How to Polish Your First Draft in 5 Passes
Research uncovered a classic approach to moving that first version over to a submittable, polished final - from a long out-of-print text from the most successful writer-training program of all time...
Excerpt from an upcoming WriterpreneurOS supplement - now in beta-release (see below…)
By William Foster Harris
In our university classes over a period of about twenty years we have found that ordinarily it is best to drive ahead with the first draft as rapidly and continuously as possible, trying never to look back. Naturally, this method will not suit all writers, and you will need to experiment and find out for yourself which is your best way. But most of our successful selling writers seem to arrive eventually at a procedure something like this:
One. Write your first draft as rapidly and continuously as you can manage it, trying never to look back, not even to the preceding page.
Two. Now let this first draft “get cold.” Set it aside for a day or two and think and do something else. At the very least, let it cool overnight, because in the morning you may have a very different idea of it than you had the night before.
Three. Now read it through coldly and jot down a very brief summary of the plot. You know what the parts of a plot are, you know where they should be. This is a surgical examination you are making now to determine whether or not the baby has the requisite number of arms and legs, a head on the right end, and feet where they should be. If you cannot synopsize the plot, condensing it into a couple of paragraphs, then you know something is the matter. And you know also just where surgery is needed.
Try to do this as coldbloodedly as possible, just as though you were criticizing the story of some completely unknown. With your own story, as with your own child, you will never be able to be as completely objective as you might be with the work of a stranger. This, incidentally, is why surgeons never operate on members of their own family and dislike to work even on close friends. Our own are too close to us, we cannot see them clearly enough for our objective techniques. If you have a competent coach, or writer-friend who is not an amateur, perhaps here you can ask him to read for you and judge the plot. But for the most part, painfully and clumsily you must learn to do this for yourself.
Four. Now, if you deem it necessary, rewrite the story to incorporate the plot corrections needed. Start at the first, and go through from beginning to end again. Don’t start at the end and work back. What we are trying to do here is not to eliminate that living, first-time-it-happened, very-first account feeling. All too often a too-meticulous writer cuts all the life out of his story when he tries to revise. So you bear this in mind. Cut as little as possible, change as little as possible. You are trying to make the story seem more real, more believable. For goodness’ sake, never change anything simply for the sake of literary style or because you think it could be “better English.”
Five. You are not finished yet. Let this revision cool and go over it from beginning to end once again. This time look for minutiae.
Read it one time to make sure all the paragraphs tie together. Edit with a pencil if they don’t.
Read it again to be sure there are no bad transitions, no pronouns with indefinite antecedents, no “he’s” or “she’s” that could refer to almost anybody.
Read it again to see if it cannot be speeded up, if, perhaps, paragraphs or even whole sections cannot profitably be cut out.
Read it once more to be sure you have introduced all the characters in the first four pages, you have planted all the properties you use, and you have pointed to all the important actions.
In brief, make about four or five versions of your story after the first draft, trying hard to concentrate on just one thing in each version. That is,
one revision in which you correct the plot.
Another in which you cut and trim for speed and length.
Another in which you watch for details, clumsy sentences, bad transitions, indefinite pronouns, excess wordage, and the like.
This infinitely tedious business is what polishing a story amounts to, and it is why the yarns in the great national magazines are called “slick” stories. For the most part they are just that – tales the author has done over and over and over, with infinite pains, just as he might polish a precious stone.
I admit sadly, only too often the ultimate result seems to be a brilliant polish job with absolutely nothing underneath it, not even a piece of glass. But nevertheless, it is what most magazine editors, and nearly all book editors as well, have come to expect.
There is a difference between a first-draft story, however vital, and a laboriously polished “slick” story, just as there is between a diamond in the rough and a finely cut and polished gem. The editors, objectively minded for the most part, all too often can see only the objective polish.
But if you are writing “with a purpose” – and believe me this is quite without profit or honor in our age – then you must also learn to revise something in the above manner, but with far more underlying purpose. Your primary consideration here is to bring out your theme.
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