The Ultimate Guide to Redrafting

What made me want to write an ultimate guide to redrafting? Thank you so much for asking. There were a couple of key things:

1. I finished redrafting my contemporary YA story last year, and actually enjoyed the process! So, I wanted to spread the joy.
2. In working with writers as a developmental editor, I’ve been collecting a lot of advice on redrafting. I thought that might be useful to people other than my clients!

Before we get started though! I think it’s worth making sure we’re all on the same page about what redrafting actually is.

What is redrafting? And is it the same as editing?

Redrafting is the process of large-scale re-writing of a draft. Editing typically means working within a draft you’ve already written and improving it. There’s overlap between the two processes, of course.

At many stages of the editing process, you might find yourself re-writing passages, or even chapters, to better fit with new ideas. And while redrafting you might lift some already-written passages with minimal changes for your new draft.

If, however, you’re going to be re-writing a majority of the manuscript, I’d call that redrafting. And I think it requires a very different approach to later-stage or more surface-level editing. I’ve talked about outlining in a previous post, which I’d also recommend reading if you’re planning big-picture changes to a draft.

But now that we know what redrafting is, let’s move on to how to do it!

Redrafting: The Ultimate Guide!

Tease out the individual components of your story, as best you can, to see what’s working and what needs work

I recommend doing this by working out the main plot threads for your story. Any significant character arcs, and important sub-plots. Once you have a list, consider how well executed those plot elements are already.

You want to consider things like pacing, set-up and payoff. For pacing, look at how well distributed the story element is throughout the book. Does it play out over a reasonable period of time? What’s the gap between each of the major developments for the plotline?

Set-up and payoff are intrinsically linked. Consider whether the way a plot is set up fits with the importance of the storyline. Is the payoff given enough space for readers to appreciate what’s going on? Do you need to spread out the payoff of various sub-plots differently to make room for them?

Depending on how many changes you decide you’re going to need to make, you might get quite a long list from this process! You don’t need to tackle it all in one go. Pick out a manageable number of issues to work on, and make those your primary focus. Starting from the most significant storylines first and working your way down is usually a good approach!

Redrafting is big-picture work, so try not to get bogged down in the details

Redrafting is not the time for worrying about sentence-level issues. Typos, clunky dialogue, issues in description, all of this is stuff to think about later down the line. It’s editing stuff.

Although, now that I mention it, if you want advice on your descriptions you should check out this post!

While you’re redrafting, you want to be thinking about the big picture. Character development, plotlines, plot holes or major inconsistencies. These are the things you’re going to be trying to address while you redraft.

Now, does that mean you’re not allowed to try to improve on writing from the earlier draft(s)? Obviously not! Part of the joy of writing is constantly trying to improve. But what I do think is important is to put most of your energy into the kind of problems you identified in the previous step.

You will have to delete some of your earlier work, and that’s okay

When you redraft, you will inevitably get rid of things you’ve written. When I was redrafting last year, I started a whole new Scrivener project. There were some scenes, descriptions or pieces of dialogue that made it across to the new draft unscathed. For the most part though, I effectively started from scratch.

Redrafting might involve deleting more than just scenes. You might end up losing whole plotlines or characters. That can sting! But it’s something to brace yourself for, and be prepared to ditch any characters or storylines that aren’t working.

Don’t delete any old drafts entirely though! Even if, like me, you don’t end up re-using a lot of it as you re-write. You might want to salvage something from an old draft later. And, if nothing else, it’s nice to look back and see how far you’ve come!

Use the redrafting process to consider what you learned while you were writing

Again – this isn’t about the sentence-level stuff. Here, I’m talking about what you’re learning about pacing. Character and plot development. Balancing storylines across a manuscript.

Writing a first draft is a major achievement! You’ll have learned a lot from it, and you can absolutely build on that as you redraft.

Personally, I find it really helpful to either talk through what I learned on my first attempt or write some notes. I’ll make a particular effort to do this around scenes or plotlines that I knew I had trouble with first time around. The very elements I’m focusing on in my redraft, not coincidentally!

What were the questions that arose for you when you first wrote these plotlines or character arcs? What were the difficulties you faced? How did you try to resolve them in the earlier draft? What issues do you still feel need addressing, and how will you attempt to do that as you redraft?

Asking yourself these questions, often and repeatedly, will help you to make the most of the redrafting process.

How do you know when it’s time to move on to editing?

To give the answer I so often give when asked a question about writing… it depends! The easiest indicator is if you go back to the first step in this guide and don’t find any major plot or character issues that need addressing. If that’s the case, no need to redraft! But it’s also totally possible, and I might argue necessary, to move on to editing before that point.

Instead of waiting until there are no significant issues to work through, you need to examine the nature of those issues. Consider how much actually needs to change in order to fix it. Even fairly major plot-holes and inconsistencies can often be fixed with more targeted editing, instead of starting a draft from scratch.

If even asking this question has you tearing your hair out though, as you consider the number of scenes and conversations you’d need to fix? Then maybe another redraft is the simplest option. It’s got to be up to you, and what you think will be the most useful approach.

Have you got any redrafting advice you’d like to share?

Writing is a really personal thing, so I’m very aware that my approach won’t work for everyone! I base my advice on my own experience as a writer, and my experience of working as a developmental editor with other writers. But there’s probably stuff that I’ve missed, or tips that I haven’t thought of. Let me know in the comments if you have any advice on the redrafting process!