How Many Drafts Does A Book Really Need? The Answer Changes Everything!
How many drafts does a book really need? Not a number. A sequence. In this video, I walk through the types of drafts that take you, the writer, from first flow draft to your publishing-ready manuscript.
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How many drafts does a book really need?
One, three, five, 10, 30?
Writers ask me this all the time, and I'm gonna give you my honest answer in just a minute. It may change the way you look at your book tonight. But stay with me to the end of this video. As a writer with books you're dreaming about or books in progress, I have something I've been working toward for a long time, and I think you'll want to hear about it.
I'm Dr. Gwyn Erwin. Welcome back to my channel, Healing for Your Life. I've been writing professionally since I was 14, and I've been a book doctor, editor, ghostwriter, writing coach, and writing instructor for decades, alongside more than 30 years in private practice as a psychoanalyst Here's my honor, honest answer about a number of drafts.
Your Number of Book Drafts Doesn't Matter - But Then What Does Matter?
The number of drafts doesn't matter.
What matters is what kind of draft you're doing and in what order. Most writers do the same kind of draft over and over. They read it, they fix what bothers them, repeat. That's why revision can feel endless.
Are we ever satisfied? Are we aiming for perfection?
Every draft tries to do everything, which isn't possible and is also very discouraging.
In my approach, and the system that I have created and worked with, with writers over years, has its focus that every draft has its purpose, and every draft builds on the previous draft.
Now, you may do one draft of a certain kind or you may do five.
It depends on what you're working with in that particular type of draft. But whatever it is that it takes to complete that type of draft, you will always know what you're aiming for.
Brief Walkthroguh of My Drafting Process
Let me walk you through a brief overview of my drafting process. You start with a flow draft.
I've done videos on that for you, but briefly, you write everything you can about your book, of the book, off the top of your head.
No notes, no research, no editing.
Think of it as your pond.
Then come a series of structural drafts, and I use the analogy of ducks because it just makes things kind of delightful and a little lighter.
So first you're going to find your ducks: You read through your flow draft, and the next draft you do is filling in only the large holes.
So you are finding all of your ducks that go in that pond. Then, you're going to gather those ducks in a row.
Once you've written all the large holes throughout your entire manuscript, you move the large pieces into the right order, chapter by chapter, act one, act two, act three.
Then, and everyone hits this, the ugly duckling stage.Your transitions break, the writing feels awkward. It's supposed to. Don't start rewriting yet, please.
Then you fill in throughout the entire manuscript the small holes, a missing scene, a missing step in an argument. This is where research and examples come in. This is where you work on scenes and characters, and you sequence them again on a small scale within the chapters and within the scenes.
Notice The Pattern in Your Draft
Notice the pattern and our three principles. You work from large to small, you work through the whole book evenly, and you form relationships.
Next comes several bridging drafts between structure and writing.
What drives your characters or in nonfiction, your ideas?
What does each one want? What do they need?
Whose voice is on the page?
And how do you make things particularly specific? The man ran is a picture. The man ran on tiptoed is a story.
Then finally, you work on the writing itself. Tension, pace, linear and nonlinear storytelling, sentence structure for effect, short and sharp when you want tension, long and flowing when you want the reader to settle in.
The Hard Part of Writing Your Draft
Then the hard part, reading for where your book lags and where it flies, cutting what you love.
My favorite writing teacher, Saul Stein, called it killing your babies, then tendering what's left, enriching it again.
The language drafts are some of my favorites. Using active versus passive voice, sensory language with all seven sentences, uh, senses, consistent voices, dialogue that raises the tension, every word has a purpose.
And only then, grammar, mechanics, line editing, and proofreading.
Most of us were taught to start there. It belongs at the end because creativity always comes before the mechanics.
So how many drafts does a book take?
As many as it takes, with each one doing one clear job.
Structure before language, large before small, creativity before mechanics.
What I've given you is a bird's-eye view of the drafting process.
Drafting Your Writing To Publication
For years, I've walked writers through every one of these drafts one at a time as I've created this system of drafting your writing to publication. And today, I present to you a new course about drafting your writing to publication.
This is the third course in the writing ecosystem that I have created for writers at every stage and of every stature.
For fiction and nonfiction writers who have a nascent idea, a dream, a wish, a pile of notes, a shoebox full of scraps, all kinds of documents scattered on a desktop, and they don't know what to do next.
This course takes you through every kind of draft I just described, one lesson at a time, from your flow draft to a manuscript ready to send to agents and publishers, or to self-publish.
This course is also where I teach the part most writing courses leave out, how to move into your creative state on purpose, and how to lo- leave it without losing it.
Your book doesn't need more drafts or fewer drafts, it needs the right ones.
So take a look and join my new course, Drafting Your Writing to Publication. It partners with my other two courses, Designing Your Fiction Work and Designing Your Non-Fiction Book.
This new course has an introduction, eight modules, 40 video lessons, 21 audio answered questions, and all sorts of resources of where to go when you have finished your book.
I can't wait to meet with you and get to know you better, and to support you, and really give you the resources you need to finish your book into a compelling, successful product that you will be proud of the rest of your life.
Happy writing. Bye for now.
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