How many times do you edit a draft before you leave it? The Editing Process.

[Madman Starryteller]

I'm on my fifth draft now for the first book of my main series. I've been adding, refining, fixing, and changing things in every pass, but I hope that draft five will be the one to leave as completed. Because I feel ready to leave it as I want to continue with book two soon.

For short stories, I usually do two to four drafts before I consider one somewhat done.

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

 

[JT Woody]

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

im literally still editing a manuscript i thought was "finished" 3 years ago
small fixes turn in to whole rewrites. drafts? im in the double digits....

how do i edit? I start looking for SPAG and inconsistencies.... then brain storm how to "fix" it.... which leads in to "i just dont like this, imma scrap it".... which creates a gap that requires a rewrite of the scenes before and after

 

[Dogberry's Watch]

I rewrote the entirety of a book recently and that was rewrite 12. The newest version is the 13th draft, and I think I'm finally done with it.

The other books I've written tend to be a little less drafty. For the second book of my series I had a total of six, and for the third book I'm on draft three.

I usually write a draft, go through it once for content expansion, then through a second time for content, and then three and four for spelling and punctuation misses. I have a hobby where I leave out quotation marks as a gift for my future self to find later.

That's my standard practice nowadays, but I think the key factor, for me, is to let the piece sit for a goooood long bit before I go back into it and see what I need to add or rewrite entirely. Not new eyes exactly, but certainly different today than a few months ago.

 

[THUNDAIR]

My first novel was beaten to death by beta readers and finally a professional edit, and after it was released, there was a comment that I had misused the term 'My Lady' so I pulled it back and went through it again. Total times were around 13.
My last three novels only required a beta, a professional and a clean sweep after the pro. I have had comments about how clean my work is because I hired a pro and didn't rely on my own abilities. I will add that I use ProWritingAid, which makes my work cleaner when I send it to the pro.

 

[X Equestris]

For me, there’s never been a clear dividing line between drafts. I revise and edit intensely as I write, so once I reach the end of a story, the draft is more or less final. My subsequent edits are essentially proofreads. There’s little alteration to the text and none to the plot unless I catch a serious issue.

I normally do two or three of those, but the exact number depends entirely on how much work it feels like it needs.

 

[JLT]

I haven't published much non-fiction, but my books usually went through a half a dozen drafts before I thought they were ready to release into the wild. But that doesn't say that they were as good as they could be.

It's said that no work of art is really finished, it's merely abandoned. There's a lot of truth in that. My rule of thumb is that I consider a work finished when there's nothing that I'm sorely tempted to fiddle with upon re-reading it. Like an athlete, I don't expect every shot to hit the basket, or sink the putt, or result in a base hit, or (insert your favorite metaphor here). I did the best I could, and moved on to the next shot.

 

[Kallisto]

I'm on my fifth draft now for the first book of my main series. I've been adding, refining, fixing, and changing things in every pass, but I hope that draft five will be the one to leave as completed. Because I feel ready to leave it as I want to continue with book two soon.

For short stories, I usually do two to four drafts before I consider one somewhat done.

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

Here's the question: has anyone else read your story? If you're on your fifth draft and you haven't had anyone else read it, I would say you probably should stop picking things and have someone else read it.

And when I mean have someone else read it, I mean someone else.

But, as I found out, not "all someone else reading it" is created equal. So, this is where you have to determine what kind of corrections you are making and what kind of feedback would actually help you!

Critiques: Great for calibrating your writing! Do you have trouble with grammar? How does your prose flow? Do you repeat words a lot? Are you using a lot of big words without a real sense of what they mean? Does your dialogue work? Is there a lot of passive voice? Are your descriptions effective or distracting? It's all the technical stuff that we often overlook in the excitement of writing. What they're amazingly bad at is determining if your story is actually any good. That is, the important question of "Will readers actually like this?" That's more into if you have a good story structure. Are your characters relatable? Does the plot make sense in a way? Did you make a world that's functional and logical? They just can't help you with that.

So, if your story is going back and nitpicking at your prose and such, go get it critiqued. You might find a root problem with your writing that's causing you to make endless small changes. Critique Circle is an amazing place to do that.

Beta Reading: This is more for figuring out if your story works as a whole. Do the events progress in a logical way? Are the characters relatable? This is really where you can see if your story actually has potential. Will a beta reader point out a technical problem like grammar? Sure. But I found Beta Readers are looking to make sure your story isn't structurally broken. That the events follow a logical path, and you don't have things slipping in that don't really serve a purpose.

The hard part is finding someone who is willing to do so can be a challenge, as it is very time-consuming. If you don't have time to read someone else's story, you can't have a beta reader unless you're willing to shell out some cash. It really is a system that thrives following the golden rule: you really do have to treat their story the same way you want yours treated, which is with respect and honest feedback. Too often, you find that one person who will wait until you read through their book, provide feedback (even if just for a few chapters), only for them to say, "I haven't read yours yet, and don't know when I'll get to it because I'm so busy. But thank you!"

So if you're finding yourself changing entire scenes, and adding things, and adjusting the scope of your project, you might want a full on beta reader to try and help you get focused back on your story.

