r/writers • u/Rcartsen0328 • 18h ago
Question Finished first draft! Where to go from here...
I recently just finished my first rough draft of my book. Yay me! But as I'm starting the 2nd rough draft does anyone have any advice or recommendations? Specifically, when it comes to editing or focus. I'm a completely novice writer and this is my first time doing a project this big. Any help is much appreciated.
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u/PinkedOff 18h ago
My advice (as writer and writing coach) is to put it aside for at least a few weeks. Don't look at it or think about it. Then return to it, read through it, and make comments to yourself about things that don't make sense, things that are inconsistent, or things you think you would like to change. Do that for the whole thing - before making any of those changes.
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u/Rcartsen0328 14h ago
I really like this, but I'm finding the itch to write hard to ignore lol. It's like when I tell myself I don't need to write I'm suddenly flooding with motivation, but when I try to force myself, I'm zapped. In the meantime, I'm trying to find writing exercises to do. I saw a post on here the other day of a person talking about copying down their favorite books to help with structure and flow and that's something I feel I struggle on. Thank you for the advice.
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u/PinkedOff 14h ago
You're welcome. It's good to feel like you should be writing! :-D Start your next project, maybe, while you let this one percolate. The point of the waiting period is to let it settle, get some distance from it, so you've got fresh eyes the next time you look at it. :)
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u/Whole-Page3588 18h ago
Congrats!
Where you go from here will depend on what your rough draft looks like. If it's like mine and barely legible (I don't stop to fix words or rewrite sentences, just write as fast as I can until I've got all my ideas out on the screen), you might spend your second draft firming up scenes and where they might fit in the narrative, and begin to build a story and character arcs.
If it's the semblance of a story already, with a beginning, middle and end, climax, etc. , I would go get a craft book on self-editing a novel and start from there. I know I wasted a lot of time editing before I really know what I was doing and I made the mistake of focusing on line edits when I should have been working on the big picture (of course, I also didn't know much about crafting a good plot, despite reading a ton, so i also needed to learn that.)
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u/WinthropTwisp 18h ago
There was a time when writers either wrote the first draft as the only draft or started all over after marking up the prior draft.
Consider printing out your draft, marking it up with an actual pen, and then start a fresh draft using your markup as a guide. Pen in hand, reading and marking up a printed copy is a completely different neurological experience compared to electronic editing. Give it a try.
You might find this more productive than repetitively remashing that first draft in your word processor.
We read back and edit as we go to get to a final draft for finish editing, but that probably doesn’t work for most people.
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u/Plenty-Apricot-5005 18h ago
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne is pretty useful. I used it after finishing the first draft of my first novel. Grab it from the library and flip through it. Make sure you put your draft down for a few weeks before you begin. I typically edit and redraft by reading and making changes, taking notes, etc., as I go. But everyone has a unique process. You'll find yours.
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u/ifonlyheart Writer Newbie 15h ago
Congratulations! After few drafts when you think you have done enough editing, I suggest using read aloud software, listen and write down what changes you want. This process of listening instead of reading gives different perspective of what you wrote. If you’re reading the current draft yourself then your thoughts are likely going to agree to what is already written. I am not a neuroscientist but I think different parts of brain function in these two approaches and that’s what makes you process differently.
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u/Thick-Assumption3400 Writer 18h ago
I am not sure how you plan to do a second draft, but I have to tell you that I am finding great success starting the 2nd draft from scratch as opposed to editing the first. Maybe this is obvious, but I have tried both and starting from scratch is far and away better.
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u/Shenlongeltigre 18h ago
When you say from scratch you mean you don't even look at your first draft in the process?
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u/Thick-Assumption3400 Writer 18h ago
No, I definitely have it up for reference. I just mean starting a whole new document and typing from a blank page. I look at the old one now and again, but I am telling the story again the second time. My language is more refined, my flow is more deliberate instead of finding its way.
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u/timperman 2h ago
I wrote the first draft without a proper plan, which basically meant that my first draft became a 120k word outline.
And therefore I rewrite it all from scratch as the second draft.
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u/OldMan92121 16h ago
Separate out the clean up of the story itself (plot, chapters, or entire story level issues) from line level edits. Consider it two separate entities in your head.
