The less shitty second draft

In the last post on my writing process, I covered the shitty first draft. Now, let's talk about the next draft of the novel: the less shitty second draft.

After I've completed the truly awful first draft, I print it out. It's easier for me to edit my work if I see a hardcopy in front of me that I can write notes on within the margins or scratch things out completely. I'm making the easy-to-spot edits as well as notes on bigger things like developmental and scene edits that need to be revised in this next draft.

Once that's all done, I get back to it. I start on the next draft, which will have better lines, more purposeful dialogue, improved character development and consistency, a more consice pace, and plot holes filled in and removed. Hopefully. If done right. This takes time.

Basically, the less shitty second draft is meant to be the developmental edit where only the major issues are caught, like if a character needs to be killed off or taken out of the story completely. If the outline was the skeleton, then the shitty first draft the blood, this draft is the muscle.

You might be thinking, "Great! I just do this and I'm done, right? All ready to be published?" Ha. Not quite. Stay tuned for the next step in my writing process.