Revising the first draft of your novel can seem daunting. You’ve poured time, energy and so much of yourself into your writing. What exactly do you do next? What are you going to find when you dive in? What are you going to do about it? I believe there are three important things to do to set yourself on a successful (and even exciting!) creative path at this crucial novel-writing stage.
How to Revise Your Draft – Start Here!
The First Step
Rest—for both yourself and your draft. Step away from your novel for a while. How long varies from author to author and project to project but it should be a true break. One day is not enough.
Some authors take months off before reading their work for the first time. I understand if that sounds too long, and I personally don’t think that giving that much time is always necessary. I hesitate to give you a rule here, but I will go out on a limb and say that anything less than two weeks is not enough of a rest (three weeks off is possibly a better minimum). Before then, your story is still bubbling and brewing inside your brain.
Think of a cake that you’ve just taken out of the oven. Before cutting into it or frosting it, you need to let it cool and set. Go in too soon, and you have a crumbly, fall-apart mess on your hands. Like that cake, give your manuscript some time to cool…to gel outside of your mind before your read. Let it turn into words on paper or screen, not just the creative whirlwind you’ve been trying to tame for the past few months!
The Second Step
Consciously adopt a Revision Mindset. Get really intentional about this. You might even want to stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself that you are about to revise, and that all first drafts require revision.
Expect that the revision process will take several read throughs and require you to make multiple changes, even significant ones. Tell yourself that this is perfectly normal, that all authors do it, and that rough patches in a manuscript are to be expected.
Rough patches do not mean you are a bad writer or incapable of polish.
Multiple passes and changes do not mean that you don’t have talent …or that your story has no potential.
This all might seem obvious or silly, but I’ve seen so many writers (myself included!) get discouraged because they go into revision expecting their draft to be much more solid than it likely is. Our story has been so alive and clear in our minds for weeks, months, maybe years that we often expect more clarity and polish from our first draft than is reasonable.
That’s why it’s important to remind yourself before taking that first peek that multiple rounds of reading and changing is the norm.
The Third Step
Put down your pen and just read. Straight through. No changes, no notes.
Not every author does this, but this is what I do myself and what I teach in my writing workshops. In my book The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel, I call it “Sit on Your Hands”.
While it’s important to have a Revision Mindset and be open to making changes, I’m a strong believer that you should get the big picture first. The forest, not the trees.
When you think about it, this is your first time encountering your story as a whole outside of yourself. Embrace this as exciting, because it is!
When we dive right in and start making changes, we can get very narrow-visioned, zeroing in on a sentence here or a word there while forgetting about the whole. I say they’ll be time enough for that later.
On your first read through, absorb the rhythm of your story. Surely, you’ll encounter rough bits, but remember that’s to be expected. You’ll also find parts that absolutely sing. Without a pen in hand—consciously foregoing making changes just for now—you’ll be able to let the magical parts that already exist in your draft carry you along. You’ll experience the page-turning spots. You may even laugh out loud or get tense or feel tears welling up, just as your readers will.
You’ve accepted that changes are needed, but you’re allowing yourself to see what already works. This is inspiring and encouraging to you as the author, and will be part of your personal fuel for the next round of revisions where you’ll no doubt be making changes. How much different it is to work on a manuscript that, thanks to your no-pen reading, you know already contains delight and potential.
You can do this, writers!
For more on a healthy Revision Mindset, check out my article: Revising Fiction – Shifting the “Bad First Draft” Mindset.
