![]() ![]() The closer you can get to that “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” often attributed to Hemmingway, the better. Say as much as you can in as few words as possible. Streamlining means optimising your novel and you do this in a few ways: A smooth and easy to read prose will trump any word count. It’s said that the average novel length is 90.000 words, and it’s true there are Agents out there that will not take any fiction with a lower word count but the truth is your novel doesn’t have to have a set number of words. This step is optional but I do recommend it. Mine made me realise some conversations sounded forced and needed some rewriting. Your first proofreader, if they’re someone in your life, is also your Alpha Reader (you’ll get Beta ones before the novel is finished), and you can usually expect some greater feedback from them than from a stranger. My proofreader added their own suggestions and I used those to work on my text and as I did, I picked up other errors in style and flow that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Depending on their skills, the changes can be simply grammatical or even alter entire sentences. With your proofreader’s work done, you need to make all the proposed changes. I could call it Third, Fourth and Fifth Drafts, but that would just get confusing. I call this step editing because it’s what you’ll be doing for a while. Once your proofreader finishes-and hopefully gives you brutally honest feedback on your novel, or at least tells you if it’s any good-it’s time to get back to work. They went through my novel and made so many annotations I was often joyful when I saw an unaltered paragraph.ĭepending on the person and the length of your story, this step might take some time, hopefully enough to refresh your mind and eyes. I was fortunate that I was seeing someone at the time with impressive proofreading and editing skills. If you don’t know anyone with those skills, then hire a freelancer, you can usually get proofreading done quite cheap. Get someone you trust, particularly someone with an eye for detail and have them proofread your novel. In fact, even taking a short break won’t help. Once you’ve finished work on your second draft, your head will be full of everything you’ve written and you won’t see any of your writing errors clearly. Sorry about the caps, but it’s very important you understand this. Once you’ve reached that stage, where you feel there’s nothing else you can do to improve it, you’re ready for the next steps, where you’ll realise just how wrong you are. The first one adding the new plot elements and tightening the existing ones and the second pass working on the prose. You’ll probably have to do multiple passes.Įventually it’ll all reach a stage where you’re more-or-less happy with it-writers are, in general, their worst critics and will never be truly happy with something they’ve worked on. Still I would recommend just pushing forwards, revising each chapter, then once you reach the end go back to the start and do it all over again. While the hard rule of the first draft was to never look back, the Second Draft is all about that. Add in your new (sub)plot details and keep working on everything on a page-by-page or chapter-by-chapter basis. Improve the flow of sentences, conversations and scenes. Starting from the first page of your novel, read it carefully and make amends, rewrite or simply cut paragraphs that don’t add enough-or anything at all-to your plot. Now that you’ve taken care of all the preliminary steps, you have to read. I prefer digital mediums so I can keep what works from the first draft without having to rewrite any of it. One thing I like to do is save a copy of the first draft and rename it Second Draft, so I can work on that one without losing the original. In doing so, you’ll revise and refine these new ideas and go back to your world building to expand upon them. Take out the documents you’ve prepared with subplots and changes you thought of during the previous step and alter your outline to include them. While the first draft’s purpose is to get your basic story on paper-and for you to actually finish writing it-the second is where you give in to your urges to go back and fix everything that is wrong with the novel. With that done, and hopefully after you’ve taken some time off from it to clear your head, it’s time for the next stage: Last time we spoke of the last steps of the planning stage, The Outline, and the first actual draft of your novel. ![]()
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