5 Steps to Edit the Second Draft of a Novel

The simple editing process to turn your messy first draft into a second draft you love.

“I’ve written first drafts before, but I’ve never edited a second draft. How do you actually do it?”

A writer asked me this a few days ago. And they’re not alone—it’s a question I hear a lot.

How do you actually edit a novel? Is there a process? A system? A strategy? Something, anything, to guide you after you finish the first draft?

Yes. Yes, there’s a process to edit a novel.

Better yet, it’s a simple process. (That doesn’t mean it’s easy—don’t get those confused. But it’s not complicated.)

And in this episode, I’ll walk you through this process step by step.

You’ll learn:

• The 5-step editing process I use with all my one-on-one clients
• How to customize this process to make it work for YOU
• The trap you risk falling into if you don’t use this process
• Where the REAL work of developmental editing happens (hint: it’s not about changing the words in your manuscript!)
• Why this process will make your editing clearer, more effective, and more efficient
• And more!

If you’ve ever felt lost, confused, daunted, or completely overwhelmed by the very idea of editing your novel—

—or if you’ve been editing, but you can’t tell whether you’re making progress or just spinning your wheels—

—then this episode is for you.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Work with me: alicesudlow.com/contact
• Ep. 31: 3 Ways to Create a Scene List That Makes Your Editing Process (Almost) Easy
• Story Structure: The 6 Essential Elements of Every Novel, Act, and Scene
• Character Arcs: Three-Act or Four-Act Structure: Which Is Best for Your Novel?
• Theme: Your Story Has Deep Meaning. Do You Know What It Is?
• Point of View: The Most Important Principle When Choosing Your Point of View

