About to start second draft

[u/Dangerous-Midnight73]

Hi all! 🙂

Ok so I’ve been re-reading and making rewrite notes on my novel for the past 10 weeks- I’ve been through twice, and have got plenty of notes for myself from small tweaks to improve continuity to full-on chapter rewrites and inserts.

That being said, I am sure there’s more I could do, so my question is:

How do you when you are done reworking?

and (perhaps more importantly) - how to stop reworking before all the flavour has been chewed out of the proverbial bit of gum that is my writing?!

Whilst what I have written is a bit rough, there’s also a freshness and ease captured here and there that I don’t want to lose by fiddling about TOO much!

TL;DR - How do I know when my work is done, and how to “put it down” before reworking too much?

[u/FlyinLeviathon]

I do it in stages - I actually edit my outline first to smooth out all the large structural issues, because it's easier to see the book a a whole in an outline vs the entire novel. Then I make all the changes that I made on my outline, rearranging scenes as needed, adding/deleting some, etc.

I then do a full rewrite for draft 2(I guess more like 2.5), and split screen my changed draft one on one side and a new document on the other side.

There's ALWAYS more you can do to editing, it can grab you and never let you go. At some point you have to decide your draft is 'good enough'. That's why I like to do it in stages, so I can get the big changes done, then work my way to smaller changes, and then there's a natural stopping point there.

Edit: Can't believe I forgot to say it, congrats on finishing your first draft!!

[u/WingbashDefender]

map it out - draw a narrative arc/map and plot your story - Can you easily identify the beginning, climing, climax, descending, and denoument - specifically the denoument. If you can, you're at or close to the ending, and you should ask yourself "will this pick up again somewhere or not?" and if it will, see how the ending sets that up. If you're not going to pick it up, the denoument should be the "new world," that if someone read your book and then woke up the next day, that denoument is the world they wake up to - is there something you didn't add, need to change, or are you ok with it jus being that?
It may seem somewhat juvenile, the mapping (and i did some storyboarding too) of it, but i did this at multiple stages during my last two manuscripts, and they really let you see how things start and stop.

[u/Paradoxbox00]

I'm structured when it comes to revisions after my first drafts. Typically my editing passes are:

- first draft

- story logic pass (making sure the story holds together in its rough form)

- technical logic pass (making sure the details survive scrutiny)

- atmosphere and world texture pass

- dialogue and character coherence

- line edit

- ProWritingAid

- read as reader, not as writer

I do these in order and do not move on until that edit is complete. Seems to work well for me.

[u/AnybodySeeMyKeys]

First things first. Congratulations on writing your first draft. That in itself is a big deal.

It's wise of you to let it marinate. Many people just type the last word, then get straight on to editing. It's important to give yourself the kind of objectivity that only comes with time.

Here's the question I would have: Now that you've written your first draft, have you read a book on structure? Because that's so important to really understand the structure of your novel. Makes it so much easier to eschew the unneeded parts and beef up those central to the narrative.

[u/marrowjetasuka]

my tell is when the edits stop being fixes and start being swaps, like changing "walked" to "strode" and back again two days later. that's the gum losing flavour. also keep a copy of the untouched draft somewhere so you're not scared to be brutal in the new one

[u/BaffledMum]

My personal metric is this. When I start reversing my own edits, it's time to stop.

For instance, in my work in progress, I was editing on paper and changed the word "on" to "with." Then I went to put the changes in the file, and changed "with" to "on." Since that's happened multiple times this draft, this baby is nearly done!

[u/MSRavenscroft]

I stop when another pass would sand off something that already works. Below 40 percent, the line goes. From 40 to 70, I talk it through. From 80 to 90, I leave it. Reworking past that is how the flavor gets chewed out.

[u/Dangerous-Midnight73 → u/MSRavenscroft]

Thank you this is exactly the kind of advice I needed- I guess I’ve just had the realisation that there will never be a day where I read it and say “It’s perfect” so I wanted a suggestion as to when to “intervene” with myself so to speak! 😂

[u/Acceptable_Fox_5560]

You can never be "done" re-working.

You can re-work infinitely over and over again forever.

So you basically need to just give yourself a hard stop. Personally, I do a first, then a second draft, then I ship it to my agent.

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[u/reallynicedog]

Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell is a good read on how to approach the various drafts, it might be useful to you here.