), but the sister isn’t listening because she’s getting on the boat, which – did I tell you? Built by Varick Design. But now you need to make sure that your novel draft works on other readers as you want it to. Your draft is a jigsaw full of individual pieces. Get your bullet points (that you made as a make-believe editor) and incorporate them. At some point, you’ll just know you’re done, and it won’t be the revision fatigue talking, you will just really, truly, and actually be done. At some point, you’ll run out of ideas. Is she about to lose another person she loves? Even if you decide to get a pro editor or beta reader, it never hurts to take a crack at self-editing first. The trees are enough to symbolise death and loss. You don’t have to do things in that order, of course, but choose one thing to tackle and do that before moving onto the next. Now it’s time for some make believe. And will the boat really sink? Her blog is used for writing courses around the world. Sometimes I start editing if I have hit writers block and again it normally gives me the lift I need. When something happens near the beginning of your novel that just doesn’t work, it can be extremely tricky to change it and still make the rest of the novel make sense. Enter your details to create your Free AutoCrit account. All authors know that writing is rewriting. Eve hires a band because, even though she’s grieving, she’s beginning to live again with Adam’s help, plus she wants to make it a nice day for Jane. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window). Very few possess the clarity, discipline, and intestinal fortitude to make the decisions necessary to turn a mediocre first stab into an incredible novel. Frank quit. Change ). Writers often have a clear idea of the story they want to write, but after months of writing, they find the draft has circled for a while before running away in various directions and becoming shapeless. Nearly anyone can write a first draft. So after all that research I decided to write the article I would have wanted to read…. Does the scene move the story along? Just have a big jug of water to hand. Just sat down with my first chapter of my WIP this afternoon and thought exactly what you said–what bunch of junk. If, after tackling all the changes (both major and minor), you’ve revised your book as far as you can on your own, and you can’t think of anything else you need to change . If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel a massive sense of achievement, along with relief. I highly recommend you go read both these books, they are great. There is no such thing as a perfect first draft. I’m going to take all the elements of my made-up story above, write new scenes and rearrange them so they make a workable manuscript. What next? . A weak spot that you brush over in the first few chapters can worm its way through the novel in such a way that it can become very, very difficult to fix later on. Details such as dates, professional terms, scientific formulae, and historical events will all need to be carefully checked to ensure you got them right. The chances are that by this point you’ll be cross-eyed and hate everything to do with your novel, including the air that surrounds it and the space in between the words on the page. You have to think. To get around that, jot down your thoughts in your notebook as you go – for example, “Pg.