This is my process: * I will make a reverse outline as I read the story through for errors or plot holes or inconsistencies across the entire story. I use Excel, but the idea is more important than the technology. Libre Office, Google Docs, whatever works for you. * Then I will read the story through for issues within each chapter, annotating the reverse outline and making it to the scene level. Along the way, I have a copy of the story broken up into scenes that match the outline. * I will fix that outline. Yup, just the spreadsheet. * Make sure the outline of the as-built fits the narrative framework is as I intended. I do it down to getting the word count for chapters and scenes and making sure I am more or less on expected track. I color code issues. Yellow is serious edit. Red is removal. Green is needs touch-up. Blue is missing stuff. This is on the scene level. * I re-do the Save the Cat beats sheet to make sure I still am screaming through all the points. Every point must be powerful, have painful decisions, and force the protagonist irrevocably closer to the conclusion. If it doesn't, it goes. * Once I have a master plan in the spreadsheet, I will fix the story. At that point, it's just rough draft writing but the flow is better and it has more dramatic tension. Once I am at the revised rough draft stage, I move on to the line level edits phase. * I use the reader in Microsoft Word (Review -> Read Aloud) to read the story out aloud. As I go, I will stop when it doesn't feel right. Then I'll fix it and re-start at that sentence. I'll do this until I stop catching errors. * Do sweeps for info dumps, run-on sentences, redundancies, and tell not show. Fix them in the story. Make everything count and drive that story. Yes, it's painful. The result is so worth it. * Fix up the grammar, punctuation, and other issues. (Grammarly Free time!) Read the story out aloud, until I stop catching errors. Yes, just the free release of Grammarly. It tries to sell you on AI slop on sentences. When it does, evaluate the sentence carefully. Half the time, there is a real problem. Often it's a fundamental one in sentence clarity and structure. * Clean the story up. I used to use ProWritingAid before they blew themselves in AI so badly that much of the core product is unusable. Their grammar check and overused words check is still useful. Alas, I had to write a crude version of ProWritingAid in Python. (If anybody wants it, PM me. It does a lot and has no AI.) This simple tool picks up a lot of my regular mistakes and helps me clean them up. * Read the story out aloud, until I stop catching errors. At this point, I started shopping for beta readers.
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u/AnybodySeeMyKeys 18h ago
Hey. I want to help. But there are about fifteen million posts just like yours, at least a thousand of which have posted in the past week. Scroll down about five seconds and you'll find those--and chock-full of good advice, too.
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u/tapgiles 18h ago
Start big, with high-level things like plot problems, sections you want to include, take out, or move around. No point wasting time polishing the text of a scene you later cut.
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u/Rualani2021 17h ago
In my first draft I mark the chapters i.e., Catalyst or inciting incident, b plot, midpoint etc in red and it makes it so much easier to read through and reference where I am in the story. I do a lot of planning and basically do my rough-rough first draft in a notebook and then on 3x5 cards to plot and then write it all out long form. That way when I get to the official second draft I have a clearer picture. I've only written two novels though, so take what you will from my advice. I write my first book's first draft entirely by hand in notebooks and while I love that I have the 5 notebooks, transcribing was soooooo hard haha. For my second draft with that MS I didn't go chapter by chapter and I really regret it. I skipped ahead and went backward and it really got me off my course. I think it made me take longer on that one than this last one. So my biggest recommendation would be to put each chapter into Scrivener or individual Google or word docs and work at it piece by piece and then as a whole afterward. That's worked for me this time around :) Congratulations on your first draft!
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u/izkornator 17h ago
congrats on that.
Whats the word count? how rough is it?
Perhaps you could post it about to get some first reviews
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u/Rcartsen0328 14h ago
Word count is a little more than 150,000 words. 22 chapters. Though I suspect once I go through and delete and add things it might be more. It is rough. I know there are already some plot holes I need to fix and some things I want to change and flush out but I have at least the main story line down. As for posting, I think I will defiantly do that once I feel a little more confident. This story has been in my head for years and its kind of like my baby. I'm not writing to publish, it's just something I want to create. I know people on here will be blatant if not brutally honest and I just dont think I can present it quite yet. Though I know I will need to eventually get eyes on it that are not my own.
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u/izkornator 1h ago
This question may land a little hard, but have you written stories before?
Your post seems to suggest no, or atleast not in the sense of a novel length story, so rephrasing my question, before this 150k word story, have you written any other stories, e.g. short stories <7k words?
