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Home » How to Edit Your First Draft: The Perfect Way to Edit Your Creative Writing

How to Edit Your First Draft: The Perfect Way to Edit Your Creative Writing

It is no secret that the process of writing a novel can be a lengthy and tiresome one, especially if you are following the traditional “write a novel in a set number of weeks” approach. Between the constant distractions of everyday life and the exhaustion that often sets in after a long day of brainstorming, many writers give up before they even start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Whether you are a seasoned author or just starting out, editing your creative writing (including fiction writing and non-fiction writing) is an essential part of the process. It is a way of honing your writing and making it the best it can be – of course, this applies to any type of creative work!

Editing typically involves three steps:

  • Reviewing multiple drafts
  • Cultural Collabration
  • Polishing

Let us take you on a step-by-step tour of how to edit your creative writing so you can polish your manuscript and prepare it for publication.

Step 1: Reviewing Multiple Drafts

When you begin the process of editing your creative writing, the first and most crucial step is to go through all of the existing drafts of your manuscript. This is important both for discovering the original idea behind the story as well as identifying the areas where you can most improve the quality of your writing.

The best way to do this is to read through the entire manuscript from the beginning to the end multiple times. This way, you can discover all of the issues that the author might not have been able to catch or notice during the initial drafting process. It also means that you can become intimately familiar with the story, which will in turn make it much easier for you to edit and improve upon when compared to a completely novel approach.

When going through the various drafts of your work, you should look for any errors in punctuation, spelling, or style. You might also want to consider doing a copyediting pass as well, just to make sure that the text is free of any errors that might creep in during the initial stages of writing.

Step 2: Cultural Collabration

After you have gone through all of the existing drafts of your story, it is time to move to the next step. This is where you get completely fresh eyes to take a look at your work and offer advice on how to make it better. At this stage, it is important to get some of your favorite writing colleagues or friends to read over your work and offer feedback. This is an invaluable tool for improving your creativity and creating something of higher quality.

As individuals, we are all sensitive to different kinds of criticism, so it is important to find a way to get over this inherent fear and begin working with your colleagues. This is a very crucial step in the process of editing because it allows you to find the flaws in your work and address them, instead of hiding from them or trying to fix them yourself. It is also important to note here that while you are searching for these flaws, you should not be looking for praise. You are simply looking to find the best version of your work that you can and then move on to the next step.

Step 3: Polishing

Once you have gone through all of the existing drafts and gotten feedback on them, it is time to move to the final stage of editing. At this stage, it is important to take all of the feedback you have compiled and either implement it or choose which pieces of advice to follow. Once you have implemented the changes that were suggested to you in the previous step, it is time to go back and read through your work from the perspective of a reader. In other words, read your work from the point of view of a complete stranger and see how your story might come across in the mind of a reader. This is a crucial step in the editing process because it allows the author to find any gaps in their story and address these issues before they set the work down in a permanent format.

This is often the stage where a lot of the rewrites and fixing take place. Once you have implemented the changes suggested to you in the previous step, it is time to go back and polish the piece so that it is of the highest quality. This means that you are going to go back and edit anything from the formatting of the text to the flow of the story, as well as make it sound more professional. In general, this is the stage where you are going to tighten up the wording and remove any unnecessary adjectives or adverbs from the text. Depending on the genre of your story, you might also want to consider changing some of the names of the characters, as well as adding more description of the setting. Everything should be of the highest quality at this stage of the editing process, so be thorough!

When you reach this point in the process of editing your creative writing, you will most likely feel confident that you have a novel that is ready to be published or at least sent to an agent. Of course, this is only if you have followed the above steps correctly. Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the basic principles of editing and the many benefits it can have on your creative writing.