02 Oct How to Edit a First Draft the Easy Way

You’ve finished your novel! It’s a real achievement to complete a first draft – congratulations! So, what now? You probably know that an edit is on the horizon. It might be that you’re lucky enough to have fellow writers with whom to share your work. But, what if you don’t? Or what if you’ve shared your first draft and have plenty of feedback, but aren’t quite sure how to proceed with your edit?

I muddled through the editing process with my first two novels and ended up with ‘final drafts’ that I was happy with. However, I was without an agent and those novels remain unpublished, so it’s difficult to judge the success or otherwise of those edits. With my third novel, Petals and Stones, I discovered a new, specific, way to edit that I found really helpful. Partly this was influenced by Sol Stein’s brilliant book ‘Solutions for Writers.’ And partly it was influenced by my agent encouraging me to work with her on a chapter outline edit (which I describe below). Here are my tips for editing the first draft of your novel:

Step away before you Start

You’ve written the end. It’s very exciting, and you deserve a rest. Your manuscript deserves this too. Have a break for a few weeks – catch up on some reading, or play around with writing something completely different. Whatever you do, leave your novel completely untouched before you begin the editing process – it’s amazing the difference it makes to return to an oh-so-familiar story with fresh eyes.

Getting started on your edit

Do keep a copy of your first draft. You might make some changes during your edit that you regret later on, so it’s vital that you always keep a copy of what came before.

When you first return to your work it can be tempting to just start reading through, making small changes here and there, polishing the words as you go along. But STOP! It’s not the time to worry about writing flow, sentence structure, spelling or grammar just yet. What needs to come first is an appraisal of the big stuff – characters and architecture.

Characterisation is everything

Do you love the characters you’ve created? Are they alive in your mind? Have you been thinking about them during your break? Are they starting to feel like real people that you know? It’s vital that your protagonist, and your other main characters, are well-rounded, perhaps complex, sometimes surprising, and certainly consistent (except when you consciously decide to have them acting our of character, of course). Inspect them for cliché and stereotypes. It is never too late to flesh-out our characters, and now is the perfect opportunity to make sure we are doing them justice. Is your protagonist flawed? They should be! And what about the antagonist in your novel? Are they complex and interesting, possibly even charming or likeable in some way? If not, you run the risk of them seeming like a two-dimensional ‘baddy’.

Throughout the course of your novel do you develop your characters in a way that makes sense? Many of your characters (but your protagonist especially) will change throughout the novel. Have you paid attention to the flow and pace of these developments? Check that your characters are developing congruently within the story. Make sure that you’re really clear what’s driving your characters: What do they want (it might be that they want something not to happen – this is still a want)? What do they long for? What is holding them back? What will they need to conquer – inwardly, as well as outwardly – before they reach the end of their story? What is it about them, that will have the reader rooting for them?

The architecture of your novel

Readers are curious, hungry for emotion, tension and suspense – and they look for it right from the start. Whilst tension may be short lived, suspense is not, and should be present through the whole of a novel to retain a reader’s interest. The classic narrative arc involves a building of suspense in the first three-quarters of your story – your protagonist’s ultimate ‘want’ should therefore remain frustratingly out of reach for most of the novel. Whilst the overall suspense will be sustained and slowly increasing throughout the entirety of your novel, there will be moments of heightened tension within individuals scenes (quite how tense will depend on the genre you are writing within, and the particular emotion you are hoping to provoke in your reader). All novels, even ‘quiet’ literary novels, involve tension and suspense. Understanding how you have handled these essential elements of storytelling is an important part of re-drafting your novel.

To help you work out what’s happening with the tension / suspense in your own story you can carry out a chapter outline edit. To do this, read through your novel (you can hopefully just skim read for this) and for each chapter (or major scene, if you don’t have chapters) write a few lines that describe the main action, and associated tension, of that section. Think about the overall suspense, but also any short-lived tension that will keep the reader interested. Think about whether the chapter provoked any questions for the reader (unanswered questions can keep readers turning the pages). Have you inadvertently slackened the tension by giving your protagonist what they want? Did you mean to do that? Have you answered questions too soon? Are you repeating yourself? (You shouldn’t be). Are you occasionally upending the reader’s expectation? (You should be).

Have separate pieces of paper for each chapter. Lay them out on the floor or table and take a look at them. What are you achieving in each? Does every chapter move the story on and add to the overall suspense / conflict / narrative drive? The middle section (often about a half of the whole novel) is usually where the tension sags, so look carefully at this area. Look out for chapters or scenes that do nothing for the story, or that hinder the action in some way. Play around with the structure here. Try removing dubious chapters and scenes. Consider amalgamating scenes or chapters that seem to be achieving the same thing – don’t tell your reader something twice! Really try at this stage of your edit to look at the big picture of your novel. You’re asking your readers to go on a journey with you – are you clear where you’re taking them?

The detail edit

Once you’re confident that the structure of your novel is sound, and that your characters are well rounded, you can progress to editing paragraphs and sentences. There is plenty of advice about how to polish your writing and I won’t explore it here in detail, other than to say that brevity is a worthy pursuit; choose your words carefully. Be precise. Reduce adverbs and adjectives. Don’t repeat yourself. Play around with sentence length to keep paragraphs interesting. Show when you need to show, and tell when your story calls for it.

If you’re stuck with the editing process and would like fresh eyes on your novel or memoir, then feel free to get in touch – I offer manuscript evaluations and one-to-one coaching sessions to help you.