How do you revise your drafts?

I did my current project differently. I used to always fall into a vicious cycle where I'd keep going back over my draft as I was writing it, which probably kept me from finishing most of them. With this one, I wrote my draft without ever looking back. When I finished, I let it sit for a few months so that I could go back to it with fresh eyes. Then I read my draft, making notes on major revisions I'd make later and only actively editing things for the sake of continuity, plus spelling and grammar errors. Now I'm doing a full edit, using my notes from my read-through/spot-edit. Next, I'll open it for readers.

I write one rough draft, then one editing pass. My rough draft is complete, fleshed out and laid out how I want it. The editing is tightening it up and making sure I'm using the best word choice. I also check for inconsistencies, plot holes, etc., but usually I catch those by the time the rough draft is done.

I write out of order and do not use an outline. I start using alpha readers early on, before my rough draft is even complete, usually around the 1/2 to 3/4-complete mark. This is where I make sure I've got the big stuff down, make sure my structural stuff is making sense and is on track.

I am a slow writer. I think I average about 500 words an hour, but I think about each sentence and how it affects the rest of the story before I put it down. I will say plot is my strength and it's composing the words that is the hardest part for me. It doesn't take me long to figure out the progression of the overall story and what scenes to do, but getting it down is like wading through molasses. Like I have one story where I've already got scenes thought out for about 20k worth of words, but all that's written of it so far is 6k. Sigh.

When I'm doing the actual editing, I use a hard copy (I'm old school), Word, and epub. I mark up the hard copy all over the place. It's very messy. And the Word and epub is mostly just to see it in a different format so my eyes can pick up things I wasn't able to see on the hard copy.

My method stems from my high school and college days. I always tried to write as little as possible. When I was given a word count to meet, I always did the minimum for it. And I always did it last minute (I'm a pro at procrastination), so I always had to have the words written well enough that I didn't have to do any editing. I always turned in my first draft. In high school we would have assignments where we had to edit our rough draft, and we'd turn in a second draft, and one more draft as the final draft. If we weren't required to turn in multiple drafts I wouldn't have otherwise done them. I always did my editing by hand, on a hard copy, because this was before computers were commonplace.

I tend to have four drafts.

The first draft is complete, but rough, mostly about getting the story down on "paper" in one piece.

The second draft is a rewrite of the first - I go through page by page and retype it. This grew out of my day job, where I sometimes have to produce a brief that includes portions contributed by other attorneys. In order for it to wind up with a single coherent voice, I have to rewrite it in my own words. For a second draft of fiction I use this to focus more on word choice and phrasing, well fleshing out any empty spots or problems I find.

Then I do two rounds of red-pen editing before I release it to beta readers.

Honestly, I think everyone does it a just a little bit differently. You'll have to figure out what works best for you.

To start with, I don't count "drafts". I work in terms of parts, chapters, scenes, etc., and revise/edit/rework when I find it necessary for any particular part. Within that context, the first thing I do is a nitpicky edit for typos, misspellings, erroneous grammatical construction, and so forth. I find if I don't correct those little things, they distract me from larger issues.

caw

I rewrite/revise as I go. This means that when I get to the end, I don't have a whole manuscript to revise, although I will make a "slash-and-burn" run to get rid of any extraneous words. And sometimes I loop back to tweak something--to add or remove foreshadowing, for instance, or to correct an inconsistency.

Many of you are a bit like me, even I am sure I need 100 rounds before the text is even readable. And before that I need a native reader. Native? Yes, native. You see, I'm coming from a country called Finland, even I can speak English. I am native speaker of Finnish, not English. That means only a native speaker of English can catch all those mistakes I make. There are many of those and I am blind to them all.

Eisen said:

Hi Everyone,

I'm in the revision/rewrite phase and curious about how folks tackle it.

How many drafts do you usually write and how do you approach each draft?

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That depends on the book. I've done as many as 8 drafts on a single book and as few as 2. But my approach is generally the same.
1. Let previous draft sit for a while.
2. Print out, read through and make notes on the pages about changes. Write rough additions on back of relevant pages.
3. If the revisions are extensive I retype the whole thing fresh, using the printed and notated previous draft as a reference. (This does mean simply retyping a bunch of pages, but for me it helps put everything in the same voice and I find little things to tweak and smooth out even on pages I wasn't originally intending to make big changes to.)
3b. If the revisions aren't extensive, I usually just go through the computer document and make the revisions. (Always remember to save each draft separately.)