Transcript

0:00

This is the real work of editing. This is deep thinking work, the kind of work that makes you sit back and really ponder the core elements of your story, troubleshooting all the problem areas in your mind, imagining solution after solution after solution, until you finally find the exact right fix this kind of thing. Doesn't involve actually putting pen to paper for like 90% of the time. So much of it is happening in your mind. And yet I think this is really the true work of editing, figuring all of these things out. Welcome to your next draft. In order to edit your novel. You need a process. In my experience, this is a real challenge for writers. You don't need to go out and learn a fancy process in order to write a novel. They're absolutely writing processes out there that can make your writing life easier, but there's no requirement to go learn them before you start writing. When most writers get started, they don't go looking for a process. They just think I have an amazing story and I want to tell it. And then they sit down with their blank document. They start at the beginning and they tell that story all the way until they reached the end and boom, a first draft. You've done it. You wrote a book. You celebrate that huge accomplishment because it is a huge accomplishment. And then you look around and you think. Wait. What's next. The process for writing a first draft can be fairly intuitive. Just open a document, start at the top and write your way to the end. But the process for editing that draft is not intuitive. It is easy for writers to get stuck here, to feel lost and confused, you know, your story. Isn't perfect. And you may even know some major weaknesses that you need to fix. But how do you actually go about fixing them? Do you just open your manuscript again, start at the top and work your way down to the bottom again, doing your best to make it better along the way, what even is better? How do you figure out what changes to make? If you've ever felt this way, overwhelmed and confused about how to turn an imperfect first draft into a story that readers will love. You're not alone. You're in good company with pretty much every writer who's ever tried to write a book for the first time. And in this episode, I'm going to give you a simple editing process that works. One that you can rely on as you developmentally edit your second draft or your third draft or your fifth draft or any draft where you refining the story that you're telling. This is the process that I'm using with my clients right now. In fact, I just did a major overhaul of all the editing packages that I'm offering writers in 2024, to bring them all into alignment with this process. If you reach out to work with me in one-on-one, this is the process that I'll guide you through. It's the most efficient and effective way that I have found to edit a novel without getting overwhelmed, without getting distracted by all the details in your story. Without worrying that you're not actually making the right changes for your story, the ones that will most help you take it to the next level. This process is designed to give you clarity and confidence as you edit your novel. I mean, let's be honest. Editing a novel can feel so daunting. Wouldn't it be nice. If you could edit with clarity and confidence. I promise it's possible. And I believe this editing process is the easiest and most efficient way to get there. It has five steps. And if you follow these five steps, I am confident that you'll make your novel so much better. Now I'm going to break down all five steps. And what you're going to notice as I do is that I'm talking about each step in really general terms. The reason why is that there are tons of different ways that you can go about each step. I've seen these steps repeated across several different writing and editing methodologies, using different tools and specific strategies within each one. And so I'm not going to prescribe one set of tools or one specific approach here. Actually, I think the beauty of this is that you can customize it in so many ways to make it work for you. What I'm going to share is the overall pattern of editing. That I have seen repeated across many editing methodologies. This is what underpins them all. I'll point out a few different approaches you can use within these steps, But I encourage you to fill in each one of these steps with the tools and strategies that work best for you. All right. That's enough preamble. Let's get into the five steps. The first step is to discover your story. And here we come to our first set of options. Yes. There are multiple ways to discover your story. Here are two different approaches that I see. Option one is to write the first draft of your novel. I consider this the discovery draft. You're simply telling yourself the story, get it all out onto the page. And now you have a story to work with. Option two is to create a detailed plan for your novel. That means, figuring out your character, arcs your genre, your theme, your plot, and more before you ever write a word. It means creating an outline for what you expect your novel will be. You're doing all the same discovery work that you could do by writing the first draft of your novel. But in this case, you're doing it in just a few pages and writing a lot fewer words. I could go on a long tangent here about how fun and creative this planning process can be. How it's all the same creativity that happens when you're writing a first draft. But I'll save that for another podcast episode. Either way, just keep in mind here that the goal of this step is to get you to the point where you have a story to work with. Whether that story is in the form of a full manuscript or a detailed outline or scene list or plot summary or what have you. It doesn't matter. Just get the story on the page. And once you have the story on the page, you're ready for step two. Create an outline of your story. Oh, Hey, look, if you chose option two, when you discovered your story by creating a detailed plan, you've done this already. You already have an outline. Ready to go. If you chose option one and you began by writing a complete first draft, you get to create your outline. Now. Again, there are a number of ways that you can do this. That is the theme here. You can customize these five steps in any way you want. In episode 31 of this podcast, I show three types of seamless that I have used said at novels. And then I have recommended to writers. You can get that episode at Alice said, though.com/ 31, or get that link in the show notes. And since I recorded that episode, I have discovered even more types of seamless, more formats that you can use To condense your story into an outline. Right now in my editing practice, I'm actually playing around with a few different formats, experimenting to see which ones work better at different stages of the editing process. And honestly, which ones I like to use best. So feel free to explore here and find the scene list format that works best for you. Regardless of the specific seamless format that you choose. The big idea here is that you want to condense your story from an 80,000 word behemoth or the a hundred thousand words or 150,000 new words, or however long your manuscript is. Into a much, much shorter document where you can see the entire story in just a few pages. It is really hard to hold a hundred thousand words of story in your head. At one time, it's just so much information. It's too much to think about. But you can hold three pages of information in your head at once you can hold five pages or 10 or 20, you can read through all of those pages in just a few minutes. And that means you can spot connections between the beginning and the end really quickly. You can see the structure for your entire story on those pages. It's not overwhelming. It's really approachable. It's manageable. You can manipulate it without getting bogged down in way too much information. So take your first draft, that giant manuscript, where it's all too easy to get lost, amid all of those words and condense it into an outline where you can grasp the entire story at once. And when you've done that. Move on. To step three. Edit your outline. That's right. Rather than editing your manuscript first, we're going to edit your outline. Remember that at this stage, we're doing developmental editing. That means we're focused on the big picture of your story. The main focus of your editing right now will be your stories structure. Do you have solid story structure in place from the beginning to the end? And in order to nail your story structure, you'll also need to examine your stories genre. Character arcs theme and points of view. I have tons of episodes on all of these topics. So I'm not going to go into depth here about how to do all of these things. I'm also not going to list all of those episodes out here on the audio, because there are so many that I want to point you to. So if you want to know exactly how to edit your stories, structure, genre, character arcs, theme, and points of view. I check out