Shannon isn’t here today because she’s on the brink of turning in her edits for Winter 2 (SQUEAL!!!) and needs to focus on that.

While I know many of you are focused on first drafts right now since it’s NaNo season, as I was thinking about articles to pull from the archives for today, this is the one that came to mind. Editing for the first time can feel so daunting!

(This post was originally published in August 2016.)

Rachael wrote to me and said, “I’m 9k into my second draft, and it’s taken me a year to get there. I feel like I’m trying to edit everything all at once–so much so, that it’s almost like writing a first draft all over again, except this one isn’t supposed to be bare bones–and I’ve gotten really discouraged. So my question is this: how do you know what to edit in the second draft, and what to let go for now? How do you keep it from being so utterly and completely overwhelming? There will always be another draft, but I don’t know what to focus on for this one. Characters? Plot? Beginning/end? Everything seems vital, but it’s too much to handle all at once.”

Oh, Rachael! Hugs!

I’m sure many other young writers nodded along as they read your words. This might not make you feel any better but I nodded along! Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. It’s okay to rewrite

When you are a young writer—whether you’re literally young or just new to writing novels—you are learning a lot very quickly. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. I never edited the first few complete manuscripts I wrote because by the time I finished them, I could see that they had serious problems—including that I was too bored with the story and characters to care enough to fix them.

Eventually I wrote the first draft of the book that became my debut novel. I rewrote this book three times because of what I learned during the process. Sometimes the best thing to do is just open up a blank document and try again.

I don’t know if this is encouraging or discouraging, but even after you’ve been writing for a while, some first drafts just come out messier than others. That’s true for my current work in progress. I wrote the draft last year, when I was pregnant and had inconsistent work time.

On top of that, I normally write my stories in first person with one narrator in good ol’ Microsoft Word. But I wanted to try Scrivener, and I thought I would need multiple point of view characters, so I decided to write in third person.

I was about 20,000 words into the book when I admitted Scrivener didn’t work for me, and that my voice loses something when I try to write in third. I eventually finished my first draft, and the result was a poorly thought out story that wandered here and there before ending in a very jarring way. And I’ve been a published novelist since 2009!

When it came time to edit that book, I just opened a new Word document and started over. I could still use a decent amount of my material from the first draft, of course, but I found it easier to just copy and paste bits of scenes rather than trying to fit all the new material around the old.

2. Embrace the mess

I was recently helping my eight-year-old daughter clean her room. She’s a sentimental, artistic type of kid, which leads to moments where I pull a bin off her closet shelf and find it contains a school assignment, a rock, a cup from a party 6 months ago, a crazy straw, and the fancy necklace she was given for Christmas but never could find.To really clean McKenna’s room, we have to take out all the bins, sort all her belongings into piles, and then distribute the piles. In short, we have to make a big mess.

Editing is similar. To do the job properly requires making a mess. I’ve tried again and again to be so organized about my first draft or the editing process that the mess never happen … but if that’s possible to achieve, I’ve yet to figure out how.

I think the smarter approach is to just embrace that editing is a messy process.

3. Editing is a skill

I’ve said this before, but editing is its own skill. You’ve learned how to craft a story, how to stretch it over the course of thousand and thousands of words. If you’re like I was as a young writer, maybe you’ve written tons of story beginnings, or you’ve made it all the way through a book a time or two, but you’ve never edited one before.

Editing a novel is different than editing an essay or an article. It’s possible you will read your first draft, know that it needs to be fixed, but not really know how. This is one reason why we encourage writers to learn about story structure and to analyze the stories you take in. Understanding components of stories that resonate—and stories that miss the mark—will help you identify problems in your own manuscript.

As an example, I wrote a book in my late teens/early twenties that I pitched several times to agents and editors. They would like the sound of it, but no one ever read more than a chapter. “The book just didn’t work for me,” or “There wasn’t enough of a hook for me to sell,” are the responses I remember. I didn’t know what to do. I believed them that something was wrong with my book, but I didn’t know what, so I definitely didn’t know how to fix it.

Several months later, I was reading a book that I just couldn’t get into. Then I realized a similarity between that opening scene of that book and mine: This author’s book opened with three friends meeting up at a bar after work to have a drink together. The first scene was mostly just their conversation. My book opened with two friends meeting up at a coffee house after school. The whole scene was just these two friends having a disagreement. I had thought the tension of the dialogue was enough to hook a reader, but when I saw it play out in the other author’s book, I could see that it was boring.

So if you read your manuscript and you have trouble pinpointing what’s not working, you might eventually figure it out by reviewing story structure or reading.

4. Prioritize problems

Chances are that you know at least some things that need to be fixed. Jill wrote a great post on Wednesday about the “macro edit,” which is that first big picture edit. This would be a great one for you to read if you haven’t already. We also wrote Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel to help writers through edits, so that can be a good resource too.

Since Jill talked about this in depth on Wednesday, I’ll just summarize briefly. The instinct for most writers is to edit their book from start to finish. But if we try to edit for everything—plot, characters, theme, grammar, sentence structure, consistency—all at once, that’s a lot to try and hold in our heads.

So I read through my first draft and make a list as I go. Things that need to be researched, story questions I raise but never answer, character motivations that seem thin, and so on. Then I divide my list into bigger issues and smaller issues.

Big issues that I will tackle in a second draft might be, but aren’t limited to:

• Something I didn’t bother to research in the first draft that could make a big impact on the story. 
• A major character who I don’t understand very well yet. I will usually take time to write a character journal if I haven’t already and then rework scenes from there.
• A villain who is too convenient/too obvious/shows up too late in the book to feel satisfying. Often I need to add scenes early on to help with this.
• A beginning that drifts too much before the real story starts. I’ll figure out what can be cut.
• A twist that I don’t set up properly, or one that doesn’t feel as twisty as I’d like.

Further down the list I usually have a list of questions I want to process. These are things that usually don’t impact many scenes, but my gut says that I need to take the time to answer them. Some examples are:

• Why does my character choose to go to this place? I never explain that.
• What is my villain doing during the off-stage time?
• I say this character is going to be gone for two weeks but they’re only gone for one.
• My character knows a piece of information before they’re told. How can I rearrange this?

After I’ve made the list, it’s time to dig in. I always save a “first draft” version of the manuscript so that as I’m working on edits, I know there’s a back up of the original version should I need it.

5. Someone out there knows how to fix your book

It amazes me every time. I will be struggling with a story problem. Like, “Why did the mother steal the necklace?” I’ll roll this question around for a few days—while I’m brushing my teeth or walking my kids to school. I might come up with an idea or two, but nothing that feels like I’ve landed on the right solution.

Then, I’ll send my writing friend, Roseanna White, a message. “I can’t figure out why her mother steals the necklace. It’s driving me crazy.” About 30 seconds later, Roseanna will write back something like, “Did she need the money? Does it have sentimental value? Was it for revenge?” Within a few minutes, Roseanna will have helped me come up with something that I love and can’t wait to write. There’s something about her distance from the manuscript that makes her amazing at solving the problems. She’s not the one who has to do the hard work of revisions, and she’s not limited by the rest of the plot because she only has a loose idea of what it is.

Maybe you don’t know why your opening scene isn’t working, or how to make that action scene more exciting. But somebody you know does! They don’t have to be a writer, either. It’s great if they are, but I was 22 before I made my first writing friend.

Rachael, I know edits are difficult and overwhelming, especially that first time. I hope something in this post was helpful to you! If you have other thoughts or encouragement for Rachael, leave them below!

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.