How long does it take to write or rewrite one draft?

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For me it's usually about 6-8 weeks for the actual writing part. But I type pretty fast (about 1.5k words an hour) so with a couple of hours each day I can knock out quite a few pages in a short amount of time. There's usually about another month at the beginning to let the MS sit before I read through and make notes, though. (So around 3 months on average.)

When do critique partners and/or beta readers come in?

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I have a friend who acts as an alpha reader for large chunks as I write. If I'm uncertain about things I will usually ask for beta-readers among the other writers I know. But these days once I have a fairly readable rough draft it goes to my agent. (Before I had an agent, I had a single beta-reader who went through multiple drafts of a particular novel with me. But that's not always typical.) Usually, I don't ask for beta-readers on anything until I'm certain I can't think of anything else to change OR I think I might still need to make changes but I'm not certain what.

Aggy B. said:

For me it's usually about 6-8 weeks for the actual writing part. But I type pretty fast (about 1.5k words an hour) so with a couple of hours each day I can knock out quite a few pages in a short amount of time.

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Now see, I find that amazing. I can type fast, too, but neither the story nor the words to tell it arrive at anything approaching that speed.

I feel like with each book my first drafts are getting better. I think I may be finding my style. I hope to get to the point that the first draft is the last draft, besides going through to clean up.

BethS said:

Now see, I find that amazing. I can type fast, too, but neither the story nor the words to tell it arrive at anything approaching that speed.

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When I was in high school and college I had a part time job for a while that was mostly cleaning bathrooms in a dorm building. Lots of repetitive, physical work, in other words. And I discovered that I could do a fair amount of "pre-writing" while I was doing that type of work. So, when I sit down to hammer out words I usually have a lot of it already stored in my brain.

Aggy B. said:

When I was in high school and college I had a part time job for a while that was mostly cleaning bathrooms in a dorm building. Lots of repetitive, physical work, in other words. And I discovered that I could do a fair amount of "pre-writing" while I was doing that type of work. So, when I sit down to hammer out words I usually have a lot of it already stored in my brain.

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I'm the same way. Sometimes I meditate on my writing while doing other things, so by the time I sit at the computer I already know exactly where I want to go!

To answer your question, I write one very horrible sloppy manuscript just to get the ideas out. The second read I make note of what works and doesn't work. I'm not changing anything yet, just reading. It isn't until the third read or so that I use my notes to hammer out the errors that I see, then pass it along to my beta-buddies. I get their feedback, apply what I can, and go to a third revision. If that one is limited to just syntax errors, I'll polish that up and get it ready for publishing.

After my outline is complete, I write one rough draft start-to-finish without looking back (as much as I can force myself to do that). This will be only about 1/2 - 2/3 the word count of the final version. While I'm in the grove, I tend to leave out a lot of details and skimp on description.

Then, I go through that chapter-by-chapter in MS Word, cleaning it up and fleshing it out for my critique group.

After I get their feedback, I print out the whole thing, double-spaced, and take my red pen to it, incorporating their feedback where appropriate. Then, I take my marked up version and do one final edit for content and catch as many punctuation and grammar errors as I can as well.

Before I start, I plan. I do the Snowflake method and plot out my scenes, major plots, characters, minor plots, themes, etc. Then I start writing at scene 1 (which invariably doesn't STAY scene 1).

I bully through the first draft. If I think of something right away (like, oh, a better name for a character, or a plot twist I need to add in earlier) I will go back and do that while doing the first draft. Otherwise, I finish. Then I wait a couple of weeks.

During that couple of weeks, I invariably come up with ideas/fixes/changes/errors that I am percolating in my brain. I email myself a list, and keep adding to it. It sits in my inbox until I'm ready for my first revision. I put them in and then reread the whole thing, shifting/changing/revising as I go.

Then I read it again - more changes. Out loud (well, sotto voce).

Then I send it off to someone else to read. And revise based on their notes.

