By: Jennifer
Ellis
A fellow writer
recently asked me to do a post on how to find the motivation to do a
second draft. I was up to my ears in my second draft for a pen
name novel, so held off for a couple of weeks, but now with that novel
published and a blank page ready to start on my fourth Derivatives of
Displacement novel, I have time to do a couple of posts (and catch up on the
consulting work that I skipped while intensely proofreading).
A second
draft means different things to different people.
A second draft
even means different things to me, depending on whether I am working on a short
or long piece and whether I am working on something I’m going to publish under
my own name, or my pen name.
Everyone’s
editing process is slightly different, especially for the second draft. Some
people will read their book through in its entirety and make revision notes,
some will start working on the prose while they do an initial pass, looking for
plot holes and structural issues. Some will approach it in a linear fashion
starting from page one and working their way through page by page, whereas
others will go where they know the biggest problems are and work on those one
by one.
There is no
right way to do it. The important thing is that you do it. Generally,
a second draft is reserved for more structural edits, fixing plot
holes, addressing major issues, adding or deleting scenes. Thus it is generally
inadvisable to spend a lot of time polishing prose until later drafts as some
of it may be deleted anyway. I tend to do a combo with stuff I publish under my
own name, doing an initial non-linear blitz of problems that I have on my
revision list, and then a complete pass through where I sharpen the prose, fix
the no brainer sentence structure problems, amp up the characterization, and
look for other structural or major problems to be fixed. For shorter stuff and
my pen name stuff, which tend to be less complex, I combine these two steps
into one linear pass through.
A second
draft is tough.
. . .
To read the rest
of the post, click here:
~*~
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