The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

Planning Your Drafts and Editing for Writing Efficiency

Do you have a plan for how to write the different drafts of your story? If you don't, you're likely wasting a lot of time editing and don't realize it.

Let's change that so you can write your stories more quickly and efficiently.

This chapter isn't about how to plot or develop stories. It's strictly about how to write them efficiently with a proven method. Here's how it works.

THE FIRST DRAFT

Your first draft should be the fastest thing you write. The most important thing should be getting the full story down in paper as quickly as possible because that gives you something to work with. It doesn't have to be a good draft. In fact, it shouldn't be good at all, really.

Many on Wattpad will likely disagree with me on this because lots of people on Wattpad write a chapter and post it right away. You'll never catch me doing that unless it's with this book, The Art of Writing. I see these messages from people I follow where they're constantly apologizing for not posting their next chapter on time. I feel bad for them because they're so anxious for people to read their writing that they put their selves in a position of obligation, weighing themselves down unnecessarily. That can be easily fixed.

Write your enter first draft but don't post it. And whatever you do, keep the following rule in mind and never break it:

DO NOT REWRITE OR EDIT WHILE WRITING YOUR FIRST DRAFT!

Never break that rule. If you keep going back to your chapters to fix or change things, you'll spend far too long writing your first draft, and that's simply unacceptable and unnecessary.

Instead of editing or fixing things, move to the next step.

OUTLINING & RECONFIGURING

Now it's time to make an outline of your story. Go to each chapter and write one or two sentences that summerizes it. When you're done, you'll have an entire outline of your book.

Look over your outline and see what's not necessary that can be cut. Get rid of anything that doesn't need to be in the outline. Cutting is one of the most valuable skills to have because it makes your story progress quicker, which engages the readers more deeply.

Next, figure out which scenes can be combined. The way I do this is by writing down short little summaries of the information and events in each chapter. Then I cut out any of that information that's not absolutely vital to the story. Whatever vital information is left over needs to be removed from boring scenes and placed into pre-existing scenes that are more interesting. I see if all of the information from one scene can be mixed into another scene. I decide if all of the actions I wrote down from the old chapter actually need to happen. The ones that need to happen, I'll put them into other chapters.

Eventually, that will cut out several chapters making the book quite a bit shorter. The first time I did that, I was able to cut 25,000 words. The second time I did it, I cut another 25,000 words.

Next, look at the characters and decide which aren't necessary to the story and cut them out. If you like some of their personality traits or abilities or skills, weave those into other characters to make them deeper, more interesting, and more complex.

You're also going to want to look at all of your plots and subplots, and decide which are unnecessary or over-complicating the story. Cut out everything that doesn't need to be there. Anytime you divert from the main plot, you run the risk of disengaging the reader unless the subplot is thoroughly interesting. But make sure it's interesting to your readers and not just you. A lot of authors have made that mistake and hurt their careers or caused their careers to never get off the ground. So, make sure when you're done eliminating subplots, all of your remaining subplots are necessary and interesting.

Now, look at the big twist in your book and make sure it's set up well. And look at all of the scenes that you want to have really strong impact. Go through and make sure you have sufficent events planted in the story, which cause the event to have the impact you want. Refer to the chapter called Writing with Impact.

Once you feel good about the story outline you have, move on to the next step.

SECOND DRAFT

Now write your second draft using your new story outline. And once again, follow the rule above, but just slightly adjusted:

DO NOT EDIT OR FIX ANYTHING!

Your goal is to produce a mediocre draft of your story with lots of errors. If your story has hardly any errors, you're either an amazing writer or you broke the rule above. When you finish your second draft, now you're ready to show your writers group or critique partner(s) or beta readers (only a few of your beta readers, not all of them). Make sure you have some good people reading for you, preferably educated writers.

When you get their feedback, it's time to reconfigure your outline accordingly. Once you're done, write your third draft (you'll be modifying your second draft).

Once you finish your third draft, it's finally time to...

FINAL DRAFT - EDITING & PROOFING

Do you understand why you haven't edited and proofed until now?

Think about it. If you had edited and proofed your first draft, there would be several chapters that changed or were cut that you edited for nothing.

So now that you're in your third draft, it make sense to do all of that refining. When you're finished, you send it to whomever does your editing and drafting. When they're done with it, make the changes and you're finally done.

POSTING

Now you're finally ready to post your book one chapter at a time, once a week on Fridays (Friday is by far the most popular day for reads on Wattpad and many say, through experience, that it's the best day for posting). I'd post up three chapters to begin with to give readers something to sink their teeth into and really get them hooked. If your story needs to do that by the first chapter, but three chapters really gets the reader immersed in the story so it makes a strong impression in their mind. It's like getting them addicted, in a sense. This will hopefully keep them coming back for more. At first, you might consider posting an extra chapter on Monday or Tuesday to give readers a little more frequency.

And notice that there's no weight on your shoulders to produce chapters now. When you rush and you don't have eyes on your chapters to help you catch mistakes and inconsistencies, your work suffers a ton, and that's a disservice to your readers and yourself. So, take your time, get your whole book written properly, and then start posting it. It's a much easier, stress-free, respectable way to do it. By respectable I meaning that it's respectful to the people you've promised chapters each week.

Now, go take one of your stories and immediately use this skill on an outline for it and them follow through with the rest of the steps. I recommend learning several of the other skills and techniques in this book before you write your third or final draft. Those are where you really utilize your writing skills to create solid prose. Once you've done this process a couple of times, you'll have it memorized and it'll be a part of all of your books.

Good luck, and as always, please vote for this chapter if you liked it!