I Wrote My First Draft! Now What?

If you are currently at the stage in your novel where you finished a first draft, you have the foundation placed for your story, but now you feel overwhelmed by your next steps – I truly hope this blog post gives some helpful ideas!

I decided to write about this topic for today’s blog post because I have a recently completed first draft, almost two, and I understand the daunting feeling that comes after typing those last words and knowing you have thousands and thousands of words to work with. Maybe you’re feeling pretty good about what you wrote in your first draft, or maybe it feels like a mess of what you hoped would be the vision for your novel exploding on the pages. Either way, I’ll start off by saying this: YOU FINISHED A FIRST DRAFT! That is incredible. Whether you feel confident, discouraged, or somewhere in between… you took an incredible step in the long path of bringing your story to life in the way you always dreamed. It is SO easy to get beaten down by the outcome of your first draft because it isn’t going to be perfect. In my own experience, every first draft I’ve written has felt like an absolute disaster. 

There’s a quote by Terry Pratchett that says, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” Which you may or may not have heard many times before, and it’s true! It’s important to have the mindset while you write a first draft that drafting and editing are two different stages of the writing process. The biggest thing that has helped me stay on track while writing a first draft and not get caught up in editing or revising too early is having a quickly accessible place to jot down notes, it could be something as big as a way to rewrite the scene to make it better, but having a place to make that note then get back to writing the original scene is a game changer for me. I’d say the first draft is to let creativity flow as much as possible, editing is to take those beautiful creative pieces and craft them into a neater story. So, stop beating down your creative side, because it holds the most precious details for your novel.

Now, I’ll actually get into some ideas on how to handle your first draft after it’s done! Below are some tips that I have personally found helpful, I am certainly not the master of this topic, or any topic for that matter, but I can certainly share my own experiences and if they happen to help you – yay!

What to Do After Finishing Your First Draft…

1). You finished your first draft, pat yourself on the back – and if you won’t, I’ll say it: I’m proud of you! Wow, you showed up for this special story of yours until the very last page of this draft. Is it perfect? No. But no story is, it’s not about perfection, it’s about the message your soul wants to share. You were brave enough to place the stepping stones down even on those days where your vision felt so far out of reach, and that is beautiful progress. :) 

2). Okay, now you have your whole document looming over you. Don’t panic! Something that has helped me feel less overwhelmed is, instead of taking it all on right away, I like to step away. Even take a break from the novel, and that doesn’t mean you have to completely forget about it for a year.  Get some new perspectives. Take at least a week to process your novel and even stir up the excitement that got you excited for it in the first place.

3). Next, or during your break, it can be helpful to grab a pen and paper and write down why you love your story and some of the main points you find the most important to share in it. Ramble about it as much as you want with no expectations. We can so often get wrapped up in the perfection and the process of writing a novel that we can forget these simple things that are the foundation for it all! That’s why you are here in the first place. It can be an inspiring reminder that can boost your motivation to get back to your project.

4). Now, getting back to business. This can be the challenging part, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as you may think! Whether you are feeling the inspiration grow inside of you again or not, this next step made me more excited about my novel than ever. When I felt like it was time to return to my  first draft, I decided to re-outline the whole thing… which might sound intimidating, but it was extremely helpful. It doesn’t have to be an intense outline, you can really take it at your own pace. For me, I find it helpful to put each scene in bullet points and include the most IMPORTANT points in the scene. It usually starts out really simple, cut and dry, and then I get excited and ideas start popping in my mind and words start pouring out into my outline. If this doesn’t happen, that’s okay too! This outline is for you to assess what are the most crucial parts of your story, you can do it scene-by-scene, chapter-by-chapter, part-by-part, whatever suits you best. I also love doing “long outlines” before I write my first draft, but you can also do this after as well. I approach my outlines (long outlines, especially) like I’m having a conversation with someone about my story, I can add smiley faces and laugh and scream in all caps. Pretend like you’re sitting at a coffee shop with a writer friend and spilling all your ideas and brainstorming. 

5). After outlining, it’s now time to figure out what is the best thing to do with your first draft and your new outline, reminding you of all those details that you need to incorporate in your story that may have fallen through the cracks during your first draft (IT’S OKAY! I’ve completely forgotten about side characters before in the first draft… sorry guys). For my current novel that is at this stage in the writing process, I am at the early stages of a second draft. So, I have my first draft, I have my outline, I took some time away to ponder the most important things to me in this story, and now I am going to write another draft. This doesn’t mean that everything in the first draft has to be thrown in the garbage! In fact, I thought my entire first draft could’ve been discarded, but after outlining I realized that there are plenty of things that I want to keep. Sure, I need to build on those things, but without them I wouldn’t have any foundation to work with! That’s why we should never think our first draft is useless. I was pleasantly surprised by how much in my first draft I wanted to bring over to my second. The second draft is essentially the same idea as your first draft, but a step up, you have more ideas and you have notes on how you can build on certain scenes and aspects in the story. A second draft doesn’t necessarily mean you have to re-write the entire novel. You can copy scenes from the first draft and put them in the second, incorporate your new ideas or scene changes. It’s basically just enhancing draft one and continuing to climb the ladder to the final product.

(For me personally, after the second draft is complete, I would start to consider the editing process. That is looking a bit too far ahead, so don’t let this thought overwhelm you if it helps to focus on the current task at hand. But that’s a little peek at the current order in my mind for my story. Outline/plot. First draft. Re-outline. Second draft. Edit. But, take things as they come, sometimes you don’t know what your novel needs until the moment comes, and that is okay. <3)

6). No matter what direction you take after you write your first draft, the most important thing to remember is that your first draft is so important. It holds the puzzle pieces you need. You might feel that after your outline you want to go through your first draft for more of an editing approach as opposed to going right into a second draft, and of course that’s a valid next step as well! Every writer is different, every NOVEL is different. Each of my novels needs something different. Print out your first draft, read it, highlight things you love or things you need to change. That’s what I am thinking about doing with my next first draft before going into the second draft, which is completely different from what I did for my previous one. There really isn’t a right way to take the next steps after writing a first draft, but the number one thing I’d say is most important is the time you take afterwards to reassess why you poured your heart into the project in the first place, because it’s beautiful.

I hope you found this blog post helpful! If there’s a specific topic you want me to talk about in a future post or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I would love to connect with you. :) In the meantime, thank you so much for reading this and I wish you all the best on your writing journey! ~Hannah