Now that you have completed your first draft, you might be overwhelmed with the idea of reading it, critiquing it, editing it, proofreading it, soliciting it for feedback, and so on. There are so many things to do once you have completed your first draft.
So, you will have to come up with a plan that will allow you to ease into self-edits without losing your mind.
Here are some of the essential steps that you should take after you have completed your first draft. The goal is to make the self-editing project so much easier and more manageable.
Give Yourself A Rest
So, you have completed your first draft, and now you are wondering what to do next. Let us start with the basics of taking a much-deserved break. The thing is that a lot of writers like to take a break between writing their first draft and embarking on edits.
If you have recently written a story, then you are incredibly familiar with it. Now, this level of familiarity will indefinitely make it harder for you to spot mistakes. You might think of it in terms of the mistakes being kind of incognito.
Take A Break Only if Necessary
Of course, not all writers need to take a break before editing their drafts as it all comes down to how long it has taken them to write the first draft. The general theory is that when you begin to edit your first draft, you will be starting with chapter one.
So, if you wrote the first chapter six months ago, you probably don’t need to take a break as this chapter won’t be that familiar to you. It will be quite easy for you to spot mistakes. On the other hand, if you wrote the first chapter a month ago, things will be fresh in your mind, which is why you will need a break to detach from your writing so that you can easily spot the mistakes when you go through the chapters one after the other.
Gamify the Editing Process
The next thing that you should do is to make a game plan for the editing process. This aspect can be incredibly helpful if this is your first time completing a draft and moving on to the editing process. When you read your first draft, you will see a lot of issues. When we say a lot – we mean a lot. This is especially true if you don’t edit on the go, and most writers don’t, as they are overly focused on completing their first draft.
From the start of editing your manuscript, you will see what overhauling it requires. If this gives you massive anxiety, you might want to get in touch with the best manuscript editing services, but it is always recommended to do a bit of self-editing yourself before handing over your manuscript to a professional editor who will otherwise make your pages bleed, and you will have to do a lot of rewriting as a result.
To save yourself loads of headaches, we recommend having a game plan, which is essential. It is a simple set of steps that you are going to follow one at a time to help you navigate the drafting and self-editing of your manuscript without losing your mind.
Read the Draft Out Loud
The first step of your game plan can be reading the draft out loud. It can be embarrassing and also painful – but – you can cry about it later. Roll up your sleeves, gather an audience, which could be the person you see in the mirror, and start to get a clear idea of how things sound when they are read out loud instead of echoing silently in your mind.
You will want to go through your manuscript, one chapter after the other, and read everything. At this point, it is important to know that you shouldn’t edit at all but only read. Editing is not the focus at this point.
Avoid the Urge to Fix Immediately
Of course, if you see a quick fix, such as a misspelled word or a missing punctuation mark – you must go ahead and change it. Ultimately, your goal at this point is to get an idea of what exactly you are dealing with and what your biggest issues are.
By reading out loud, you will develop a better understanding of the most repeated words and phrases. You will also get a better idea of the characters that aren’t capturing your attention. You will get to know about the scenes that need to be completely rewritten or deleted.
At this step, you might feel the urge to fix everything right away – but – if you give in to this urge, you are only going to get overwhelmed. By reading the draft out loud, you will only get an idea of the job scope ahead, which will allow you to approach the actual editing task in an organized fashion.
Tag not Edit
When you will be reading out the draft, you will see loads of things. Instead of editing it, you will want to take things easy first by tagging them. You can choose to highlight, mark, and bold the mistakes that you find in your draft. You can also opt for color-coding by assigning specific types of issues to their respective colors.
For example, you can choose pink for inconsistencies and blue for spelling mistakes.
Include Comments
There will be issues in your draft that you cannot tag or categorize as they are a lot more specific and require more thought and strategy. For instance, you might be dealing with an intimate scene, and it needs way more detail than what you have already given. Instead of fretting over the issue, you should simply leave a comment that states “elaborate” or “requires more detail.”
The inclusion of comments or questions can help your future self by pointing you in the right direction. Also, you can include comments and questions to silence the overwhelm as you know that you will be addressing the issue as you are holding yourself accountable now.
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