7 Misconceptions Writers Have About Drafting

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I am going to be sharing 7 misconceptions that people have about drafting and drafts I'd like to thank the viewer Kristen and her books for suggesting this topic it was a really good idea I had fun coming up with some of these misconceptions I've seen for people about everything from first to final drafts and so we're gonna dive right in so the first misconception a lot of people have and I feel it really holds them back from whatever writing or ever finishing a project is first drafts have to be perfect perfection is the enemy of good and the enemy of finished the idea that the first draft that you write of a book has to be note perfect I mean what like final like publishing ready it just holds you back the reality is any book that you pick up from the shelf is not a first draft it might not even be a fifth draft it's completely okay and normal for a first draft of a book to be a little bit messy or at the least imperfect drafts do indeed run the gamut but it's totally okay if you don't quite know what you're doing when you're writing that first draft and the sentences aren't the prettiest sentences and maybe here there you don't even know the right word for something or you don't have a name for something yet and you put a little placeholder that's totally okay because your number one job on a first draft is to complete it and finishing a first draft in my opinion is one of the hardest things to do I mean some of us are born drafters and some of us are born editors and I'm a born editor so for me the hardest part is to get a first draft done and if I didn't throw the idea of perfection away I would never do anything so screw that stupid idea first drafts do not have to be perfect but the second misconception I've heard is the opposite which is that first drafts are garbage garbage fires always a first draft is always terrible the irony is if you've seen my harsh writing advice video I say in that video that first drafts are always garbage but what I really meant was first drafts of first book so the first book you've ever met is never going to be perfect I was just a little bit of hyperbole but it is both true that no first draft is perfect and it's always gonna be a little bit messy and you're always going to need to do something to it you're gonna have to edit fix it etc it's not actually uniformly or universally true that every first draft is total hot garbage some people are really clean drafters and I want to talk about the difference between the prose on the page the writing the grammar the usage etc being really really unsophisticated and messy and the actual ideas of the book so the pacing the plot mechanics structural things character arcs needing work you can have a first draft we of course naturally have to do a lot of work on the pacing the plot the character arcs etc but the prose is actually very very clean the sentences themselves are in pretty good shape and don't necessarily need a total overhaul it's the actual substance of the story that means a lot of editing so those tend to be cases where of course it's not a garbage draft it's perfectly readable it just needs work there are also people who do the opposite their structure is actually in pretty immaculate shape but all of the mechanics are messy I'd say that the first one's a little bit more common but the second one is also perfectly possible but I'd say it's more common that people have issues with both and you need to do editing and work on both but not everyone writes a complete garbage fire of a first draft which brings me to a misconception about revision this covers subsequent drafts draft two's draft threes whatever and this misconception is the idea that revising a draft taking something from save draft one to draft two just means doing cosmetic edits on the prose doing line edits or copy edits oh I'm just gonna pretty it up no that is not editing even cases where your structure is pretty good you're going to have something to edit on that book whether it's a character arc a motivation trimming something somewhere because no first draft is perfect and editing should never just be a cosmetic past the manuscript to clean up some language that is how you're going to end up with a second draft that is beastly just a prettier version of your first draft taking a book from a draft to a draft is always going to involve some substantive work on that draft i personally don't consider copy editing or line editing making something pretty a draft change I consider drafts developmental edits so really digging into a book that's what a developmental that it is and working on actual concrete story plot character elements like the substantive things of a novel that truly impact the reading experience in terms of story absorption how quickly you're turning the pages tension etc it pains me when I hear people say and it's so frequently on Reddit and other parts of the internet oh I'm just gonna write a copy at it on this and then it's gonna be good to go and if you just run a copy edit on your first draft you basically still just have a first draft so yeah but the next misconception is the idea that editing and taking a draft from one to the next draft one two draft two always involves a total rewrite not every book is a complete teardown this misconception is actually a fear and it's one that I had in early days as well because you definitely hear in the stories from authors who go I completely rewrote my book I tore it down and restarted it from scratch and that is my nightmare I've never done it and I hope to never do it but I think that this misconception again holds a lot of people back because they go I don't want to write an entire book only to have to tear the entire thing down and rewrite it and probably my response to the previous misconception also creates fear that oh it's not just a pass to clean it up and make it sound pretty I have - like really dig into it really digging into your own work and like making real changes is indeed scary but there's a happy medium between a cosmetic pass and a total rewrite so I encourage people not to be afraid of this misconception first of all total rewrite is always a choice of the author lake no one's gonna make you do a total page one rewrite and there are those happy mediums to be found it is well maybe the motivation isn't working and admittedly throwing out of motivation and