The Second Draft

I think every writer approaches the draft process in his or her own way. For that reason it's hard to think of a “second draft” as an official part of the process. How many drafts are there? I would say as many as you need. My personal advice, hard won by much trial and many errors, is to leave the black and white stuff, grammar, spelling and punctuation, for the final stage, whatever that turns out to be. Those are things that won't change no matter how much the story itself is altered. If you spend time cleaning these things up before you are entirely happy with the story, you'll end up doing it several times over. If I had to define the word draft as it applies to a book, I would say it was the result of every effort at improvement separated by a span of time long enough to allow for a clean approach. My personal gap is a minimum of two weeks, and preferably at least a month. So in theory you could end up with as many drafts as there are chapters. It's a question of personal standards, new ideas, patience and the recognition that sooner or later you will reach the point at which any further attempt at improvement will result in disaster. For the book I have just finished I did two drafts by my own definition. During the first I re-wrote the first chapter, shuffled several around, added an epilogue, re-structured about a thousand sentences and deleted more adverbs than I thought I knew. During the second I added another chapter and a prologue, re-shuffled several chapters, re-constructed another thousand sentences and deleted over ten thousand words. Only then did have the book edited for commas, capitals and tenses. But there is no limit to the number of drafts you can do, as long as you understand that perfection is unobtainable. I could probably spend the rest of my life repeating the process and always finding something else to tinker with. I put my foot down when I realized that writing the next book, not re-engineering the first, was going to make me a better author. If you are happy that the manuscript is as good as you can make it without devoting your entire life to it, call it done and move on. Your readers, or the lack of them, will let you know if you need a reality check. Hope that helps and good luck!

The second draft should be read as if you were completely new to the novel. In this sense, it is recommended that you put your first draft away in a drawer for at least four weeks (longer if you can).

When you come to read it, hopefully you will be suprised, aghast, etc in all the right places. You are reading it to see if it makes progressive sense and to get a 'feel' for it.

Your third draft would then be the improvements to your text, based upon your constructive criticism of the second.

Hope this helps.

Tony