craft details like your writing style and word choices. Working on some other creative endeavour for a bit lets you come back to your story later on with a clear head. It also stops you getting burnt out, which kills a story faster than anything else.
How long your break is is entirely up to you. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, says he leaves his novels for at least a month and does the first draft of something else. Granted, he was talking about how he wrote so many novels, (not just how to write them well), but it’s solid advice. I usually leave short stories for at least two weeks. If you come back to your story after a break and you still feel like you can’t get a good persective, then you may either want to
a) repeat step one
b) try step three, or
c) extend your break.
It’s also worth mentioning that printing out your story (if it isn’t already written by hand) and attacking all the bits you’re not sure about with a chunky black marker is very satisfying. Don’t think you like the word “that” in that sentence? Black it out! Feel like the simile you chose is too cliche or sounds wrong? Black it out! I use this method for rewriting my opening paragraph(s), but it’s fine for all sorts of writing.
3) GET BETA-READERS
Asking people to read your brain-baby is a scary, but hugely worthwhile, experience. As I’ve already said, stories get stuck inside your head; you need to work out how to tell them to other people. An outside perspective is crucial.
“How” and “Why” are probably the most important questions you can ask: beta-readers will think critically about your story, and then you need to think critically about their answers. Ask them questions about HOW certain story aspects made them feel and WHY they felt that way. If their answers catch you by surprise, that could show you what isn’t working in your story. I’ve always found with beta-readers that when a beta’s comment makes me go “Wait, you thought WHAT??”, it’s like my eyes get blown wide open and I can see exactly why I was dissatisfied with a certain passage or scene. Sometimes it didn’t convey what I thought it conveyed, and sometimes it was extra information that added too much clutter to the narrative.
Remember that a beta-reader’s comments will come from personal opinion. This isn’t a bad thing - you want their opinion. It just means that their comments aren’t going to magically fix your story. You need to weigh their opinion against yours, and decide what you want to do about it. Betas also shouldn’t get too critical of your writing style, but they can point out anything that makes little sense, or that reads confusingly.
Once you’ve mulled over what your betas think, either use step one or plunge straight into a re-write, keeping their feedback in mind. Their fresh perspective’s might be just what you need to work out how to finish your story.
yarnyfan replied to your post: “I have stacked my queue to the ceiling That probably means I should...”:
random number generator to pick one?
I think my problem was that I want to work on Project Tiramisu, when I SHOULD be working on Starbound, so I opened up Tiramisu and started reading. And yowza. I wrote this? Seriously? Wow.
Hey there! I have a question for you-- I'm writing my dcbb and it's coming pretty easy (for now), but I'm really trying this time around to just write and not overthink it, and I keep telling myself I can go back later to fix it. Do you think you can ever got too far with that? Like, being too flippant in the first draft? I just worry because I'm afraid when I go back later, I won't remember what I need to fix and such. Thoughts?
One solution that I use, whether i’m writing in Scrivener, Libre Office, or Google Docs is the comment. The comment is a treasure. I often find myself in a scene and I’m not feeling it and I want to come back to it later, so I do these things:
Highlight it by changing the text colour. I often use red text over the passage that I want to re-do.
If I can’t think of something I will often put in a comment that explains what my worry is. “I need more setting here” or “LOL HAY TAGLESS DIALOGUE IN AN EMPTY ROOM HOW YOU DOON?” or in the body of the text (Dean says something bitter and relevant to the theme here and then flounces out of the room) or (They fight. Castiel wins.)
Know that i’m going to be obsessive in my rewrite, because I am a hardcore rewriter, so if something feels flat, I’ll notice it in my re-do.
Really when it comes to your first draft there are a lot of ways to handle it. Some people edit as they go, and find that it works to help them get a firmer feel for the way the words go down on paper. Other people write to a milestone, say every 5000 words, and then edit the 5000 words they just wrote. I puke it all out and then go back, prepared to tear the whole thing down if I have to, but my ways have become very labor intensive and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t try something different.