putting in a new one is a lot of work it's an almost total rewrite but it's not a page one rewrite or maybe you can just work on the foundation so that that character motivation does work and so there's always decision-making and solutions that can be found to make a developmental edit a lot more manageable for you so yeah revising a draft does not have to mean a total rewrite the fifth misconception is that there is a magic number of drafts that a book has to go through and once you hit that magic number of drafts it's done unfortunately I can't tell you some magic number I can't say to you well once you've done three revisions so you're on your draft four then you're ready to query or every published book is a draft six and there's just no universal answer every individual book is gonna need different levels of editing different rounds there are all sorts of different situations that can contribute to the number of drafts that a book can go through its how clean that first draft was it's how editorial your agent is it's whether you have CPS who give really spot-on notes that create a brain wave in you of how to fix your book it is how developmental your editor is if it's selling to a publishing house it's whether you do multiple rounds thereof developmental editing it just totally depends there are books on the shelf behind me by professional writers where it could be a second draft published it could be a fourth draft or it could be a tense I have a friend where her published book is the twelfth draft of the book because she worked on this Ashtyn project over years and years and years and when you do have a passion project a book that is a passion project those usually do you go through more rewrites because you're not just throwing the book out if it's not working in the market so every book is gonna have a different number of drafts which brings me to my next misconception the six misconception which is the idea that well if a writer has to do a million drafts that clearly means that the book isn't as good as a book that only needed three drafts no now tons and tons of revision can be the sign of a novice writer a newer writer but that doesn't mean that those final drafts when that writer has leveled up their skill and produced that final book that doesn't mean that final book can't be a masterpiece there plenty of writers who juice work on past projects for years and years and years so naturally those books go through more drafts than someone who you know go through the cycle on a book in a year and a half where that final draft is just magic and similarly just because a book takes one person only a year to write and they're done in three drafts doesn't mean then that's a masterpiece either it could be it couldn't be the book that needs 12 drafts might not be perfect either though well that's our last misconception Perfect's the wrong word a masterpiece the perf a great book so it really runs the gamut and every writer is going to have their own personal process and it's also gonna vary book to book some books don't need as many dress some books can't have as many drafts when you get into professional publishing and you're writing on deadlines sometimes you're only allowed to do one major edit so whether you like it or not draft 2 is published even if it's not the book that you want it to be that does happen so it really just varies but I encourage you not to think oh a writer we wrote their book eight times that must be bad the number of drafts the book goes through is not an automatic indicator of quality and then that's our final mist come and I used the word perfect in relation to final and it's wrong that's wrong because no final draft is perfect no final draft is truly final for the author and this is where we get into kind of nebulous like author feelings territory because that's the thing a final draft can be final it can be final in the sense that you have to stop working on it you have to turn it in and it it is published or you choose to publish it you just got a there's only so much you can work on a book because you can also over work a book and mess it up more drafts doesn't always equal good I mean that's the last point isn't it sometimes you just got to take your hands off the story and let it rest and sometimes that taking your hands off a story and letting it rest is the final version that is published here's a secret it's not really a secret most authors are never happy with the final drafts of their books like there's always something more that you could do and especially once a book is published and the public gets their hands on it and their reviews sometimes they will point out things for you're like drat or you just know realistically this is a hindsight thing as you move along in your writing career that you're a much better writer now and of course you could take an older project and like really shine it up because you made novice mistakes in that book but it's too late it's too late unless you self-published it's too late and so you just have to emotionally let go of final drafts they are final but they're not perfect so that's doesn't make you feel better if your feeling is you're editing your work that you're never quite happy with it welcome doing the club this is basically how we hope feel about our books so yeah the end goal honestly is not perfection because final drafts aren't perfect it's just done you do as much work as you can possibly do on a book you do as many drafts as is needed on a book and then you just hope it turns out okay you do as much as you can and then yet you move on to your next book and you start the whole process over again yeah so those are seven exceptions that I've seen about drafting and drafts and I want to know down below in the comments what misconceptions have you had about drafts or drafting you know before you started writing or now or misconceptions that you've heard about drafts and drafting that drive you a little bit up the wall give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I will make more videos like this and if you're not are subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 32,696

Rating: 4.9833641 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, drafting, writing a book, drafting a book, first drafts, final drafts, how many drafts, misconceptions writers have, writer misconceptions, book drafts, how to draft a book

Id: rfaLe3hyvzw

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020