Asked: “How much of your second draft changes from the first?”
“How much of your second draft changes from the first?”
The obvious answer is that it just depends on the piece. Contrary to popular assumption, the manuscripts that need the least amount of work could either be the ones written extremely quickly or were thoroughly brainstormed before starting, no middle of the road for this girl! The further out on the panster-plotter spectrum I am, the more cohesive the work tends to be. BUT, I say that with the additive there’s usually a reason I was capable of writing something quickly; it made sense to me, I was inspired, and it just flowed. The worst manuscript I’ve been working on in recent history was a National Novel Writing Month piece that was getting patchworked together as I forced myself to come up with a plot.
As for brainstorming, it involved other people to
bounce ideas off of, not just me sitting there outlining. Prepping for a novel
before beginning does some good for me, but for the most part, I work best by
letting the pieces fall where they will and then rearranging them. I’m good
with nuance and going with the flow, bad at predicting issues, abstractly
recognizing cause and effect, or creating atmosphere around mechanically
tailored plots. Having someone to talk the story out with, or, more
importantly, who gives me an anchor of what I’m trying to do—as in, write something they'd like—enables me to create a fully immersive storyline without the clinical
process of outlining that often leaves me uninspired.
But mostly, things just come out unexpectedly,
regardless of tactics, and the fact is, I won’t know how much work a draft
needs until it’s all said and done.
However, what’s interesting about this question is
that my first recommendation to anyone who is struggling with the editing
process is to avoid getting overwhelmed: don’t worry about making a lot of
changes in the second draft.
The “novice writer,” as he called himself, had
previously did a few edits for grammar and typos here and there, but now really
wanted to improve his work and push it further. Curious about other peoples’
processes, he wanted to have a better idea of how much he should expect to
change, and I found myself a little surprised by the answers.
Most people underwent a huge amount of change, a
lot of them rewriting every word.
I remember, when it came to The Dying Breed, someone who I was brainstorming with about the
lack of enthusiasm it was receiving asked if I had thought about doing a
complete rewrite. No, if I was going to do that, I decided, I’d just write a
whole new story. The concept, the pitch, the expected setting, was the real
issue. It was the characterization and atmosphere that makes the manuscript
have its merit. Once people got hooked, they were thrilled with it, but like
many stories, it took becoming invested in the characters for the work to stand
out. If I were to completely rewrite it, it would be the foundation of it—what
made it that story—that would need to change, and with that, all of the
character development, wording, and mood would alter as well. To fix it, I'd rewrite everything, and if I was going to do that, I might as well do something totally new.
But I’m also hesitant to restart things from
scratch in general. This isn’t about the work going into it, but rather that
starting over for some tends to be a go-to to combat disappointment, but in my experience it often just changes the issues rather than making less of them.
True, you get better the more you write, but your
second manuscript isn’t necessarily going to be better than your first, and
assuming so is going to get you into trouble. Just like being 60 doesn’t
automatically make you a better writer than a 25 year old, your tenth
manuscript is going to have qualities and flaws that your first didn’t even
touch on. As I go back over writing, I see how successful I was in achieving
some things that I’ve struggled with, but also some of the qualities I’ve lost.
You learn a lot from tweaking, and the less things
change - the more precise you are about fixing things - the less likely you are going
to add in new problems.
And what goes for critique partners goes for you.
It’s fairly common that being absorbed in correcting all the little issues makes
people miss the larger problems—like the case when only one person caught that
my gun had disappeared mid-scene, and she was the one with the least amount of
corrections on it. So not only will obsessing over making it work now overwhelm you, it also increased the chance you won’t pick
up on plot holes, or other larger, more abstract problems.
How you edit is based around your personality, the
way your mind works, and your goals. None of this is to say that doing major
edits for round two is problematic, but what interests me is how much I’ve
actively deviated from that mentality the more I write. I find that making huge
changes is tempting, but a part of that tends to be not being able to figure
out what went wrong.
What’s to stop me from making the same mistake
again in a different way?
My second draft doesn’t change much from the
first, and in some ways, I prevent myself from being brash. The Dying Breed underwent massive
alterations from the first to the eleventh variation, five total rewrites of
the first few chapters, cut probably around 80,000 words cut with an estimate
of 10,000 added. I moved everything around several times, added layer, took out
threads, and while the bare bones of it are the same, it really isn’t the same
story. Even the characters have changed, some for the better, and it was almost like a rewrite except I could be precious about what I kept.
As you can see though, I personally work better
with more drafts, trial and error, seeing what I have, and processing. For some,
they despise drafting and editing as you write helps git-‘er-done. And if you
know what you want to change and how to fix it, there’s not a reason not to do
it.
However, what I suppose my point is, it sometimes
feels like people think if they don’t make massive changes to their story,
they’re not being harsh enough, they’re not being a good, devoted writer. Sometimes
the best thing you can do is sit back and ruminate on what it actually is
before worrying so much about what it could be. Being thoughtful is just as
important as being merciless.
