What is a "second draft" anyway?

JohnLine

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This is something that seems like it’s obvious, and maybe it is, but I still don’t exactly know what people mean by the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] or 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] draft of a book.

I imagine it varies from writer to writer, but when people start the second draft do they generally throw away the first draft and retell the story with a blank slate? Or does it mean edit and revise?

In board terms, what percentage of one draft is carried over into the next?
 

lizmonster

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For me, it means any time I save a new Scrivener document. :) Edit and revise, basically.

Percentages are going to be individual to each writer and each book.
 

neandermagnon

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Personally I work with one electronic copy which I edit and don't need to redraft. I will save a copy before making major edits. If I do something really drastic (like change the plot) I'll rewrite the whole thing from scratch with little or no reference to the original, but I would consider a rewrite to be different to a redraft. A rewrite results in a different story, albeit with things in common with the original, such as characters, setting, part of the plot, etc. A redraft stays much the same in its overall structure but is made into an improved, tidier, smoother version. At least that's how I've always understood it, bearing in mind that I'm a science grad unfamiliar with a lot of technical writing terms. So I could be wrong.

Back in the dark ages when I was a teenager, I handwrote "novels" that were wall of text behemoths and one of them I typed up on a word processor (very early version thereof on a BBC master or similar thing with probably around 128k memory) with paragraphs and edits, so was a legit second draft. Each chapter was a separate file, lol.

In terms of how much to keep of a draft - keep what works, change or remove what doesn't work. There are no rules.
 
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Brightdreamer

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It's probably going to vary by writer. Some, I believe, don't really draft but revise as they go. That's a perfectly valid approach, too.

To my mind, a first draft is done when you reach the end. The second draft (again, to my mind) starts when you take that saved copy, go back to the beginning, and start going over it again and begin to fix what needs fixing in order to make the story stronger - which generally (but not always) results in a fair bit of remodeling and demolition and some new construction to the point where, if you were to lay the first and second drafts over each other, they would definitely not match. You know the story better after the first draft. You get a better idea of what works and what doesn't. You're going to approach a second draft differently than a first draft, much as you'd approach a remodel differently than building a brand-new house on an empty lot. Some writers have specific goals for each draft (say, one pass for plot, one for character, one for continuity), but generally a new draft is a refinement of the previous one.

It is not uncommon for even professional, experienced writers to go through multiple drafts before they come up with the strongest version of the story they're trying to tell. (I'm not sure most writers ever consider a story truly perfect or finished.) Every story is a learning process to some degree; even if you know how to write stories in general, you don't know how to write this story until you write it.
 

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I agree with Brightdreamer.

At least in this current project, the first draft was a march to THE END and the story kept slipping in all sorts of weird ways throughout so that by the time I reached the end the plot was not at all coherent. I see it as framing a house, possibly with scaffolding. It took four months.

The second draft hammered out the plot so that it was largely consistent. I see it as ensuring all the beams can support the structure and the scaffolding can come off. The frame stands. That took two months.

At that point I fiddled with everything from character names to rewriting scenes, adding and axing characters, etc, to make the story work better, be prettier and so on. After those pot-shot fiddles I read through start to finish at 5000 words per day, to make sure it flowed, and called that Draft Three. (Took three weeks.) Maybe this is dry wall on the frame.

I'm pot-shotting fixes again this month, emphasizing character voice, tweaking the heist so it's more realistic, starting to find bad writing habits that have crept in, working through issues like: Can I name a real person in the story?, deepening the science aspect, weaving in a few hints for the final installment which only exists in my mind, and adding more emotional context throughout. I will read through again and expect to be able to do so in ten days. That will be draft four.

Etc...
 

JohnLine

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Back in the dark ages when I was a teenager, I handwrote "novels" that were wall of text behemoths and one of them I typed up on a word processor (very early version thereof on a BBC master or similar thing with probably around 128k memory) with paragraphs and edits, so was a legit second draft. Each chapter was a separate file, lol.

Ah ha... (I just had an "ah ha" moment!) The term "draft" probably came about before computers, and in order to make revisions a writer would need to sit down with a typewriter and literally retype it. So it used to have a lot of meaning back in the day, as you'd really want to plan out each draft to save work. But now you that you can just make edits on the fly, it really doesn't mean that much.

As for my own process:
  • My first step is to sit down away from the computer and think through each chapter, letting it play out in my mind.
  • Next I try to get everything down on paper, trying to squeeze in every detail.
  • Then I go through and fix grammar and spelling.
  • Then a pass to make sure the words flow, also fixing paragraph order, duplicate, and missing information.
  • And finally I'll do an out loud read through, usually having the computer read it back to me, fixing issues on the way (This is when I consider my first draft complete.)
 

