Second Draft Question

[sweetnpetite]

You've written your first draft and let it cool off for a while. You're ready to look at it with fresh eyes and make revisions.

How do you look at it as a whole, when it is so big?

I honestly have no idea how to do a second draft...

Advice?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Assuming you have the draft in Word or similar, I'd just start reading, making changes as you go. If you want to see changes, use "track changes", but why bother? Just keep asking, does it read right? Assuming your spelling and grammar is good, obviously.

 

[oggbashan]

You've written your first draft and let it cool off for a while. You're ready to look at it with fresh eyes and make revisions.

How do you look at it as a whole, when it is so big?

I honestly have no idea how to do a second draft...

Advice?

I print it off, even if it is 50+ A4 pages, punch holes in the edge before putting in a folder and then sit down well away from the computer to read it.

(I use a black and white laser printer. The cost of the cartridges and the paper is reasonable. I use a ream of cheap paper every week.)

I have a pen in my hand and mark typos, inconsistencies, non-sequiturs, plot problems.

On a SECOND draft I don't expect to find many large errors.

For some stories I can have up to five or six print-outs before I'm satisfied. After the second draft I might temporarily change the type face and or size before printing so it doesn't look the same.

When I've finished all the intermediate draft print-outs go through the shredder but I've saved all the versions in my 'old drafts' folder. I have thousands of old drafts but I keep them because just once I decided to rewrite a story going back to draft 6 when I had got into a mess on draft 14.

All my stories, completed or incomplete, and all my drafts from the time I started writing for Literotica will fit on a single DVD as .doc and .txt files. As .txt they would fit on a CD.

But the folders with the printouts of my completed stories take up eight feet of shelf space.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I'm with electric on this...after running it through Grammarly, I have a problem with not using enough commas. I just start reading. If I don't like something, I change it on the fly.

I then put it aside once more for a shorter period and give it one final read through before I publish.

 

[visioneer]

Read the story out loud to yourself, or have your computer or someone else read it to you. Our ears are finely tuned to catch awkward phrasing, bad grammar, and the like. When you hear something jarring, pause and either mark or fix it.