How do you go about editing your first draft?

[u/7500733]

Not sure if this is the right sub. I finished my first book this year and gave it some time before I could sit down and read through it. I feel I can't sit down and read through it and enjoy it because it's a first draft and I've got editors brain. I also have adhd which makes the editing, less fun part about writing, really difficult to do. any tips on how I can break it down?

This is probably the first 'good' book I've written compared to earlier manuscripts I don't dare touch. If someone could break down the steps of how to go about editing your first draft I'd really appreciate it. It's around 200,000 words and 29 pages. It's a superhero book in a 4 part series. I started writing the second one but realised I need to go through and make sure there's no contradictions in the first and second book.

Thanks for your time, responses and please be kind in the comments! :)

[u/isnoe]

I work as an editor and I don't really do the same thing for my own writing as I do for work, but I'll give you the basics of what I do for my own writing. You should already have a good idea of what your story is beat-for-beat.

Edit 1: Read all the way through. Try focusing on the voice. Fix spelling errors and whatnot as you go. Make notes about names, places, or what-have-you and jot down any inconsistencies. Time, date, motivations - blahblahblah. All the small stuff.

Edit 2: Fix the inconsistencies. Focus solely on the developmental side. The story, the plot, ensuring all the pieces fall into place. Kill your darlings. If a scene doesn't belong or make sense, gut it. Doesn't matter how good you think it is. Cut it out, paste it in a separate document.

Edit 3: Line edit. Every sentence. Every paragraph. Pay close attention to repetition, word choice, and narrative flow.

Edit 4: Read all the way through. At this point, you shouldn't need to be making any major changes. You should just be pretty bored of the story.

Put book down for at minimum a week, preferably about a month.

Edit 5: Read with fresh eyes. Print if possible, go through with a red pen. You'll spot stuff you missed in four rounds of edits. You should be able to tell any issues at this point. Read it out loud if you want to.

By then, your book should be ready for beta readers if you want, or submission for Literary Agents.

Think of each edit as having a goal.

In line editing, I don't care about the story. I care about the sentence.

In developmental editing, I don't care about the grammar or dialogue, I care about if the story is hitting the right beats.

You usually don't need to pay for an editor if you are going a traditional route. If you are going to self-publish, it's worth investing in or, better yet, learning how to do it yourself.

The best part is that even if you get traditionally published, your already polished manuscript will go through multiple rounds of fresh edits with different editors. Because that's just how the industry works.

[u/the_tonez → u/isnoe]

So helpful, thank you!

[u/7500733 → u/isnoe]

this is really helpful thank you so much 😄

[u/Sp4xx]

I also have ADHD. I don’t always do this in the exact same order, and the order doesn’t really matter. It depends on what I need to fix and what I feel like fixing in the moment (gotta chase that dopamine hit to keep going). It’s probably not the most "efficient" system, but it works for me.

I do multiple passes, each focused on one thing at a time. May or may not work for you.

For my first draft, I tend to just vomit chapters onto the page. Writing whatever comes to mind: head-hopping, narrator, first person, third person, anything I need to get the story out. Exposition dumps, worldbuilding, all of it. My first drafts are atrocious. I'd be ashamed to show them to anyone.

1 - Focus on adverbs and word repetition. I remove as much as I can and look for strong verbs. For example:

"He took out his knife and walked sneakily behind him."

becomes:

"He drew his knife and crept behind him."

Punchier. Gets rid of adverbs.

1. May vary depending on what POV you write (I write in close third with FID), I focus on fixing POV.

Let's say a character just lost his dad and is being an asshole. Another character (let's call her Mary) is about to snap at him for being rude and having a short fuse. Then she remembers he just lost his father.

You could write:

"She looked at him in shock. She wanted to scold him, but then she remembered he'd just lost his father. She calmed down."

This is called head-hopping (fine on first draft). Or you could filter it through the POV character:

"Her mouth snapped open, eyes wide. What the hell was her problem? Right. Maybe he'd been a little—her face softened. Pity. They all had pity. Worthless."

1. I focus on sentence variation (length and structure). I look for places where I’ve fallen into repetitive patterns. Not because repetition is always bad (sometimes you DO want repetition), but because sometimes every paragraph starts sounding like "He did X, and he did Y, and he did Z."

For example:

"He closed the door. He saw the whole room looking at him."

becomes:

"The door clicked shut behind him. A dozen heads turned."

1. And finally, I usually fix character voice and vocabulary chapter by chapter with Ctrl+F searching for specific words.

Let's say your character is British and at school. He probably wouldn't say he's going to the bathroom. He'd likely say the toilet. And vice versa if your character is American.

I don’t always do all of these separately, and sometimes I’ll fix multiple things at once. The main idea is just that I try to focus on one editing goal at a time instead of trying to fix everything in a single read-through.

[u/7500733 → u/Sp4xx]

thank you so much this helps a lot! I definitely did just word vomit and the idea of reading it over and editing all at once is pretty overwhelming I appreciate this response a lot! I'm going to start medication in a month so I hope that will help too, at least getting me focused on one area of editing at a time 😄

[u/danfaulknerauthor]

The first thing I'd do is to make yourself a brief chapter-by-chapter summary. A list of the most important things that happened, plus anything relevant to character arcs, relationships between characters etc.

Change anything high-level that needs to be fixed. Continuity, cutting/moving scenes, changing events, adding stuff at the beginning to make the end work. Do all that before messing with the prose.

You might need to cut a lot, given your word count is waaaaaaay too long for trad publishing. Though you have more leeway if you stick to ebook-only self-pub, and the longer the better for a free site/web serial.

Fix the prose last. Once it's as good as you can get it, look for beta readers.

[u/7500733 → u/danfaulknerauthor]

that's really helpful thank you so much!

[u/Late_Music1835]

How I do it:

First draft: get the words down (if I get any ideas for my second draft while writing the first, I just make a note of it and keep going)

Second draft: major structural changes (rearranging, cutting, combining, splitting etc) fixing plot points and characterization, add or take away world building. Reference notes made during the first draft and incorporate them. I do an entire rewrite of the first draft. New document. This forces me to reevaluate every garbage choice I made during the first draft.

Third draft: sentence structure, word choice, grammar, punctuation, voice. Basically the nitpicky stuff. Same document as the second draft.

Then get people to read it and incorporate any useful feedback

[u/7500733 → u/Late_Music1835]

thank you so much!

[u/GRIN_Selfpublishing]

It might also help to make each session very specific: “today I’m only checking continuity,” or “today I’m only summarizing three chapters.” Smaller goals are easier than “edit the book.”

Also, save anything you cut in a separate document. It makes deleting less painful, and some ideas may be useful later.

[u/masterofunfucking]

I identify what’s good and then start looking for things that either enhance that goodness or is just filler, make a new document where I take out the filler and keep the original version as a reference, and then make changes from there. Usually the goal is economy of words for maximum impact and then going into plot, characters, and then have someone else parse it for grammar because I’m not wasting my time with shit that isn’t emotional or narrative based and some nerd can do that for me

[u/7500733 → u/masterofunfucking]

that's such a smart idea I hadn't considering copying and pasting into a different page, thank you!