AW Admin

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Ah ha... (I just had an "ah ha" moment!) The term "draft" probably came about before computers, and in order to make revisions a writer would need to sit down with a typewriter and literally retype it. So it used to have a lot of meaning back in the day, as you'd really want to plan out each draft to save work. But now you that you can just make edits on the fly, it really doesn't mean that much.

That's a false assertion; it depends entirely on the writer's process.

Many writers who began writing after the home computer became standard for writers, still execute multiple versions of a document, saving multiple versions so that they can return to an earlier version.

I have a co-writer who produces startlingly clean copy, because he does a lot of pre-planning and recursively revises, but even he has a final draft, an edit draft, and a master draft, at various stages of the publication process.

Moreover, once you as a writer submit a final version to an editor, whether you self-publish or trade publish, there are still going to be multiple versions.

This is an issue that archivists collecting the papers of writers have already had to deal with, in terms of archiving hard copy, digital versions of files, and /or digital version on media, for future scholars to use in their research.
 

JohnLine

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That's a false assertion; it depends entirely on the writer's process.

Yes, revisions are important, but I think you're belittling my observation that the term "draft" came out before the computer.
 

Roxxsmom

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Yes, revisions are important, but I think you're belittling my observation that the term "draft" came out before the computer.

I'd argue that most of the terms currently in use by the English Language came into use before the computer, but I don't think pointing out that writers have had different processes probably for as long as writing has existed is belittling anyone. Aw Admin knows her stuff. She's corrected my wrong assumptions at times, but it's meant to educate, not belittle.
 

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Yes, revisions are important, but I think you're belittling my observation that the term "draft" came out before the computer.

I'm not belittling anything but since you bring up, again, the idea that draft predates the computer:

Most of the words in English predate the computer. This particular word, draft, is fairly common in Middle English, and has a respectable Old English ancestry (*dreaht, cognate with drag). So yeah, the word predates the computer. So does every single word in this post, including the word computer.*

Draft is used for something that is pulled, picked, plucked or otherwise chosen from a group of other similar things, as in drafted for military service, or for a baskeball team, or a draft of beer or a draft of air . . . all are items pulled from or out of or away from other similar items.

This particular meaning of draft, item # 12 s.v. the lemma draft in AHD:

12.
a. Any of various stages in the development of a plan, document, or picture: a preliminary draft of a report; the final draft of a paper.
b. A representation of something to be constructed.

First attested in 1528, according to the OED.

Now, I'm still not belittling you; but I am pointing out that you are barking up the wrong tree regarding the relevance of draft in the digital realm.

Writers, many of them, still produce drafts on and off the computer or tablet—both of which generally automatically save multiple versions or drafts of a document, whether or not the human creating them is even aware that that is happening, and that too goes back to the earliest versions of word processors running on mainframes.

Many work recursively on a single file. Many save a file, regularly, and work on a copy, modifying that as they go, per neandermagnon and Brightdreamer.

A writer is not at all required to have drafts, create drafts, or use version control, but that doesn't change the fact that many writers do, and that their software is probably doing it whether or not they realize it.

*Computer was first used to refer to people who compiled the columns of hand-written spread sheets, caculating, via pencils and brains, the results. They were mostly women.
 
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katfeete

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Ah ha... (I just had an "ah ha" moment!) The term "draft" probably came about before computers, and in order to make revisions a writer would need to sit down with a typewriter and literally retype it. So it used to have a lot of meaning back in the day, as you'd really want to plan out each draft to save work. But now you that you can just make edits on the fly, it really doesn't mean that much.

... they didn’t, though, at least not all of them. Ray Bradbury, for example, describes creating his second draft via “cut and paste” — literally cutting the story to bits and rearranging it onto typewriter paper with new bits typed on it in places. He would continue this process through as many drafts as necessary, only re-typing the whole thing for the final “clean” draft to send on submission.

And if you want to get even more literal, the term “draft” dates to at least the 17th century, before typewriters were invented, and when manuscripts were being written by hand, and you might make a “clean copy” in better handwriting before you sent it to your publisher or you might figure that was *their* problem....

The point though is — now and then — what you consider a “draft” is pretty much up to a writer. I handwrite a lot of my first drafts, but I don’t always consider it a “new draft” when I type it in; I call something a draft only when I’ve filled in enough holes that I can see the shape of the story, which is generally quite a ways past the “fill a notebook with bad handwritten scenes” stage. Some writers (like me) have to go over a story dozens of times, others turn out fairly clean copy that needs only proofreading and tweaks. This has been true, as far as I can tell from reading Victorians, for pretty much as long as novel writing has been a thing, and probably will be forever.

