The Ten Drafts of a Story Part 1 – Theme

Editing is a murky business. With a first draft you have one, clearly-defined goal – get to the end of the sodding story. With editing the goal becomes nebulous – improve the story. Yeah, great, but how?

I’ve realised over the years that each edit needs a focus. I’ve also realised there are ten* of these focuses – each one worthy of a complete draft. If anyone had told me when I first set out to write a novel, that I’d have to rewrite it ten times I’d have probably never started, but, sometimes, the truth sets you free.

I recently returned to a screenplay I co-wrote in 2012. It was, until a couple of weeks ago, a complete first draft. That is, we’d screamed, sweated and ultimately limped our way to the end of the story. Our friendship didn’t survive. First drafts, like giving birth, are painful, furious, messy and best forgotten as soon as you’ve delivered.

Eventually though, once you’ve got over the pain, you’re going to want to look at your baby. What is it?

The first edit is always about theme. Standing back, and asking, what’s it about? The obvious answer to this question is to detail the plot events – this screenplay is about a mother who decides it’s time to take her young, autistic-spectrum son on an adventure. She books a trip to America, but then they miss the train and…

But to get to theme, to get to the heart of the story, it’s important to ask another question – ‘What’s it really about?’

Often, when I’m writing, I have no idea what’s it’s really about. That’s why I need to leave the story behind for a period, so that I am detached enough to see. I realised, on that first read through, eight years after delivery, that really, it’s about motherhood and loss – loss of economic power, loss of confidence, loss of sexuality.

Once I know what it’s really about, the first redraft is easy/brutal, because it’s about getting rid of anything that doesn’t relate to the theme – the slash and burn of the editing process. Theme is what ties a story together, so if a character/location/sub-plot doesn’t relate to the theme, it doesn’t belong to that story.  [To make this process easier I convince myself I will use these discarded sections in a later work. I save them all in a folder called Junked Bits – probably the biggest file on my computer.]

Of course there’s more to this edit than just cutting – often I have to replace that scene/character/subplot with something else that does relate to the theme. Sometimes I won’t write these scenes straightaway – I’ll just make a note – ‘write a gripping scene here where x does this to y’.

This thematic edit is best done by reading the entire thing cover to cover, hard copy, without a pen or pencil in hand.  This is the big picture read. I read it like I want my reader to read it – an uninterrupted gorge. That’s why the time away part is important – so I can read it with the joyful naivety of the reader  – who wasn’t present for the birth – who sees only the baby: glorious, bloody, a bit squished, always naked, possibly screaming but with so much potential…

 

*[Apologies but today I’m in the mood for blunt truth…] ten drafts is probably a conservative estimate.