In 2021, I wrote about 13,000 words on this first draft. I think I restarted it twice and put it away more often than I wrote. From March of this year to now, I’ve written 63,000 words. As of 11pm, Thursday, June 9th, I’ve completed my first draft of Symbiosis at 76,000 words. This is the first book in a planned trilogy. How did I go from writing 10,000 over the span of a year to writing 63,000 in the span of 3 months?
Bookdun! This is a group of writers on discord all with one goal — get the book done. There are team competitions and events. There are daily and weekly goals. You can earn roles and awards. It’s your choice to be as involved as you want to be. I cannot recommend this discord writing group enough.
Moving on to the elephant in the room — editing! I finally finished this draft and now it’s time to edit. It’s time to get this draft into shape. It’s time to turn this draft into a novel. But, where do I start? There are hundreds of books on writing. Some writing books mention editing in passing, but I need more. I want to read five different full processes for editing, six possible ways to just get started, and four things to absolutely ignore during the process. Sure, there are websites with the top 10 this or top 10 that — but they do not get into the meat of the editing process.
There are numerous ways to structure a story. There are specific processes you can follow depending on genre, pace, and point of view. However, I cannot locate a specific process for editing let alone multiple processes with variances depending on any number of variables.
That main suggestion seems to be to start with the big picture and save line by line editing for the last review. I purchased an annual subscription to Plottr with hopes it will help me see my draft in a big picture format. Right now, my draft is a list of no name chapters in which things happen. Some of the chapters make sense. Some of the chapters do not. I can tell you quite honestly there’s a few scenes right in the middle, and they do not flow with the story. I could feel it while I was writing it. So why did I keep it? Because my goal was to get it all out, then go back after the draft was done. I would jokingly say, “that issue is for editing Wendy, not drafting Wendy.” Well, editing Wendy doesn’t see the humor.
I’m off to start some sort of editing process. My plan is to get the major plot points into Plottr for a visual of the draft. From there I’ll add more detail and look for the holes. I’ll let you know how it’s going in the coming weeks. I am open to any suggestions or advice on editing a fiction draft.
Wendy Crafton Writes 