Support for Indie Authors discussion

I know every book is different, but I was wondering how many drafts on average are written per book.

Edit: Also, how different was your final draft from your first draft?

PaperRose wrote: "I know every book is different, but I was wondering how many drafts on average are written per book."

I wrote two drafts for my first novel, followed that up with extensive edits for content and grammar, and finally submitted it to my publisher. After it was accepted, we went through three rounds of content edits and three rounds of line edits. Pretty typical, from what I've read. Hope this helps!

1st vomit draft, line by line rewrite, another massive tweaking round by line/paragraph, edit rounds 4-6 = more reworking and tweaking, rounds 7-8 cleaning up and tweaking, rounds 9-10 obsessively cleaning up and tweaking.

I stop at 10, because I could go on infinitely, causing my husband to think I need a nice white jacket and a padded room.

My older stuff, 2-3 complete rewrites, plus all of the below.

Anything drafted in the last two to three years, first draft is pretty clean. Do a continuity read and edit. More detailed edit, tweak descriptions, eliminate awkward or repetitive phrasing. Run through Hemingway, Grammarly, and text to speech. Beta readers. Any changes required after beta readers. Send out to proofreader. Make the final edits and get it out. That's about six drafts.

I prefer to have the first draft as clean as possible, like PD. I'll do a full sweep on the computer just to make sure the story flows and then I'll send it to my kindle to read as if it's a book I've picked up. I'll make notes as I go if there's still any plot issues, and catch as many grammar and typos as I see. After that, every read through is just proofreading.

My first drafts tend to be kind of experimental, I guess you might say. I do a lot of plotting before I start, but things inevitably change and I never really feel like I know my characters until I have a solid draft or two finished. What that means is that I usually end up doing two to three rewrites before I even start working on line-edits or proofreading. With the novel I'm publishing in July, I've done about five rewrites where I've changed at least half of the plot material between drafts. Needless to say, the story now only vaguely resembles that first draft, but it's been five years since I started it and I've grown a lot as a writer since then, so that probably has something to do with it. I've almost finished drafting a different novel and, while I'll still probably end up rewriting it a couple times, I don't think it will require the kind of huge drastic changes I made to this one I'm publishing soon.

I've written several short stories, too, and the finalized versions of those tend to be a lot closer to their first drafts than my novels. I'm not really sure why that is--maybe just because there's a lot less time passing between the first and final drafts.

The story itself is pretty much all there in the rough draft, usually. I might make some minor changes, but seldom anything crazy. I only make changes to the story if I see that they will enhance it or give it a more interesting twist.

Character development might continue through all drafts, but generally by the end of the second draft my characters are pretty solid.

Pretty much the only thing I'm looking at after the second draft is the wording of things, looking for better ways to describe or explain, looking for punctuation or spelling errors, etc.

It could take a total of three drafts. It could take ten. It could take more. It's just done when it's done.

Book 1 was rewritten twice. Book 2 was rewritten once. Book 3 was rewritten once. As far as edited versions, usually 3-5 each. I'm finding they usually need less work as I go through the series.

I don't usually do a complete rewrite unless it's a story that I haven't done anything with in a long while. Then I'll do a complete rewrite, beginning to end. For editing, I usually do at least four drafts. There might be more editing done, depending on how I feel after draft four.

I think my current story is the one with the most drafts so far - coming up to nine drafts in total when I'm done. Possibly even ten. The first few drafts are all about cleaning up the spelling and grammar, with the rest dedicated to fixing plot issues. So far I've only ever had to do one rewrite and that was for a story I wrote over ten years ago back when my writing skills were in desperate need of polishing.

Story-wise my first and final drafts are almost the same, but my final drafts tend to be a heck of a lot shorter than my first drafts. I do a lot of cutting. Although ironically there's a story I'm working on now that's actually getting longer, which is a good thing since it was a little too short for my liking at first.

I must overdo things. For my first book, I'm not sure if any sentences were kept the same between draft 1 and published version. In six years, I rewrote chapters and scenes so many times that my deleted scenes file was the same length as my book. I would struggle to count the drafts it went through (and I like math).

For book 2, considerably fewer. Maybe 4 or 5 "rough" drafts and 4 or 5 "polished" drafts?

I'm really hoping book 3 will have even fewer drafts.

I edit as I go, so my first draft is essentially it. I do lot of work on it afterwards, but it's really heavy duty polishing rather than a new draft.

The overall plot arc remains the same but details change. Most of it goes through about three or four rewrites.

However sometimes a passage is difficult. The chapter where Jane ends up outside the galaxy and has to rethink her priorities is in fact the sixteenth version.

Basically, we don't do "drafts" per se. We write until we are happy. We don't finish a story until we like what we have, and we don't rewrite to any substantial degree once we finish the draft. We do almost all our editing (for wording and such) as we go along.

For our first book, we wrote a draft, proofed ourselves it and published it. We didn't know there was such a thing as beta readers then. Our second book, we learned about beta readers, and got some feedback on the draft, which added one short scene and made minor changes to a couple of others. The third book, we involved some people early on and got feedback on the plot structure as we went along. So there again, the draft and the final were the same except for proofing.

Sometimes it takes a long time to be happy. We've been working on the end of current book for a couple of years now, and we aren't yet quite happy.

Usually 7 or 8 before I send it to the beta/proofreader to finalize, then one more after that to review abs implement suggestions.

As many as it takes. But like a lot of others here, I usually try to produce a finished work as I go, as carefully crafted as I can make it. I always have to go back and redo a few things, and proof and edit, but tweaking it as I go along seems to get me more into the story, and I can reread it as I would a finished book. That's just my way of doing it, and I know it wouldn't work for everybody.