TL:DR Your second draft is when you think your second draft is. :D
 

Woollybear

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Maybe draft refers to the rushing sound of a deadline whooshing past.

(In which case I'm on my 25th, with this project.)
 

gothicangel

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For me, the first draft is about getting the story down. Once I've finished that I write a full synopsis which will be the basis of draft 2 looking for plot holes, poor pacing, tension and suspense etc. I'm currently at the mid-point of draft 1 and I already know that there are plot points that need to be changed but don't want to stop the momentum by going back and rewriting now.
 

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My first draft is the fully edited manuscript I send out to agents and publishers. If unsuccessful and I decide to do some more work on the book before submitting again, that's my second draft. (If no changes, it's still my first draft)
 

JohnLine

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Look I admit, I’m wrong, and I can be kind of a pain in the backside about things.

My problem is that I understand by deconstructing. I need to know what’s right and wrong with something, to understand the compromises it makes, in order to get a handle on it.

In the case of the term “draft” I think the problem is that it has three meanings:

  1. The act of copying a work.
  2. The physical copy resulting from that act.
  3. The thought and procedure that goes into making a new version of a work.

When an author sets out to create a “first draft”, those three meanings are essentially the same. The author has a thought, copies it down, and creates a physical thing.

Until computers came on the scene, and correct me if I’m wrong, I’d guess that the procedure for creating each new draft necessitated recopying a work, not just the parts that changed, but everything had to be rewritten.

So a lot of planning went into creating each draft. If the writer misspelled “utter” and wanted to change “Steve” to “Sam”. They would pore through the text, make a lot of notes, and then sit down for the better part of a week and retype the darn thing.

On a computer, writing is incremental. As soon as you enter in any change, no matter how small, the computer does definition 1 to create definition 2 automatically. And so I find those definitions not to be helpful after the first draft.

When I work on a piece I reread it, making changes as I go, until I have a copy I’m okay with other people reading.

So it was very confusing to hear people talk about second and third drafts until I understood that they were using notes on paper copies to save up revisions to make in a single pass. A revelation that only came to me when Neandermagnon talked about handwriting novels.

I’ve done beta swaps, written notes for other people, and used their notes when revising my work, but when it comes to revising my own work, I’ll just go in and make the changes without making notes about it first.

So yes, “drafts” are an important tool. But the definition, at least to me, remains confounding. If I make a hundred incremental changes to a computer file, am I still on draft one? Or am I on draft one hundred?
 

neandermagnon

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Thing is, as long as the process works for you, it doesn't matter what you call it. I edit as I go so technically speaking, I only ever have one draft, however that draft undergoes a huge number of changes - most of them before I even finish the thing. There is no defining moment when I can say "second draft is finished" and there's no way to assign numbers to it. Unless I change the plot and rewrite it from scratch. Some people might call my rewrites drafts. Personally I don't because the result is an entirely different story.

Different writers mean different things when they say they're on their nth draft. Some writers find it helpful to type it all out again, whether the first copy/previous copies were handwritten or electronic, similar to the process before word processors were a thing. Other writers work with a single electronic draft that gets beaten into shape through repeated edits. Even if you do that you can still have defining moments when you consider a draft completed, e.g. if you don't edit as you go, so your first draft is when you type your way to the end. The second draft is when you go through and make changes, starting at the beginning and ending at the end. The third draft is when you do the same thing again, etc etc.

Some writers have a process whereby they make big changes (adding/deleting scenes, changing the order of scenes, cutting out waffle, making sure the plot works) on the first revision (or 2nd draft, if you prefer) then subsequent revisions/drafts they focus on other, less drastic changes, like voice, characterisation, word choices etc. Final revisions/drafts may focus on cleaning it up, e.g. removing any typos you missed in earlier revisions. So the term "draft" isn't obsolete by a long shot. But some writers (myself included) work in ways that make it impossible to assign numbers like 2nd draft, 3rd draft etc.

People often think there's a right and wrong way to go about planning and writing a novel. There isn't. What matters is the finished product. If you want to publish it and for others to read it, it's got to be of a good enough quality and suitably engaging to keep the reader interested. Some writers only write for themselves and if so the only thing that matters is that you enjoying what you're doing and you like what you end up with. Everything else really doesn't matter as long as it leads you to what you want to achieve with your writing. Often it takes trial and error to find out what works for you. Best advice is to enjoy the process.