Can you relate?
Sam took a few deep breaths and said she’d tackle the next draft by first trimming text and cutting extraneous material. It seemed the easiest and most manageable thing to do. But I advised her against this. It takes a lot of energy and commitment to do another draft. Yes, with each draft you deepen your understanding of the story in some way, but how do you maximise the leap forward in the next draft?
The more you understand what you need to do in the next draft, and what needs to happen at a chapter and scene level, the fewer drafts you will need to do in the long run. The key is to create an outline of what you have on the page, as opposed to what you think you have on the page, so you can more easily identify where the strengths and weaknesses are. Yes, a detailed and close read through of the full draft from beginning to end is crucial: you may have lots of ideas that pop up, and you may have sections that feel flat but you’re not sure why. Pulling back to get a clear view of the big picture with a visual representation, a map of how the story unfolds, allows you to ‘see’ the work in a different way, and gives you more guidance on what to do in the next draft.
Donning the planning hat
Some writers meticulously plot their story before they begin chapter one, filling exercise books with lists, diagrams and spreadsheets. These are the planners. Others just start writing and let the story develop and unfold as they go. These are sometimes referred to as ‘pantsers’, those who write ‘from the seat of their pants’. Usually, writers use a combination of the two approaches. It’s not that one way is better than the other; it is totally dependent on the writerly practice that works for the individual author. But once you have a complete draft, even if you are a pantser, I highly recommend you don the planning hat before launching into endless revisions.
You can use index cards, sticky notes, power point slides, or draw boxes to create a storyboard. Or you can use a spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet can have any columns relevant to your story, such as point of view character (if you have multiple POVs), time/date, turning points, setting, even word count. In a story where the passage of time is critical you can chart hours, days or weeks and keep track of what is happening with each character. In a story with interweaving plotlines you can chart the progression of each story thread.
Many writers use some form of outline to help them work through multiple drafts. You can find some interesting examples of outlines online from J.K. Rowling, Joseph Heller, Normal Mailer and more.
Chapter outlines
I advise writers to create an outline as they read through the draft, considering the parameters and purpose of each chapter, and tracking what happens. You can use one of the mapping methods mentioned above, or simply make some dot points for each chapter.
When I’m assessing a manuscript, my notes on each chapter include time and setting, point of view character if there is more than one, and the key event of the chapter. If there are multiple points of view, or the story covers a long time period, or weaves together threads from different times, or uses different narrative voices, I track these along the way, often in a simple spreadsheet so that the writer can see the big picture clearly.
Often writers see things about their story that they haven’t been able to see before. For example, one writer I worked with was following three different women’s stories in her non-fiction manuscript. She thought she had neatly interwoven them, but when I drew up a simple list of the chapters and gave each a highlight colour depending on which woman’s story was featured, she could easily see the lack of consistent braiding and balance in how the stories unfolded on the page. This view allowed her to rethink how she wanted to structure the work and in her next draft, with that clarity, she was able to address this successfully.
A chapter outline can help you to see which chapters seem to lack a key event and need rethinking, or whether you have too much backstory up front, or whether there is a better place to begin the story. It can be a quick and effective diagnostic tool for structural corrections.
Creating a chapter outline provides you with a map with a certain level of detail, from a certain distance. Some writers have short chapters containing a single scene, but most writers group scenes together into chapters. Next step is to turn the ‘map’ view of a chapter outline into a ‘satellite’ view of a scene outline whereby you can see the terrain more clearly and in more detail.
See Mapping Your Story Part 2: Scene outlines