What to edit in first draft, or how to write second draft

This was a hot topic when I asked on Twitter what people wanted me to blog about next, and since I'm in the process of editing 1st draft of ROSEHEAD (or, in other words, writing 2nd draft), it fit perfectly. Plus, of course, people saw me blasting a picture of my board with sticky notes and were wondering what's written on them (gibberish, mostly, I tell you, and maybe some nuggets of sense here and there). Anyway... here you are, sitting, all happy with yourself for having finished 1st draft of your novel. Woohoo! You drank the wine, you ate the chocolate, your friends patted you on the back, you took the required (Stephen King says you should, and I believe him) 2 to 4 week break, occupying your genius self with other things, and now the day has come. You opened your 1st draft, you poured yourself a fresh cup of coffee (okay, okay, for some people it's tea), and now you stare at the screen, wondering what in the blazes you ought to do with it. Well, here is what I do with my 1st drafts. Take it for what it is, it's only my second time doing it, or... maybe fourth, if you count SIREN SUICIDES as three books.

Read the entire draft in one sitting, if possible. This is very important. Along with the fact that you should take a break (read Stephen King's ON WRITING, if you don't believe me)  between drafts, before you do any writing, you have to get a sense of the overall story, and for that you have to cram it into your head in the shortest amount of time possible. Here are my numbers. It takes me about 6-8 weeks to write 1st draft (roughly 80-100K words), it takes me about 6-8 hours to read it. I turn everything off, so I have no distractions, and read it without editing. Do not be tempted to edit! Once you start, you will get sucked into it, and it will slow you down. Just read the damn thing, and take notes. That is what you see on those sticky notes in the picture. I have a pad of sticky notes and every time I stumble on something, have a question or an idea, I jot down the page number, maybe a chapter number, and one line about what bothered. For example, I discovered that I mention 30 people in the Bloom manor at dinner on one page, and on another I say 21. That's a continuity issue, so I wrote it down. Or, a character pulls out a bird feather from the pocket, without me previously having stated how that feather got into her pocket. I go like this until I'm done reading the entire thing.

Your opening sentence is your novel; your opening paragraphs set tone for your chapters. I take special care about editing the very 1st sentence of the 1st chapter, as well as the whole paragraph. I try to summarize the entire novel in that 1st sentence. In 2nd draft of ROSEHEAD I edited it to this: "Lilith Bloom had a peculiar feeling that once she steps into the rose garden, it won’t let her out alive." To compare, here is the 1st draft version: "The garden reeked of rotten sweetness as if the roses were not blooming, but rather decomposing in the heat." You see the problem here? It doesn't state who the main character is, nor what her issue is. We are left with some garden that stinks. Who cares? It's my general rule now to mention the name of the main character and the problem she or he is facing in the opening line. In SIREN SUICIDES it's: "I chose to die in the bathroom because it's the only room in the house I can lock." It's written in 1st person, so I don't mention the name right away, but I squeeze it into the 1st paragraph nonetheless, which I try to make as a setup for the entire chapter. My favorite 1st line is from Stephen King's GUNSLINGER: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." If you read the entire Dark Tower series, you will know that it pretty much summarizes everything. In that 1 sentence. Amazing, right? Well, that's what you need to do too. For example, IRKADURA is my next novel, and I already have the opening line. It might change later, but it sets the tone: "Irka stopped talking the moment she learned how to talk." 

Get rid of over-explanations, repetitions, and excessive descriptions. My personal weakness is describing things extensively, so this is what I do next. You might have something different, but all rookie writers seem to have the problem of obvious repetitions or over-descriptions, for example: "She bent her legs and sat down on the couch by the ornate glass window." I do this a lot, to those of you laughing right now. Let's peel this apart. Do you know anyone who can sit down on the couch without bending legs? No? Exactly. You're overstating the obvious. Let's see how this will look. "She sat down on the couch by the ornate glass window." All right, can you sit up on the couch? No. There is only one direction, down, so this word is redundant. Also, is a window typically made of glass? Yes, unless it's some special window. Let's cut that too. Here is what we have: "She sat on the couch by the ornate window." Bam. Much cleaner, right? (By the way, as a non-native speaker, I still stumble on the use of the, please don't kill me if I used it wrong here.) Your 1st draft will be probably littered with sentences like this one, I know mine is. It's okay, that's what 2nd draft is for, to clean it up. In essence, you write a lot in your 1st draft and you cut a lot out in the 2nd.  

Clean up the dialogue so it flows with the story. I have this problem of creating disconnected pockets of dialogue that make sense when I write them, but when I read the whole thing later, seem to be disjointed, because in reality a lot of time has passed between the instances when I wrote them, but when I read the whole draft, I perceive them very close to each other, and sometimes they make absolutely no sense in the fabric of the story in terms of its flow. For example, if two characters had an argument and 10 pages later they talk nicely to each other, you have to at least hint at what made them forget their disagreements, or edit and make them angry. Also, if your dialogue is very lengthy or clean or self-explanatory, in the 2nd draft break it up, make it sound more human. Cut sentences short, insert silences, unspoken words, things like "umm..." or "look..." or "listen...". Best, read your dialogue aloud in front of the mirror so you can your facial expressions, and where you see a puzzled face, you have to edit it. 

