What should my redraft phase entail?
I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing and he's got quite a lot to say about the redraft phase. He explains his working method.
- Write with the door closed, just for him and create a 1st draft as quickly as possible
- Put the book in a drawer and don't look at it for 6-12 weeks, work on something else
- Redraft
I quite like this approach. I've found myself writing quickly, rereading and correcting typos etc. and then sending out and I've always felt that a proper redraft process would help me a great deal.
Imagine I've written my first draft and then buried it in a drawer for a few weeks. Once I pull it out what practical steps should I carry out (beyond just reading it).
What should I practically do during a redraft phase? Should I transcribe each word and literally rewrite? Should I read and edit?
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3 answers
Going over a draft the first time around, I look for the things that really don't work, things that stick out like a sore thumb. Those might be issues with the flow, internal contradictions and inconsistencies, things a character wouldn't say, wording, etc.
Sometimes, I see straight away how to correct an issue, and so I can do so at once. Most of the time, however, I only see the problem, and I don't want to spend an hour over it here and now. In such cases, I mark the issue with a brief comment describing what I want to do with it later.
Having gone over the draft this way, I have a draft that's both better than the first one (since I've already corrected some things), and I have a clear indication of what to do next, since I've marked those parts. So next, I address those, in whatever order is convenient.
Rinse and repeat.
tl;dr: Read the story. Edit where things can be improved. Mark what can be improved but not right now. And repeat this process until you're finished.
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The first draft is like the word says: A draft!
The draft is the basic skeleton of your story, not much detail, not much deepness, just in everything: not much
This is a fact. Like you said in point 2: Let the work lay down and do something else. Your mind is setting this matter aside and you have a much fresher view on the same thing again after some time. The next part should be redrafting. In this case you take on the whole story with a fresh aspect and write again. Wipe out parts that don't make sense, polish characters, deepen the environment and setting, and so on and so on. Redrafts are commonly the phase where you polish out your story. Make the chapters larger, add more details, flesh out everything. Then you repeat part 2 and 3 so long, until you think you are finished. Then it would be a good thing to let others read your work. In most cases you have to do a final draft again and then the story may be ready to submit.
But drafting and redrafting is a whole process that works over months and could even end with a whole rewrite of your story. But in most cases it is just the improvement of your story
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Although I am a fan of King's instruction and I am also a discovery writer, I do not wait before the first draft and the second, for a very specific reason.
At the end of the first draft is when I have the most detailed knowledge of my characters, their traits and personalities. I did not have this same sense of them when I began, so the most important thing I do in the second draft is getting my main characters consistent; their voice quirks, their sense of humor, their reactions and passions.
The second priority in the second draft is correcting what I call "under-imagined" scenes; blocks of dialogue with no exposition about setting, or feelings, or thinking, or pauses: untethered to the world.
Likewise, any exposition that is untethered to characters is under-imagined; it is world-building or explanations I should delete or find a way to make matter to somebody, otherwise it is boring. This doesn't apply to "immediate" description; btw, exposition about things a character is actually seeing and processing.
But if it is explaining culture or artifacts or the physics of magic or whatever, to ME that must be done in a way that is directly influencing a character (e.g. a character learning magic, or a young prince or young soldier learning from the court magician how magic can be deployed in battle, etc).
Finally, this second draft is a good time to at least note opportunities for foreshadowing. As a discovery writer, I don't know what is coming, but at the end of the first draft I do; and I can backfill or change some scenes or experiences to resonate with things to come. For example if the plot later hinges on an unexpected development; perhaps remake an early scene to also hinge on an unexpected development the MC resolves.
My second draft is for consistency, and improvement of scenes and deletion of things I wrote that turned out, in my discovery process, to not really matter to the story; meaning they did not have significant consequences in either the plot or in character development.
Then I might put the book aside to get some distance and objectivity.
ps: To answer the direct question: I read and edit, on a computer, but make a backup first. I am a programmer and have devised an archive system that keeps every version of a file I've saved; so I forget to mention this. Sometimes when changing a scene, you want to be able to see how you left it last time.
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