Everyone has their method, and obviously, as you gain more experience and have more work published, you should naturally develop a system that works for you, similar to developing a writing style. I would read through all the responses in your thread, and pick and choose from there what you think works for you.

My style of writing when it comes to the actual writing process, I write what I feel and I tend to read back what I wrote at least one or more times and make edits as I go. Once I feel I have the entire manuscript the way I want it, I print it out and read it through, red penning as I go using proofreader marks, as my background is photojournalism, so I'm a more AP Style Guide, guy. Sometimes I may print a chapter that I wrote, go outside or to some other environment just around the corner, just to read in a new light source or ambiance.

I will then red pen edits, enter the edits, and may print it out again, but only that chapter/section I'm working on at the time. I also travel a lot, so when I travel, I will have printed out the entire manuscript completed so far, because I feel it's important to start from page one and read all the way through, red penning along the way, so if I stumble on ideas or feel I need to add more, I can make red pen notes along the way, besides the edits.

I don't count the rounds, I do look at word count, but more important, I look to see if I've completed what I truly want convey in my non-fiction books. I do believe editing on paper with a red pen will help you find things that editing on screen you might not catch.

Along the way, I have a few trusted friends, some with real editing experience, that I will send the manuscript, regardless of the stage of completion and ask them to provide their edits/feedback. When I get that feedback/edits back, I then decide how much of their edits I want to use or not use. Sometimes those editors might come up with things I didn't think of to add more content to my book. I like to call it my focus group and it's composed of both male and female, sometimes you want the different perspectives of the genders.

I hope that helps, and good luck with all your writing endeavors. Rolando

I usually have three passes before I feel a story is ready to show someone. First pass is obviously the writing bit, but as I go along, I make notes about things I need to change earlier in the manuscript. F'rinstance, today I decided two characters in my WIP would get combined into one, which means checking back on all their scenes and seeing how to combine them. I address the notes in my second pass, along with trimming my rampant overwriting, and then the third pass is the smoothing and minor changes pass.

Aggy B. said:

When I was in high school and college I had a part time job for a while that was mostly cleaning bathrooms in a dorm building. Lots of repetitive, physical work, in other words. And I discovered that I could do a fair amount of "pre-writing" while I was doing that type of work. So, when I sit down to hammer out words I usually have a lot of it already stored in my brain.

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It does work like that for some people. Me, I used to do tons of "pre-writing" in my brain but it would all come to nothing when I sat down to actually write. My brain was, like, "Nope, you've already told that story. I'm bored. Not gonna play."

But hey, more power to you. It's a gift to be able to write fast.

Aggy B. said:

But I type pretty fast (about 1.5k words an hour) through multiple drafts of a particular novel with me..

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That's slow typing, but very fast writing. Have you sold any novels while writing at this speed?

I edit and rewrite each page as I go, so I don't do drafts. Or I do twenty drafts. Depends on how you look at it. Some pages are nearly perfect on the first pass, while other pages need fifteen or more passes. But once a page is finished, I never read it again.

Basically the same as BethS and James - one draft, revise/rewrite/edit as I go; when I reach the last page there's just polishing to do.

Jamesaritchie said:

I edit and rewrite each page as I go, so I don't do drafts. Or I do twenty drafts. Depends on how you look at it. Some pages are nearly perfect on the first pass, while other pages need fifteen or more passes. But once a page is finished, I never read it again.

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You must have a phenomenal memory. I reread a lot, not just because I forget things but because it helps me re-immerse myself in the flow of the story. I need that from time to time.

BethS said:

You must have a phenomenal memory. I reread a lot, not just because I forget things but because it helps me re-immerse myself in the flow of the story. I need that from time to time.

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I don't think it's good memory as much as being so totally involved in the story - speaking for myself, of course. Occasionally I have to go back and double-check something, to make sure the next step I want to take actually fits, but I don't actually re-read anything. (And I somehow know within a page where that sentence or paragraph is.) But being that involved is another reason I don't go back and re-read the stories even long after they're finished - I start and immediately I'm watching a rerun for the 1000th time - it's just not fun any more.

^Yeah. I don't find myself rereading too often either. The story is like a favourite film in my head, I know the details, although notes do help.