I Finished My First Draft...Now What?

As an editor who is also working on a first draft, I am well aware that writing the first draft is by far the hardest part of the process. Once the first draft is finished, an author sometimes feels like they should go ahead and send it to an editor to "clean up" for them. Don't do this. I repeat, DO NOT DO THIS - DO NOT SEND ANYONE YOUR FIRST DRAFT. Often, an author is hurredly trying to write their ideas down before they are lost forever. The resulting "first draft" is usually a jumbled mess of ideas, misspelled words, and fragmentary sentences. Occasionally two character names are the same, or very similar; sometimes locations change unexpectedly. Blond-haired beauties toss their raven locks dramatically. This is bad, especially if you are paying someone unfamiliar with your story to try to sort it all out. What should an author do at this point? 


1. Reread your manuscript. This will take a bit of time, since you will invariably need to make changes. Go ahead and make them.

2. You probably typed the manuscript into a word processor. Use the built-in tools to your advantage. Run a spelling and grammar check. If you are using Word, Microsoft provides the Readability Statistics for your document once the spelling and grammar check is complete. The report gives you counts for words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences. It give you averages: sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, and characters per word. Most importantly, it gives you the readability information: percentage of passive sentences, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. This information is very important, especially if your writing is age-specific. The higher the Flesch Reading Ease score and lower Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels, the easier a document is to read. Lower Flesch Reading Ease and Higher Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scores indicate more complex text. 


3. Have someone that you trust to give you brutally honest feedback read the manuscript. Make sure you are clear about what you want when requesting this read-through. Some things to have them look for are consistency, clarity of ideas, and logical flow. If your subject deals with technical details not familiar to the general public, make sure to clarify terms and concepts. I discovered the importance of this when I sent out copies of "The Fear Below" to my beta readers, all of whom were science fiction or horror fans, but two of them were non-scuba divers. They pointed out that I had used scuba-specific acronyms and ideas that were completely unfamiliar to the general public. Remember, the readers that seem harsh and critical are often going to give you the best advice. If it is too painful to your ego to dwell on their criticism (it always is for me) skim through their response (assuming it is written), then don't look at it for a few days. When you look at it again, you will be more prepared to hear what they are saying.


4. Make all of these cumulative changes before you ever even consider sending your manuscript to an editor. 


If you follow these steps, what you will be turning over to your editor will in actuality be a second or third draft free of typos and glaring errors. Your editor will thank you.