Revising a first draft in three passes

A first draft exists so that a second one can. The trouble is that revising feels like one enormous task, and writers either tinker with the sentences on page one for a month or change everything at once and lose track of what the book was. Three passes, each with a single question, keep the work in order: the story first, then the scenes, then the lines. Polishing sentences in a scene you later cut is the most common way to waste a revision.

Let it rest, then read it straight through

Put the draft away for two to four weeks: long enough to forget the sentences, not so long that you forget the feeling. Then read it start to finish, in as few sittings as you can, as a reader would, on a phone, a tablet or paper, somewhere you cannot edit. Keep a notebook and write down only what you notice (sags after the wedding, why does he trust her?, too many kitchens). Do not fix anything. The read-through gives you the one thing a first draft cannot give you while you are writing it: the shape of the whole.

The story pass

One question: does the story work? Take the notebook and the outline and look at the book at the level of acts and turning points. Does the protagonist want something from the first chapter? Does each act end with a change you can name? Is the ending set up, and does it cost something? Are there two characters doing one job, a subplot that goes nowhere, a middle that marks time?

Fix these on the outline before you touch the prose: move scenes, merge characters, cut a thread, write the two new scenes the ending needs. This is the pass where whole chapters go, which is why it comes first. Sentences polished in a chapter you then delete go with it.

The scene pass

One question per scene: what changes here? Go through the book scene by scene and write, in one line, what is different at the end of the scene from the start: a decision, a discovery, a shift in a relationship. A scene with no answer is a scene to cut or to merge with its neighbour, however good its writing. Then check each scene for the faults the question tends to expose: it starts too early (three paragraphs of arriving), it ends too late (the characters say goodnight), the point of view wanders, the setting is missing or is described twice. Mark each scene done as you go, so you can see the pass move across the book.

The line pass

Only now the sentences. Read every paragraph for the things a draft collects: adverbs doing the verb’s job, filler (just, really, began to), passive constructions that hide who acted, the phrase you did not know you use in every chapter, sentences that run on because you were still finding the thought. Read the dialogue aloud; the tags and the lines that do not sound like speech show up in the ear before the eye. Keep the voice. A line pass that makes every sentence correct can also make every sentence the same; cut what is slack, not what is strange.

Cutting without fear

Writers keep weak scenes because deleting feels like losing work. So never delete: save a version of the book before each pass, and move cut scenes to the trash or to an “outtakes” chapter rather than into the void. When you know you can get a scene back in a minute, you cut what needs cutting. Most books lose a tenth to a fifth of their words between the first and second drafts, and the lost words are rarely missed by anyone, including the writer six months later.

Knowing when you are done

You are done with a pass when you find yourself changing things back. You are done with the revision when the notebook from a fresh read-through has nothing structural on it, only sentences, and when the changes you make are smaller than the ones you unmake. Then the book goes to readers, who will find the things you no longer can, which is a different guide.

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