What’s after that?

In my last post, I talked about the next steps after finishing a rough draft. In this post, I’m discussing the steps following that.

Once I get done making an outline of what I’ve already written, I start making changes based on my notes. I call it red-lettering because I use red in my outline for anything I need to work on. Red-Lettering usually doesn’t take long. It’s just basic additions of missing or wrong information.

I tend to write really, really tight in my first draft. So, my next step is to find out how short I am from my goal story length. I do a complete dig on the novel. I print out the scene, add missing details, lengthen it, try to figure out some unexploited subplots, stuff like that. Once done, I print it out again and do the dig on that scene again. And again. As many times as it takes to get where I want/need to be. This is where the hard work is.

But once that’s all done, I’m ready for the easy stuff: the fine line edit. I sit down, read the whole novel front to back with a red pen in my hand. When I’m done, my manuscript usually looks like someone slit their wrist open over it. Below is one of mine. But making the corrections from this is very, very fast.

Then I’m done.