Rewriting: how I tackle my second drafts
You’ve finished your manuscript; written an entire book. A book! What an achievement! All those hours, the sweat, the tears, the late nights and early mornings. Everything was worth it because you are now the proud author of an entire, full-length book!
But, what’s that now? You need to rewrite it? I beg your pardon?
Yes, rewrite. Redraft. Edit. Fix the whole, sloppy thing up.
If you’re anything like me, then your first drafts are fast, messy and full of cliches (not to mention the plot holes big enough that you could drive a semi-trailer through them). So rewriting is a must.
I used to think that rewriting involved actually rewriting the entire manuscript. As in, open up a blank word document and start from page one. But it’s just a term for editing and while, yes, that may involve rewriting certain scenes or (aghast!) writing brand new scenes, a lot of the original manuscript may still be used.
So how do you go about it? Well for me it looks a little like this:
1) I print and bind my first draft out once it’s finished as I find it easiest to do my first round of edits on a hardcopy (and there’s something about feeling the weight of all those months’ work in your hands). I like to add a few blank pages at the back to take notes on later.
2) I pop it aside. Deadlines and contracts mean that I can usually only do this for a week or two, but for my first book I managed six weeks (I had very twitchy fingers by that stage). Basically, the longer the better. This will allow you to tackle it with fresh eyes.
3) Armed with my red pen, I start reading. I make notes, cross out sections, pick up errors. What I don’t do is write up whole new scenes. Instead I just make a note that I will need to add those scenes in. I use the blank pages at the back to do up a running list of all the things I need to add in or check.
4) Once I’ve read the hardcopy, it’s time for me to jump back in front of the computer. I start at the beginning and work through the manuscript chapter by chapter, from start to finish. I add in all of the changes that I’d marked up in the hard copy as well as addressing the notes pages at the back. The digital version of my manuscript also has a list of things to add/change at the start of each chapter. These are notes that I made while writing my first draft as I don’t edit during the first drafting process (for instance, if I was writing chapter twenty and realised that I wanted to add in some foreshadowing for a new idea then I would go back to the relevant earlier chapters and make a note to add them in during the second draft rather than modifying the scenes then and there).
And that’s it! If time permits, then I usually allow for as many weeks for the second draft as I did for the first. It always takes me a surprisingly long time to rewrite!
Good luck and happy writing!
Photo Credit: Laura Olsen via Unsplash
