tinyanddangerous asked you: I have difficulty labeling my drafts because I review it a lot then do full edits and have others edit, so now my labels are inconsistent. At what point does a rough draft become a first draft (and so on)?
Oh wow, that’s a difficult one. That decision would really be up to each individual writer. I’ll describe my own, personal, process; but I’ve written it out and rewritten it out six times and it’s more confusing every time, so please bear with me. I can see the process in my head, but I can’t really explain it as well as I’d like to.
Rough draft: I have all my notes of what events should transpire in each scene set in parentheses in bold: ( ). And I take no effort to make it sound eloquent.
Example: (she’s running from two guys. really scared. Runs fast, jumps, trips and breaks her legs.)
There are plenty of ‘ect’s and ‘elaborate’s set all over it, with a few bits of choppy dialogue and descriptions here and there. Remember I make no effort to be eloquent; and this is just an example.
Example: “What are you doing?” She says angrily.
“A little here, a little there, a lot of nonsense.” Dismissive.
She puts her hand on her hip and shifts the weight of her body onto one leg; angling herself to seem displeased,“Why? We should be gone by now.”
(more)
“I don’t kn-“
“Why did you kill her?” She bites.
“Why do you care? You never cared about her (elaborate).”
“I need a blue, a green, a purple conductor, a metallic substance, (ect).” B holds up the wire (elaborate on what it looks like),“Only then can I fix it.”
That’s where I get my overall idea down and make sure there’s nothing that my mind has concocted about that story I haven’t written down. I know my memory and I know better than to not write it down.
Draft 1 comes when I’ve taken all the ( ) s out and have expressed all my ideas in the narrative. Instead of saying (trips and breaks her legs), I’ve described how she stumbled, fell and broke her legs in much greater detail. The eloquence at this stage is still lacking and most of it is about as artistic as a monkey with a crayon, but the idea is out and it looks closer to a story than before.
The number of drafts from this point can vary. There can be five or more drafts, or there can only be three. I judge it on how it looks to me. If the third time I re-write it entirely looks starkly different and better than before, but still has a long way to go, I would call that a draft. Usually there’s the rough draft, the first draft, the second draft, maybe a third, then a final draft/revising section. Some may say rewriting it makes it in the revising stage and anything past the first draft is in the revising stage, but that comes back to opinion. Then comes the editing, the final re-read, the beta read, then publish.
I’m sure that was sufficiently confusing and I’m sorry I have no clear answer. This tells the five general stages of writing, but you’ll notice it’s pretty vague on how many drafts there can be. It’s mostly up to each writer.
Hope I’ve helped more than hindered. Anyone else have some advice?