drafting a novel

What do you mean by "drafting?"

If novels came in draft, I would totally be a novelholic. Hell, if they came in bottles I would be too. Bottoms up!

I'm also confused by the drafting thing. I would think it would be sort of outlining, and would therefore come before you write it, but it seems the other way around for you. Color me confused, and likely an idiot. Please explain, inquiring village idiots want to know!

For some reason, when you say drafting, it sounds like you mean 'rewriting with edits' or something...

Are you talking about a first draft or an outline?

If you mean a rough draft, it depends. My first book, which was 130,000 words, took me a year and a half. I didn't use an outline; I just winged it.

My second book, the one I'm sending out to agents now, came to a little over 60,000 words. I spent about two weeks outlining it, and I wrote the first draft in a month. However, it took me three months to edit it.

Did anyone ever figure out the term "drafting?" I'm working on my first novel (I'm in chapter 12) and I, too, have bypassed an outline. I've just taken my idea and run with it. So far, it's working well. I save each chapter individually and edit at the end of each one. I'll go over the entire MS when I'm completely done and do a final polishing.

Sorry... seems I've gotten off topic. What were we talking about again?

VonShneer said:

What about everyone else?

Click to expand...

Assuming that you mean the entire writing process when you say drafting, there are two ways to estimate how long it will take to write a book-length manuscript (100-120K words): writing with a deadline and without. Without a deadline, it could take forever. With a deadline, it will take . . . well, you guessed it. Most commercial fiction writers under contract produce one book a year. There are exceptions in both directions. Good luck.

oh the english language is so confusing, it's a wonder we can communicate at all. What is that you say? We don't communicate? In that case, lets all learn french. Might get things going again. Zut alors!

Yes they are called drafts. But saying you are drafting a story, suggests that you are in the first stages of creation before the writing process begins. Once you've done your first draft, anything after that is called revising. So what you meant is that you are revising, or editing, your story.

To answer your question, it takes however long it takes. I know, I know, stupid answer but that's how it is. Sometimes it all comes out nicely formed, almost perfect, and sometimes this mess comes out and you have to do a lot of shaping before it even remotely resembles a story. For a novel, the revisions can take a year or 6 monts or 5 years. It depends on how rough your first draft is, how formed it is, how many plot holes there are, how fast you write. Some people outline extensively before they start the first draft and that helps them to walk the straight and narrow (suzanne brockmann, NY Times best seller, outlines to the point of 40 to 50 pages before she starts the first draft. I imagine her first draft comes out looking pretty clean). Other people have a vague idea where they want to go and wing it. Usually that means a lot more cleaning up.

All those are things that we cant answer for you. You will discover them on your own once you start.

I love the quirks and endless nuances of English. ::happy sigh::

Assuming drafting means "creating"

It takes me about a month of thinking before I attempt to outline. It takes me about a month to outline. It takes me about 3 months to write the story, but the outline is usually thrown on the fire early on. editing can take many months. Start to finish is usually a year.