Is writing three drafts really necessary?
So I understand the first draft which is basically writing whatever comes to mind but I don't understand why we have to rewrite it three times. Can someone please explain to me? What exactly do we have to do in the second and third draft of the story?
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Write three drafts? In my 54-year career, I've written technical reports, technical manuals, a PhD dissertation, and now fiction, and if I could have done any of them in only three drafts, I would have been extremely happy. My first novel (started in 2008) is in its 51st draft. Not complete rewrites, but enough changes to constitute a new revision. So what's the problem with doing only three rewrites? Doesn't sound like much of a burden to me. A truly expert writer might be able to write everything down and it will be perfect. For the rest of us, six to eight drafts might be required as an optimal goal. My third novel is now in its 16th draft. One of these days, I will stop revising and start submitting.
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The point of "subsequent drafts" is that for 99% of writers, the first draft is weak. That's completely fine. The purpose of the first draft is to get the damn thing on paper. You can't edit an empty page.
Subsequent drafts are for fixing weak spots: in plot, timeline, character, worldbuilding, credibility, theme, and so on.
You might need two or three rounds to fix those trouble spots depending on how many or how extensive they are. There is no magic number beyond "probably more than one." Mercedes Lackey rewrote her first trilogy seventeen times before it was published. Gregory Maguire took ten years to write Wicked. Barbara Cartland probably just did a spellcheck.
Your final one or two rounds should be polishing: grammar, spelling, punctuation.
The real question is what you consider one draft to be. Is it "one complete round of edits from beginning to end" or "rewrite the entire book"? Because it's usually not necessary to rewrite the entire book three times, but you will do multiple rounds of edits.
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What is a draft?
I mean that sincerely.
And I mean it as a frame challenge. Advice about numbers of drafts and other rules about writing usually comes from pretty old advice that doesn't apply so much anymore. If it ever did.
Back when I was in primary school, a draft was what you wrote on a fresh sheet of paper. You then marked it up until it was unreadable and wrote it out clean. That was your next draft.
In secondary school, I had a typewriter, though I did a lot by hand too. A draft was the same, only typed, with handwritten corrections.
I didn't have a computer until well into college, and mostly not until grad school. Up to the present day. The idea of a draft has lost much of its meaning. I revise a lot. I write up a chapter and feel that it's done. Sometimes my husband reads it and comments and I make changes if needed. Sometimes I print it out to read to my critique group, then make changes based on their comments. Other times I just re-read it and tweak stuff. Often I make revisions on chapters before I'm done writing them. I couldn't even begin to give you a number of "drafts" I've done. One? Fifty?
A draft often means something you turn in to a teacher.
If you're in a class, you might be asked to turn in a first draft and any number of subsequent drafts, then the final copy. This isn't because X number of drafts is what writers need. It's your teacher's way of making sure you're progressing and not saving all the work for the last minute.
I've done it myself when I taught college students to write essays. I didn't care if the first draft was an outline or a skeleton essay or a fleshed out portion of the essay with nothing else done. I just wanted to see work. If I asked for a second draft, I simply wanted to see more work than the first draft. It was also a way to make sure the student chose a workable topic and was on track.
Sometimes a draft gets a new number because you've hit a deadline.
My first draft is always what I end up with when I'm done with the chapter (I'm not yet done with my novel, so I don't have a first draft of it yet). I could call what I give to my critique group my second draft. And so on. It's pretty arbitrary.
The important take-away is that you rethink, rework, and revise.
The numbers don't matter. No one will be watching to see if you revise the entire work at once or if you focus on certain bits. So long as you understand that it's rare to have an entire work just right the first time and that you put in the work to make it better.
The last step is proofreading.
However many drafts come before, and however you count them or make them happen, once you're satisfied with your work, the very last step is to proofread. Not yourself, mind you. You've already done that. But by an outsider. This isn't beta reading, which is editing or critique by outside people, and will have been part of your editing/drafting process.
Is it done yet?
Maybe. Maybe not. Depends what you do with it next.
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There is no fixed number of drafts. I go through several drafts, (I've done twenty, in the past), to correct problems I know I have persistently in writing.
1) Writing off the top of my head, I tend to be repetitive. I dislike that in writing and so do most people. So I find places where I have said the same thing just in different ways, or used multiple adjectives that are nearly the same thing, and cut or revise to say it in one BEST way. I don't need to tell or show readers three ways that Alice was surprised.
2) Dialogue walls, AKA talking heads. I don't usually write these, but they are a symptom of an under-imagined scene. People don't just talk at each other, they have bodies, they are moving in an environment, or at least looking around, they can feel things, think things they don't say, recall memories, smell things, have emotional reactions to things. My characters are very seldom standing still and just looking at each other, and if my dialogue exchange could just as well be that -- It needs to be longer. The scene is under-imagined. That is boring.
