Rough Draft to Final Draft

NaNoWriMo is almost over, which means many of you will now 50,000+ words on a new draft.

Of course, you realize it’s a rough draft. So, what’s next?

Since 1999, I’ve taught Novel Revision Retreats that answer this very question. How do you take the rough draft to a finished draft?

Step 1. Look at what you’ve written. At this point, there are really two versions of your novel. There’s the novel in your head and the novel on the page. And they aren’t the same. Your intentions were only partly realized in this version. That means its time to actually look at what you wrote, and not what you think you wrote.

I ask writers to go through the mss chapter by chapter (or scene by scene, if they’d rather) and write one sentence to summarize the actions (plot) and another sentence to summarize the emotional content of the scene/chapter. Also, note whether the scene contains conflict.

If you read through these summaries, it should be a fairly smooth synopsis of the entire story. And you’ll see the holes in the story much easier.

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