5 Things To Do When You Finish a First Draft
A week has passed since I finished the first draft of my current manuscript (just under 80,000 words in 12 weeks) and it’s been… enlightening, to say the least. I am by no means an expert at this, but in hoping I wasn’t alone riding the emotional rollercoaster that followed ‘The End’, I started researching what other writers had to say about this strange and wonderful time. Many, many rabbit-holes later, I compiled a list of the most common advice from other authors, podcasts episodes, and general writing hubs on what you should do after finishing a first draft.
1) Celebrate!
First things first: celebrate. Seriously, don’t skip this step, because writing a book is a massive accomplishment, and something to be incredibly proud of. Apparently, 97% of people who start writing a book never finish it! And sure, your manuscript might not be in bestselling novel shape (yet!) but as Jodi Picoult once said:
“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
I celebrated with a glass of wine and a three-pack of Oreos, and it was totally worth the mild hangover and upset stomach in the morning!
2) Take a Break
This was, by far, the most common piece of advice; to leave the manuscript sit and go do something else while the the story and the characters percolate in your subconscious. The main reason for this time away is to be able to come back to the manuscript with fresh eyes, because sometimes when you’re so deep in the writing process, it’s easy to miss things that are right in front of you.
Though the length of time suggested varied widely - some say a week, a month, sometimes longer, I feel like this is a very personal decision and can be dictated by deadlines or trying to balance a well-earned break with protecting a writing routine that was forged to complete the draft in the first place.
3) Read Through
Whenever you do come back to the manuscript, the advice is to dedicate a certain amount of consecutive time, ideally a weekend, to read through your draft from start to finish and take notes. This initial read through isn’t the time to start rewriting sentences or fixing grammar. Instead, focus on the big picture: How does the story flow? Are the characters believable and do they have clear arcs? Does the ending work?
The other common piece of advice here is to print out the manuscript for this stage. Printing it out helps to prevent unnecessary fiddling but I also read a genius idea where you can just save your manuscript as a PDF you can’t edit! Which is what I’ll be doing for this round as I can’t justify the waste of paper while we’re travelling!
4) Don’t Despair!
Feel free to interchange despair for panic, cry, or burn the manuscript in its entirety because apparently, the first read-through can be tough.
And I get it, it’s easy to compare your first, messy draft to a polished, published novel and think you’ll never get there. But you have to remember that those books didn’t start out like that. They went through countless rounds of revisions, edits, and professional proofreading to become what they are, and apparently, this pain/hopelessness/anxiety is all part of the process!
5) Make a Plan
Once you’ve read through your draft, taken some notes, and a few deep breaths, it’s time to make a plan. Start by tackling the big stuff: plot holes, pacing issues, and character arcs. Once those are sorted, you can focus on the smaller details, like dialogue and sentence structure.
Trying to do everything at once will feel overwhelming - I get paralysis by analysis just thinking of everything I now need to do in this next draft! So focus on one problem at a time. The good thing about having a plan is that you don’t have to tackle the manuscript chronologically either. It could help with writer’s block, too - if you get stumped in one chapter, you can jump to the next to-do item on the list!
Finishing a first draft is an amazing achievement, but it is just the beginning.
And, for this next draft, I’m leaning heavily into the notion that the only thing you need to be a writer is persistence.