Get rid of continuity issues. I'm borrowing a screenwriting term here, since I used to write screenplays. I suppose the same applies to novels. These problems are very simple. I already mentioned above how on one page I mentioned the number or guests as 30, and on another as 21. That's a continuity issue. If at the beginning of the chapter your character wears a blue polka-dot sweater, and at the end a purple striped sweater, that's a continuity issue. There are many more, like character's names and their correct spelling, places, specific terms, etc. Basically, the facts of your novel. 

Indulge in research and fill in specific details. And, at last, instead of cutting, cutting, cutting, there is one thing that I do here which constitutes adding. While I write 1st draft by the seat of my pants, flying through it and not giving much thought to research at all, in the 2nd draft I take my time to go and look up all those things I'm talking about, to add just enough facts that will make my story sound authentic. For example, for ROSEHEAD I had to research the types of roses, the methods of growing and fertilizing them, the terms rosarians typically use and more stuff like that. This is the fun part, but be careful not to be carried away into spending hours and hours on this. Your story is the most important thing here. If you have a weak story, no amount of research will make it stronger. 

Let's see... I think I covered all major things I do. No, I lied, I didn't. There is one big component that I forgot to talk about. Your novel's ending. That's because in SIREN SUICIDES I didn't know how it would end until draft 4, and in ROSEHEAD I knew how it would end in draft 1, so it doesn't apply to draft 2. I suppose you might know how it ends by the end of draft 1, or you might not. Don't focus on it, keep editing. The ending will come. There. I think this is it. Anything I missed? Please, chime in. 

Why 1st Drafts DON'T SUCK!!!

Somebody asked me at a party recently, why can't you just write your book perfectly the 1st time around, why are you doing so many drafts? I tried explaining why and didn't quite succeed. The question bothered me. Indeed, why can't we? Why DO 1st Drafts suck the first time around, or, in Ernest Hemingway's words, why "The first draft of anything is shit." I thought about it all morning, and came to one single conclusion. THEY DON'T. 1st Drafts don't suck. Hey, stop shouting at me! Let me explain:

Can you tell what's tapping from inside an egg? All right, since I had scrambled eggs for breakfast, I thought, hey, the 1st draft of anything is like being inside an egg. On the inside, it makes perfect sense. It's all white and yellow and liquidy and floaty and stuff. All ingredients for survival are right there, you don't need to go anywhere or talk to anyone or explain anything. Get the allegory? It's like being inside the writer's head. So you take your idea and spill it. Out it swims. The problem is, on the outside, the reader has no clue what egg this is. Who laid it? A chicken? A pigeon? A snake? A dinosaur? An ostrich? An alien?!? Meaning, can I touch it or do I have to run for life? When will it hatch? Can I eat it? And so on. Thus, 1st draft makes PERFECT sense to you as a writer, but it makes no sense whatsoever to the reader. And, in that light, 1st draft doesn't suck. Because - It. Is. Not. Meant. For. The Reader!!! 1st Draft for the writer's eyes only (and it's only when the writer imagines it being read by someone else does the writer cringe).

Would you want to sleep on a naked mattress? I don't know where this allegory came from, but imagine a mattress, an old-fashioned spring-loaded monstrosity stripped of its layers. What do you have inside? A cold looking wire-frame. Would you sleep on that? Oh, no, you would not. You'd want layers of foam and some other fuzzy stuff I don't know the names for, and then cotton on top, and then a pad, and a sheet. But, does that mean that the frame itself sucks? It doesn't. Sleeping on it would suck, but it itself is perfectly fine. It's a base, a foundation, and that's what a 1st Draft of anything is. So leave it be already.

Ever saw a baby take her 1st step? Wobbly, no? Exactly. Writing a book is a long loooooong journey. And the 1st Draft is only a first step on it. The point is not to admire it, to judge it, to pull it apart and compare it to all the other first steps you've seen in your life. Nope. The point is - TO MAKE IT. Yes, that's right. Do it. First tries are always like that. Like Maureen Johnson said in her 4 min video advice DARE TO SUCK, if someone gave you a violin, would you suddenly deliver a perfect performance at the Carnegie Hall? No, you wouldn't. But you would try doing it, if only to please the one who gave you the present. And the effort itself is what'll lead to the final step on the journey. Which brings me to the next point.

