A Novel in Four Drafts

I’ll often get requests to cover specific subjects related to the craft of writing while I’m out giving workshops and lectures for various writing organizations. One of the most popular requests is a how-to presentation on editing and revising a novel-length manuscript. With that in mind, I thought I’d use this article to describe my own process for revision and how I deal with this occasionally frustrating but always rewarding form of writing.

First, a disclaimer. While I will be discussing this process from the perspective of four distinct drafts of a manuscript, I could just as easily have called them the four phases of a manuscript. My main purpose in calling them drafts was to emphasize the need to do at least four distinct, separate versions of a novel before declaring it finished. With that said, I understand that many authors may feel the need to perform the tasks described below on the entire manuscript multiple times. In that case, each variation of the manuscript could also be accurately identified as a separate draft.

The First Draft – Just Get it Down

A wise mentor once told me his mantra for writing first drafts. “Just get it down, we’ll clean it up later.” The purpose of the first draft is to create the raw material you will be working on for the rest of the process. This is when you flesh out your initial ideas, experiment, get crazy, and just write whatever may come into your head. This is not the time for editing, revising, or reworking.

Of course, writing a first draft isn't always as easy as copying down whatever your muse whispers to you. What happens when the writer is half-way through the first draft and decides that the plot needs to be completely overhauled? In my opinion, while it is sometimes necessary to start over, I really try to encourage writers to press on until the first draft is complete, regardless of how broken or incomplete it is. The reason is simple. In most cases, it’s easier and faster to change an existing, broken manuscript than to create an entirely new one out of thin air.

The Second Draft – Start Carving

When I first started coaching writers, I worked with a young lady who had some ambitious goals for completing a series of novels, but was struggling in seeing the project through to the end. In addition to setting some unrealistic goals for herself, she had written the first novel in the series a total of four times without any rewrites. Instead of revising any of her existing manuscripts, her frustration level forced her to start over every time she finished. This vicious cycle meant that while she was constantly writing, she was never getting any farther than her first draft, and ended up wasting all of her precious time and inspiration. This is not what your second draft should be.

Think of the relation between the first and second drafts of a novel like carving a stone statue. Writing the first draft is the equivalent of cutting out a block of stone from a quarry and perhaps making a few initial, rough cuts. The second draft is when the statue really starts coming into shape through a series of repeated, carefully considered cuts. Of course, revision is more than just cutting away what is unnecessary. The second draft is the time to consider the story as a whole, evaluating the plot structure, character development, and scene composition.

It’s important to remember that at this stage nothing is so important that it can’t be cut for the sake of the novel as a whole. Bad chapters or superfluous characters may need to be removed, and even the plot may experience multiple transformations at this stage. This may seem time consuming, but it’s necessary if the final product is going to be the writer’s best work.

The Third Draft – Troubleshooting

By this time, the final version of the story is beginning to take shape. This is when the writer examines each page of the manuscript closely, looking for minor plot holes, logical errors, and continuity issues. This is also a good time to consider the story’s pacing. Do some sections feel like they’re dragging, while other scenes feel rushed? This is the point at which levels of detail -what I like to call the volume of narrative description- is adjusted. Word choice is key, and the old maxim “show don’t tell” should never be clearer in the writer’s mind than at this stage.

It’s worth noting that this is likely the process that most writers will think of when they first picture themselves editing their manuscript. Keep in mind, however, that this sort of problem-solving should wait until the major plot and story structure have been worked out and finalized in order to avoid unnecessary frustration and rewrites.

The Fourth Draft – Polishing

This is the final, proofreading stage of the revision process. Issues like spelling, word choice, sentence structure, and any other mechanical problems are resolved at this time. This is probably the hardest draft for me to devote an appropriate amount of time to, and I don’t think I’m alone. At this point, I usually am so sick of a manuscript that I just want to be done with it, regardless of whether it still has any errors in it.

The best solution I've found for this sort of late-game fatigue is seeking help in the form of additional readers. This doesn't necessarily mean hiring a professional editor, though that’s certainly an option. I actually find test readers to be incredibly helpful, whether they’re writers themselves or just fans of the genre that I’m writing. Having fresh eyes go over the manuscript always seems to expose those little issues that the author missed. Of course, it’s still up to the author to decide which criticism to listen to, but that’s a subject for another article.





I hope that this article has been of use to those of you who may be working on a novel in some stage of revision. Please leave a comment below if this has been helpful, and be sure to share it with all of your writer friends.