The reason I asked is that I dove into an epic sci fi novel rather quickly into my writing journey and after hammering out >80k words, I realised I had explored some very interesting ideas, but tangled them up in a mess of expositions, knotted plot lines, and all I seemed to be achieving is widening and thickening the disaster rather than tying it up neatly.
I remember clearly working on my second draft. All the sparkle of venturing out into my imaginary world was gone, and now the painstaking and unrewarding process of cleaning it up swamped me. Motivation hit ZERO.
Worse. Untangling the plots lead me to the uncomfortable unanswered questions about my tale. Where does it go, what do I want to communicate with my story, and worst of all: how does it end.
And just to put it out now: I also saw it as my baby, and publishing was not on the horizon at all.
That all happened >5y ago. Today it sits as a draft, but I have not stopped writing.
Instead, I dove into mastering the craft of writing short stories. I quickly realised that I had been woefully unprepared to take on that novel. I am not saying that my >80k words were a waste - far from it. I got enough of my baby down to feel confident that I could pick it up again when I have the skills to really do it.
Better yet, I began to relive, and refine, in a much more managable package, snippets of my baby in some of my short stories.
What I have achieved is honing my hand at writing compelling inciting incidents, how to map up compelling turning points and amp up the pressure on the protagonist, how to throw a satisfying climax out, triggering the climax, and how to resolve it all with a neat bow tie.
I really feel like this process was a great way to take my baby and explore it piece by piece while developing my own voice and having a lot of practice at these story telling beats.
I dont know exactly whether or not I am advising you of anything, but I felt compeled to share my journey with you, because your post could have easily came out of my keyboard ~5 years ago.
Good luck
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u/mrwhosaywhatnow Writer 16h ago
At any draft phase it’s hard not to consider all of the different points that need addressing but in general here is a bit of my flow-
If I’m really happy with my first draft I do the following. But usually I’m not so my second draft is just rewriting the whole story from scratch. Knowing the full story better makes the writing better as it becomes easier to weave in important things earlier on. It’s creatively liberating to be on a blank page. If I’m just trying to fix a bad draft, I can miss things or limit myself in a way that doesn’t end up as good as it could. Anyway-
1st edit pass is Proofreading for glaring grammar mistakes and clunky sentences. I read it out loud to myself to make sure it flows in a way I like. (Bad spelling/grammar is distracting to me so I need to have that somewhat in good shape to even think about story)
2nd - once those small bumps are smoothed out, I read it all the way through for pacing. For me pacing is usually tied to the plot progression so it helps me see what needs expanding or to remove redundancies, whatever serves the story better. I pretty frequently move chapters or passages around as well during this part. (So story and pacing go together for me)
Then I set it away for a while (a month? More?) and come back to it with fresh eyes. Sometimes I end up hating it and I shelf the book and be done with it. Otherwise, it’s small tweaks that get it ready to share to beta readers.
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u/babamum 11h ago
I'd do a quick first edit. Then look for beta readers to give feedback to help you do the second edit.
A professional developmental editor is worth it if you can spare $1k to $2k.
Look on Facebook and reddit for beta readers. Avoid fiverr and be very wary of people using AI to 'read' and give feedback.
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u/RegularImportant3325 11h ago
My advice is to use the second draft to cement the plot and characters. During your first draft, you probably came up with a lot of ideas and color for how your story is gonna go and whoever everyone is the second time through find connections add details, deep in conversations and try to just get everything to fit together in a coherent and interesting way I’d recommend not doing final copy edits in your second draft and waiting till you have a solid plot and character arc so that you can then make a final pass with a certain style in mind.
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u/randymysteries 5h ago
Step away from your computer. It is between you and your book. Print out the first draft and read it in different places. Varying your ambiance will trigger ideas. Make notes with a pencil.
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u/jwilander Published Author 4h ago
I focus rounds of edits on specific aspects, so that's something you can try. For instance character voice, conflict and banter, and scene descriptions (don't forget weather and smell).
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u/EromanticDream 18h ago
First draft is the rough story.
Second and third drafts should probably focus on story gaps and plot revisions; big story items that need to be adjusted.
After that, another draft should focus solely on pacing.
After that, final drafts should be for grammar and punctuation and other technical issues.
That’s what works for me, anyway.