Why knit a sweater when you can just wrap the yarn around yourself? Like those kittehs (yes, I meant it to spell 'kittehs') do on funny YouTube videos. I mean, man, it takes forever to knit a sweater, so why bother? Besides, knitting sucks. Your back hurts, your fingers ache, your spouse thinks you need therapy or have gone senile. No matter what anyone says, you know why you do it. You want to be able to take this thing on and off, wrap it in sparky paper and give it as a gift, fold it up and stow it in the drawer, wash it and shrink it... fill in your own blank. The point I'm trying to make is - the sweater is a THING. It has a beginning and an end, the top and the bottom, you can hold it in your hands. It has purpose. Same goes for books. 1st Draft is that yarn being looped into consecutive rows, one after another, until it starts taking shape. Each consecutive draft is one more piece, the back, the sleeves. And then one day you're ready to stitch the pieces together (the problem here is, you might discover you mixed up the pattern and the sides don't match in size, but that's a different blog post) to make a fuzzy warm knit garment to be worn to holes.

I can sit here and keep coming up with more allegories, but they're all about the same thing, really. 1st Drafts DON'T SUCK. Because they are 1st Drafts. So they are allowed to suck. Meaning, 1st Drafts DO SUCK. And in that, they DON'T SUCK. (I know, my own brain just got twisted too). BECAUSE!!! 1st Drafts are those first stepping stones in the foundation for a piece of art. Like first layer of paint on a canvas, or first whistled tune from the lips of a composer, or first piece of rough marble chiseled at by a sculptor.

Anyway, what do I know? I'm only on Draft number 4. So, please, esteemed audience, do chime in in the comments. 

How to write a novel first draft in 6 weeks

If you asked me several years ago if I knew how to write a novel, I'd stare at you, blank. And here I am now, editing my 1st novel's 2nd draft, still not knowing what the hell I'm doing, but moving forward. I thought, hey, if I can do it, you can do it, right? Why not share? Well then, here goes:

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL FIRST DRAFT IN 6 WEEKS:

Get yourself fired. Seriously. If you really want to write, you've got to write full time. That, or sleep only 3 hours a night and have no social life. Take your pick. Remember, that's what the glorious unemployment benefits are for. (Disclaimer - I didn't get fired, I was laid off, and not on purpose, it was time for me to go, but still. You get the idea.)

Find a supporting body. Spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, distant aunt who loves books, a writer's group - you name it. If you don't have someone to talk to about your book DAILY, and I mean, DAILY, then forget it. Your story will die without ever being born, unless you're an antisocial genius who can talk to yourself in your head. If you can do it, my hat off to you. I can't. (Oh, did I mention that the supporting body better be the one who praises and encourages you no matter what?)

Get a room. For real. The one with a working door that you can slam shut. And some desk and a chair and a lamp. Until you have a spot like that (doesn't have to be fancy, can be a refurbished closet), you won't be able to shut the world out enough to focus on your story. (If you have children in your household, you'll agree with me immediately.)

Do the math. OK, don't make that long face. It doesn't sound sexy, I know. Here is what I mean by it. Based on my research, a typical novel can be anywhere from 80,000 to 120,000 words (more experienced writers - correct me if I'm wrong!). I aimed at 100,000 - just because it's a nice round number. I anticipated to cut about 20% of the total word count when editing, which would make the final book 80,000 words long (good length for a Young Adult novel). I had to produce 3,400 words a day to be done in 6 weeks (not including the weekends). For comparison, Stephen King likes to produce 2,000 words a day. Obviously, his 2,000 is pure genius while my 3,400 is full of air. Do your math to fit your schedule, and tell all your friends the date you'll be done. (They will bug you if you don't - a good motivator).

Write. Yes, write. Wake up, drink a ton of coffee, turn off your phone, close all the browser windows on your laptop (that includes Facebook), close the door, sit down, and... write. I planned my book out kind of like Garth Nix usually does, but you don't have to. As long as you have an image in your head, start there. Write. Don't worry about grammar, or characters, or plot. That will come later. Write. Don't come out of the room until you produce your number of words. When done, walk away. Here is the catch - the next morning DO NOT REWRITE what you wrote the day before. No-no-no. Keep moving forward. Otherwise you'll be stuck in the re-write land forever.

Read. When you've done your daily writing, read a book. NOT a book on writing. Fiction. Read something for the pleasure of reading. Read anything you can get your hands on. Classics. Cult books that everyone reads. Bad books that nobody wants to read. Your friend's 1st draft who is trying to write a book (like you). If you don't have time to read every day, might as well forget about writing. You will learn a ton as you read. I didn't say it, Stephen King did.

Do not chicken out!!! Keep at it! No matter what happens, stick to it! If you think you're stupid, still write. If you hate your story, still write. If crying helps, cry. Cry a lot. Cry every hour if you need to. Or yell at the wall. Or blast loud music. Under no ciscumstances are you allowed to chicken out. Focus on your writing one step at a time, one day after another, and in 6 weeks - presto! You'll end up with a completed first draft. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, it simply has to be DONE.