I guess I only write one draft (after the first one) where significant changes take place like added scenes. After that, I do probably five proofreads until I am happy. Then it gets formatted and I read it over a few more times to catch errors or formatting issues.

"As many as it takes" about sums it up. Rewrite the story until you have no more plot conflicts. Make sure the descriptive language is something you are pleased with, work in more metaphors, etc.. Edit until your eyes bleed. Publish-read reviews, edit more- release new edition. Repeat process until reviewers no longer have any valid criticism.

Then market like crazy, and start the next book.

I'm another who rewrites as she goes. First book took over two years to write because the story kept changing. As I only got to the end twice in that time, would you call that two drafts?

While I'm writing I'm quite obsessive about secrecy, and a book has to be very close to what I think is the end product before I even consider letting anyone else near it. Maybe that's the first draft, because I have been known to make fairly major changes when my reader shouts at me.

it all depends on how much I did on research and took notes. for signet it wasn't much of a difference (other than tighter writing) between first 3 drafts and the final 8 years later lolz . for demonic awakening I had 8 drafts but it was basically unchanged as well, just had deleted a bunch of scenes that weren't working and rearranged some things. the agency had many drafts (over 10) and 3 major rewrites. for my current batch the teen fantasy/magic girl one had 4 drafts and 2 major rewrites and my epic fantasy saga had 2 drafts and one rewrite. I'm getting better at it it seems lolz. these days I try for 3 drafts and 1 rewrite since now I take better notes and have a more streamlined process.

Robert wrote: "4-5. Second to get the story right. Third spelling. Fourth grammar. 5th styling."

I like that methodology. I think that should work for most writers. Simple, but organized.

With my novel, I wrote and then before continuing the following day, I would reread/edit what I had written the day before. You have a whole lot to edit with a complete work, so this helps alleviate some missing words, tonality, etc. I don't really like to consider them separate drafts - just revisions.
1. The first draft is the complete story written as quickly as possible but hitting on all the points you want to.
2. The first revision is to make sure the story makes sense in the order you planned for it.
3. The next revision should focus on spelling and grammar and other missing words.
4. The last revision is to ensure consistency - like tone and style - but that just isn't the story from the narrating perspective, but making sure all the characters stay in their character. That's a tough one, especially if you have a lot of players - which I usually do.

In editing and revisions, don't get too caught up in the pursuit of perfection. It's a novel, not a poem. You'll have plenty of time with editors/agents/publishers for "perfecting."

As Many as it takes until I'm happy with it.

I'd like to be more patient with rewrites... There's no fixed amount of times for me to re-draft a story, I usually just stop when I feel like there's nothing left for me to do.
Most of the work seems to get done in the second draft, though. That's where I'll add or delete scenes, change lines of dialogue, put in new characters or decide that Act III needs a dragon :) after that, the work seems to consist largely of tying the prose together nicely.

J.M. wrote: "As Many as it takes until I'm happy with it."

That's me!

Just one,I tried but I simply could not make up my mind to prepare a new version of my novel.Somehow,I have this premonition that the new one is not going to end up better than the first,maybe it is because of the peculiar story and setting of my first novel

My writing tends to be one continuous draft, with scenes added and eliminated along the way. It's very rare I do a complete rewrite.

3-4. Once to get it done. Second to get each chapter right as a stanadalone. Third to make sure all the chapters hang together. Fourth for satisfaction.

How many drafts?

How long is a string?

I find when I begin to remove a comma and then put it back and then alter the tense of a word, then retype the original; that it's time to stop before I over edit my book. This usually happens through my third draft or fourth draft.

I also write the first draft from start to finish without reading back through it. That seems to work for me but might not work for everybody.

Hope that helps
all the best
Adrian

Adrian wrote: "I find when I begin to remove a comma and then put it back and then alter the tense of a word, then retype the original; that it's time to stop before I over edit my book. This usually happens thro..."

That's pretty much how I do it. When it's change for the sake of change, and the changes don't really make it better, it's time to stop.

Millions. But only sometimes, like when the first draft isn't very good.
Some books only need 4 or 5.

I dont do drafts. I just write and rewrite until its as clean and coherent as I can make it, then send it in for editing. With my first book didnt know about beta readers. With my second book, they all let me down. Hopefully with my future books I'll have reliable beta readers.

Yolanda wrote: "I don't do drafts. I just write and rewrite..."

That's what writing a draft is. Your original writing is the first draft, the first rewrite is the second draft and so on.

My current manuscript is in draft 8, and it's hugely different from draft 1. The basic plot idea has remained the same, but the story used to be dark and taking place in the future, whereas it's now light and contemporary.

For some reason, six seems to be my magic number for drafts. I've written four books and three of them took six drafts until I was satisfied. The first three drafts concentrate on revisions to the story; the last three focus more on editing.

If you count the number of times I start over at the beginning of the document and go all the way to the end, I'm an average of 5-6 drafts. But in reality it's a continuous process where I can go back at any time during the revision process, make a change, and then start from that change moving forward to ensure continuity for the rest.

As for how different, it's vastly different from first to last. From re-writes of character, to clearer sentences, down to eliminating overused words, the last will resemble the first, but they will read completely different.

Anywhere from five to seven, depending on what kind of notes I get back from my editor. Thankfully, much of my revising is just that -- revising. I haven't found myself doing too much re-writing as of yet, but I only have three novels and a short story under my belt. That could change down the road.

I can't tell you how many I do on average, because I've only written one novel so far. I went over it beginning to end five times after the first draft, with continous rewrites of specific portions in between, whenever it occurred to me that something needed changing. But I would say the golden rule is, keep doing new drafts until you feel it your book is ready.