3) Colors. Smell. Sounds. Temperature. Touch sensation. Although my characters are usually in motion and are experiencing emotions, I do have a tendency to write in "black and white." I just forget to think about color and other senses. They enrich the scene, and (to me) often surprise me in the associations they afford. Again, a symptom of an under-imagined scene. I don't write all of them at once, and usually only include one extra sense in the mix, but c'mon, if somebody is having a conversation while cooking in the kitchen, and I don't include even one mention of what they smell, I am not writing well.
4) Continuity (=Transition failures). Voice. Out of Character. Lack of Conflict (Infodump is a subset of Lack of Conflict). Readers read to find out what happens next. There should be basically four ranges of tension in a story: What happens in the next few pages, what happens at the end of this scene/chapter, what happens at the end of this Act, what happens to end the story.
What happens in the next few pages: Infodumps and setting descriptions should not be more than about 250 words long (roughly one page in paperback) before something happens. No matter how poetic and beautiful my description may be, I know that tensionless description is what makes people stop reading. Describe, be poetic if you like, but make it short. They turn the page to see what happens next right now, and describing the beautiful Spring mountain range and that spring-fed trout lake nestled in it for two pages is a good time to fold up the book and get to bed.
What happens at the end of the scene/chapter: Most of my chapters are set in one place, so a scene and a chapter are quite similar. A scene advance the plot or story, in some way. It decides something. It presents a problem, or a clue to the solution, or a dilemma, or an emergency to deal with. I kind of think of them as challenge-response. So we need scene tension, to get the reader through the scene, they want to see how the MC handles the challenge. Generally that response should make the reader wonder how that is going to turn out, so they start the next chapter.
Book tension: MC's should be engaged in the big picture, and that should be injected at least once in every chapter. What's the overall goal? What has the villain done now? How have things gotten worse, or more difficult? The story is about solving some big problem. The MCs do that by solving a lot of smaller problems and challenges, but we are building toward a confrontation, always running late, and every battle we win still costs us and that may lose us the war. Paradoxically, you want your MC to succeed but (until the third Act) it feels like the major goal is receding or becoming even more difficult to achieve.
5) Act Length. I divide my story into four equal parts; each roughly 25% of the book. Act I: The MC and their normal world. Halfway through, the "inciting incident" occurs, something that will grow in the second half of Act I into a big problem. At the end of Act I, the MC must leave her normal world (metaphorically or physically) to solve the problem presented by the "inciting incident".
Act IIa: Reactive fixes. The MC tries to fix the problem in some easy way, and fails. She tries again, the problem gets worse. She tries a third easy fix, and now things are very bad. But at the end of Act IIa, she has learned something, about the villain, or problem, or herself. There is an epiphany at the middle of the book.
Act IIb: Proactive fixes. Using this epiphany, she starts to try intelligent fixes. She learns more. She is acting rationally now, not just reacting, but planning. It is again a three-step process. Something gets a little better, a little problem is solved. Then a victory. Then another and it comes with a full understanding of what she needs to do next, which is often risky.
Act III: The big plan and confrontation. She executes, adapts as she goes, and prevails. For the final scene, she either returns to her normal world (or some version of it), or she begins life in her new normal. The End.
I call them Act IIa and IIb out of respect for the Three Act Structure, which is a good thing to research.
For the purpose of drafts, I want my acts to be between 20% and 30% of the book, and if they are too long I need to cut. If they are too short, I need more scenes. My Act III (the finale) is quite often shorter than the others, but I don't want it too short and sudden, I won't go under 20%. You could call this draft "Pacing", I don't want to bore the reader with any one of these being too long, or confuse the reader by having any one of these too short.
This is particularly true of the beginning, many novice writers rush the beginning of their novel to get to "the good stuff". It is 1/8 of the book. In an 80,000 word novel, 10,000 words. 40 pages in paperback, before we get to the inciting incident.
That is the most valuable real estate in the whole novel, because it is THERE the reader learns enough about your character to care about her, want her to succeed, to see her deal with problems (usually trivial ones you devise to show her character), deal with friends, deal with non-friend irritants, deal with family, or loneliness, or whatever. For drafting purposes, definitely do not cut this short. Fully imagine your MC and show us what she's made of, before you start firing bullets at her. We need to know her to care about her.
Added in response to comments: Also check out this answer of mine, about the psychology of starting a new story (From the POV of a Discovery writer, me).
These answers (of mine) may be helpful also.
What would a reader like to know about a character first?
How to invest readers in a story that (initially) has no clear direction?
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