The Process of Editing Your First Draft

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So you’ve finished your first draft; now what? 

Well, no first draft is perfect. The next step is the first of many editing rounds. With your first draft it will be important to avoid getting too into the nitty-gritty of grammar, or even style, because you should be considering big changes. There’s no point in wrangling your commas if you might not even keep that sentence, scene or chapter!

So… where do you begin?

First things first: let it rest.

You’ll hear some people say step away for a month, a week or just a few days. There’s no perfect amount of time to step away from your project, so depending on your deadlines, level of patience and personal preference (or rather how your brain works) your ideal time spent away will differ. 

To help you figure out how long to step away, let’s discuss why we’re stepping away. With our own writing and story we tend to suffer from the “forest for the trees” problem. We’re familiar with both our story and the words we’ve written, so despite whether this is your first draft and you’re looking for big picture issues, or it's your tenth and your polishing grammar, your brain might be filling in holes without you even knowing it. By taking some time away to basically forget what you’ve written, you can come back with a more reader- and editor-like perspective.

It might be best to consider going back to your draft when you’ve stopped being obsessed with it. If you’re no longer thinking about things to change, you’ve distanced far enough. That being said, if you’re like me, you will have ideas for changes, because your brain never stops chattering. Take notes! Just don’t go make any changes to the actual manuscript yet.

Know Your Goals.

Just like when you go to hire an editor, you’ll want to consider your goals when self editing too! You don’t want to get bogged down in simple grammar changes when you might still change an entire scene. A lot of this will depend on what draft you’re on. If this is indeed your first draft, forget grammar! Unless you literally can’t understand what you wrote; it’s good enough for now. 

Early draft editing should focus on big picture changes like structure, plot and characters.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is it clear what this character desires?

• Is first-person point of view working here?

• Is this the correct order of events?

• Have I given enough of a clue that the reader won’t feel betrayed by this twist?

• Am I starting at the most interesting place I can?

In later drafts, you can start to get closer to line editing and making your writing more evocative and clear.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is this passive or active voice? Should it be?

• Is this adverb actually doing any work? Is there a stronger verb or noun I could use?

• Is this showing or telling? Should it be?

• Are these sentences varied enough in structure? Length?

• Is the pacing slow/ fast enough?

And finally, you will need to look at grammar and spelling. The technical, last effort polish.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Does this comma go here?

• Should there be a comma here?

• Did I spell the main character's name the same way every time?

• Have I started a new paragraph every time the topic changes? 

With those questions in mind…

Read First, Edit later.

I know it can be difficult to keep the red pen at bay when you’re ready to start editing. Especially when you’re doing a more substantive, or big picture, edit, it’s really important to read through a large chunk (if not the whole thing) first. If you’re working on a novel, it might make sense to go chapter by chapter depending on your goals, but short stories and essays should certainly be read in full before markup begins.

This doesn't mean you can’t take notes, but keep them brief and keep your focus on just taking in the story. Yes, you know the story, but that doesn't mean you wrote it that way. Sometimes things morph in our memory, and it’s possibly been quite some time since you wrote those first sentences. Maybe you even know you changed something big since then; it's still good to get a handle on what’s going on before you start changing things. 

Additionally, you may want to do something like a reverse outline to assist you in your editing process. While in theory you could do this from your memory it's going to be a more solid outline if you read through your piece. More about this and other supporting documents in the future.

What I'm really getting at is: our memories are fickle. Give your full piece (or the section you’re focussing on) a read before diving into edits. Big picture edits require you to have an understanding of the big picture. I know I've disregarded these tips in the past, and started editing only to find out that I'd remembered the narrative incorrectly. Usually it has something to do with whether something has been revealed yet, or the order of events was a little off in my mind. A quick read through would have set those straight.

Don’t just revise, rewrite.

It is definitely more work, but in my opinion, it is so worth it to completely rewrite your piece. This is something I’ve been doing since the dawn of time. One of the few common tips that I was doing without being told. Because when I was young I wrote everything by hand first and then typed it up, I was forced to rewrite. Very quickly I realized this was helpful and became a part of my process.

During school, I didn't feel I had the time to always write by hand and then rewrite, so I started typing my first drafts. But as long as the deadline wasn’t looming too near, I still rewrote. There are a few things this does for me.

I can let my brain rewrite sentences in a more natural way. Yes, you can edit sentences on the page, but something different happens when you read a sentence and rewrite it; sometimes your fingers just scream to write it a different way. Try it their way; listen to your fingers, your brain, your muse, whatever. (This allows you to make those line level changes even though your goal is a substantive edit.) It’s kinda like being told to write the textbook in your own words, because it proves you understand, and your brain will absorb the information easier; your brain is always working in the background. 

It gives me a blank slate. Often we fear the blank slate, but it also gives you the freedom to play around with your words. We struggle to change our precious, but there's far less harm in recreating our precious. Maybe it will be more precious, or maybe we’ll end up reverting to the original, but the freedom to play is there. In the same vein, it leaves the first draft intact. Yes, you can always create a copy and revise a second version, but it really isn’t the same process. 

Final thoughts on editing your first draft…

At this point in editing your first draft, you should feel free to make big changes. You should avoid getting bogged down in the minutiae. (And that’s why rewriting is extra freeing because you have the opportunity to make line level changes without compromising the fact that you’re doing a big picture edit 😉) 

While you let your piece rest, consider what parts of your story you want to focus on. Create a list of questions in line with the big picture edit list, but make it unique to your manuscript. Instead of, “Is it clear what my main character wants?” try, “Is it clear Jenny wants a promotion?”

Before putting pen to paper (or finger to backspace,) read your manuscript (chapter, section) to get a clear picture of your current story. Yes, you think you know everything about your story, but our memories are more fickle than you think, and you’ve likely learned a lot and changed some since you began writing.

Now you can start making changes but don't just revise it, rewrite it. Let your brain work in the background; as you make your obvious changes, it will fix little things as you go without you needing to focus on it. Play with your words on your blank canvas; the old draft will still be there if you need it.

And now you start all over again! With each pass of your manuscript try to focus on a different part. As you feel more and more confident in the big picture you can start focusing on style. Making sure your dialogue sounds realistic, looking for places to up the drama of your writing, removing filler phrases, choosing stronger verbs… And sooner than you think, you’ll be at the point of polishing: fixing grammar and spelling. At any point in time you may want to ask for some fresh eyes from friends and family, beta readers or an editor. If you’re interested in an editor, I have a series called, “So You Want to Hire an Editor,” that you may find helpful.

Keep your eyes peeled for tips on later editing passes!

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Jerrica is a writer and editor who inspires up-and-coming writers to create compelling fiction and creative nonfiction works while providing them with the confidence to do it themselves or ask for a helping hand when they need it. She enjoys speculative fiction, horror and gut-wrenching emotion with a side of food & drink and the cozier things in life.