the show notes where I'm going to link to a lot of podcasts episodes to help. The point of this step, though, is to take your outline and mark it up. Note on it, all the changes that you want to make in order to make your story's structure really strong. As you do this, you're actually creating your revision plan for your next draft. When most people think of editing, they typically think of someone making changes to their manuscript. You've got the manuscript open and you're tweaking things. But in my mind, this, this step here, the revision of the outline. This is the real work of editing. This is deep thinking work, the kind of work that makes you sit back and really ponder the core elements of your story, troubleshooting all the problem areas in your mind, imagining solution after solution after solution, until you finally find the exact right fix this kind of thing. Doesn't involve actually putting pen to paper for like 90% of the time. So much of it is happening in your mind. And yet I think this is really the true work of editing, figuring all of these things out. And this is exactly the kind of work that is difficult to do. If you were to simply open your first draft, start at the top and work your way down, doing your best to make it better as you go. So. Don't rush this step. Really use this time to troubleshoot as much as you can, because I promise you there is so much you can do to level up your story just by revising your outline. And when you've marked your outline all the way up and you've created a plan for all the changes you're going to make in your next draft. You're ready for step four. Make your manuscript match your outline. All right. Now you get to pull your manuscript back out And now you can start editing it at the beginning and work your way all the way to the end. We were going to get there eventually. As you do this, you have one goal to make all the changes to your manuscript that you just planned on your outline. That might mean deleting scenes or adding scenes or moving scenes or combining scenes or changing the action or purpose within a scene. All of this is work for sure. It takes time and creative energy to work your way through an entire manuscripts. Making changes at this level. It might take you a few weeks or even a few months to execute all of those changes. But notice that word. Execution. At this stage, you're just executing the changes that you've planned. You've already identified the major problems in your manuscript, and you've already found solutions. You did that hard work of editing back in step three. When you get to step four, you're just putting those solutions down on the page and you can make those changes with clarity and confidence because you know that they're going to work. Now while you are executing a preexisting plan, this is still creative work. You're probably going to discover new insights about your story as you work through this draft. And that's great. Welcome that creative process. It's the natural evolution of story development, and it's part of what will make this step really fun. Plus there's space for that natural evolution in this process, because after you reached the end of this draft, you're ready for step five. Which is. Repeat steps, two, three, and four. That's right. When you finish this draft, update your outline to match what your manuscript is doing now, then edit that outline and use it to plan your changes for your next revision. Then revise the manuscript to match that outline. Why are we doing this all again? Well, First off. This is a great way to evaluate the changes that you've made to see whether they're working. If you update your outline to reflect your second draft and then you study it story structure. Does the structure still hold together? And second, it takes time and practice and study to learn the story structure and storytelling principles that underpin all great stories. If you're a new writer working on your first novel, you probably won't solve all of your big picture challenges in your first revision, or even in your second. It will probably take several cycles through this manuscript to outline to manuscript process, to catch them all. This, by the way, it's one of the best things about working with a developmental editor. I can spot so many stories, structure problems in an outline and help you catch them all in one, go significantly shortening the cycle of manuscripts to outline to manuscript passes. Uh, compared to the number of passes that I've seen writers do when they're working on their own. As you're probably picking up. There is no right number of manuscripts to outline to manuscript cycles that you need in order to edit your book. Well, The number that you need is however many, it takes you to solve all of your high level story structure problems that might take one pass, or it might take two, or it might take five. Eventually you will reach a point where you've solved all the problems that you can solve with the outline and you get to zoom in. Now you shift from book level problems to scene level problems. You get to go in and refine each scene, making the high points of your story, even higher and the low points even lower. And once you've done that, you'll be ready to zoom in even more to line editing and ultimately to copy editing to book production, to proofreading into publication. And then you get to have a great big party to celebrate that your book is now in reader's hands. Yay. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Before you get there first, you need a story that your readers will love to read. And the way that you craft that story is through this five step process. One discover your story. Two. Create an outline. Three. Edit your outline for story structure. Four. Make your manuscript match the outline. And five. Repeat steps two through four, as many times as you need to solve all of your big picture problems. If you skip this process and simply open your manuscript and start editing it from page one. Here's what happens. You will see. Only the issues on page one. You can easily get sucked into line editing here, focused on getting the words right, without strengthening the story, Or you'll make changes that are substantive changes much larger than line editing, and you'll hope that they strengthen the story. But you'll struggle to know whether they really work in the context of the whole. In that approach, you're figuring out your edits as you go. You're identifying problems, planning solutions, and executing those solutions all at the same time. And that is really hard to do for a couple of reasons. First, because at this stage, the problems that need solving Aren't problems that you can see on one page of your manuscript or even in one scene or one chapter. They're much bigger, the kind of problems that will require you to take a holistic view of your entire story. And second, because identifying problems, planning solutions, and executing those solutions are three very challenging tasks. And combining them into one step compounds. That challenge it's a lot easier and less overwhelming to separate them out into three separate steps. First you'll identify the problems, then you'll find solutions. And only then once you have a plan, will you execute those solutions on the page? Three separate steps, three separate brain processes, And you split them all up to make your life a lot easier. When you follow this five step editing process, when you approach your developmental editing as a series of manuscripts to outline to manuscript cycles. Here's what happens. You'll create space to focus on big picture issues without getting bogged down in the individual lines of your novel and distracted by trying to find the perfect words. You'll separate identifying problems, planning solutions, and executing changes into distinct steps. You'll do the heavy lifting of troubleshooting your story challenges before you ever touch your manuscript. By the time you get to your manuscript, you'll simply execute those changes with clarity and confidence. And while you'll probably still start editing the manuscript on page one and work your way down to the end. You'll know as you do that, that every line level change you'll make will be in line with your big picture vision for this revision. Clarity. Confidence efficiency, effectiveness free of overwhelm. Free of distractions, free of information overload. Focused on the most important areas of your novel, the ones that will most improve your story. I won't promise that this process will be easy because major creative projects rarely are. But I do promise that this process is powerful. And it has the potential to transform your manuscript for the better. Give it a try and see what happens. And of course, if you get stuck along the way, or if you're ready for some expert eyes to help you spot and solve your story problems. Feel free to reach out. Just go to Alice sabo.com/contact and fill out the forms to tell me about your book. And we'll talk about how you and I can work together to edit your novel. You've got this happy editing.