Collaboration: This is where you sit down with others to talk about your story. No reading. No big long commitments. Just talking. You're going over the characters, general plot, etc. This is great if you're not sure where you need to go to advance the plot, which often causes me to go back to previous chapters and start revising them just because you don't know what else to do or how to go.

Obviously, the drawback is that they're not actually reading the story. So they can't make a comment so much on the overall execution.

And maybe as you read this you a little bit of everything. You might need to do all three of these things. I'm just throwing out a suggestion and what works and doesn't to possibly fix your problem.

 

[SilverBear]

I'm on my fifth draft now for the first book of my main series. I've been adding, refining, fixing, and changing things in every pass, but I hope that draft five will be the one to leave as completed. Because I feel ready to leave it as I want to continue with book two soon.

For short stories, I usually do two to four drafts before I consider one somewhat done.

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

Here's how my editing has evolved over 14 years. In addtition to my edits, my wife does one late in the process, usually after my next to last. I also have between six and ten FIRST READERS. Two of them are excellent editors and fact checkers while the others may find a few goofs and they give me their impressions. Over the years I reduced my number of edits until I reached five for the most recent book. I did that because I finally realized that the later "edits" had become more of a "searching for a better word or phrase," rather than fixing errors. When I realized that first part could go on literally forever, I chose to just STOP and say "Done!" As a side note, I am a plotter, so I know when the first draft has hit the done part. I often adjust the plot while writing and move chapters around as needed, so by the time I am done with the first draft, the book is close to it's final form.

8 Edits
Books 1-7; 2011-2017

7 edits
Books 8-10; 2017-2018

6 Edits
Books 11-20; 2019-2024

5 Edits
Book 21; 2025

 

[JT Woody]

Here's how my editing has evolved over 14 years. In addtition to my edits, my wife does one late in the process, usually after my next to last. I also have between six and ten FIRST READERS. Two of them are excellent editors and fact checkers while the others may find a few goofs and they give me their impressions. Over the years I reduced my number of edits until I reached five for the most recent book. I did that because I finally realized that the later "edits" had become more of a "searching for a better word or phrase," rather than fixing errors. When I realized that first part could go on literally forever, I chose to just STOP and say "Done!" As a side note, I am a plotter, so I know when the first draft has hit the done part. I often adjust the plot while writing and move chapters around as needed, so by the time I am done with the first draft, the book is close to it's final form.

8 Edits
Books 1-7; 2011-2017

7 edits
Books 8-10; 2017-2018

6 Edits
Books 11-20; 2019-2024

5 Edits
Book 21; 2025

Im stuck on the "find readers" part....
I keep editing myself in circles but i dont really know whats working and not working without actual readers
(Ive gotten feedback from 2 readers on my current project and thats guided me somewhat).

 

[SilverBear]

Im stuck on the "find readers" part....
I keep editing myself in circles but i dont really know whats working and not working without actual readers
(Ive gotten feedback from 2 readers on my current project and thats guided me somewhat).

I left out one important thing I do: I write in Word, which has text to speech. I have it read the MS to me as I edit. I do that for usually 2 edits. Great for finding missing words. There may be other resources that can read to you.

 

[Kallisto]

I left out one important thing I do: I write in Word, which has text to speech. I have it read the MS to me as I edit. I do that for usually 2 edits. Great for finding missing words. There may be other resources that can read to you.

ALL Word Processors have text to speech software capabilities, not just MS. Either they are built in or they are free as extensions. Even if they don't, so long as you have a copy paste function active on your computer, accessing one is a quick search function away on your favorite browser

 

[defaux]

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

Ad Infinitum.

I can only accomplish this feat by redefining "Complete" to mean "Good enough for now."

It helps, actually, to have a hard deadline, like in the short story contests on this site. I can only edit so many times before it has to be posted, and then I make myself leave it alone because I like to have a record of my progress as hopefully improve with each story I attempt to tell.

I do tend to find there is a point at which the tweaking diminishes to feel like no longer improving but merely changing, and at that point I begin to fear doing more damage than good. Sometimes stepping away for a time brings new perspective for more improvements. Sometimes I just leave it lie there, as is, and consider this to be "as good as I can make it at this stage in my journey."

Often that decision comes from how much time I am able or willing to dedicate to a specific piece of work.

As for my longer work, well... I have not yet completed the full first draft. I need to stop going back and re-editing the previous chapters because I know they aren't good enough. I'm hoping using the NWT challenge to push through a significant word count will break me of this habit. I can only imagine how post-editing this beast will go.

 

[alzie]

Oh God! I am fearful (yet excited) of the editing process. I was called out by a mentor of mine that I am writing to be published. I said of course I was, and she said to stop that right now. Write to finish the story. But I cannot. I have to write the best first version, the innocent, first virgin copy to the best of my ability with the thought that edits one...two...three...etc. will be that much easier. I hope it's only one edit. Write quickly but well. It will make the edits easier.

 

[JLT]

Oh God! I am fearful (yet excited) of the editing process. I was called out by a mentor of mine that I am writing to be published. I said of course I was, and she said to stop that right now. Write to finish the story. But I cannot. I have to write the best first version, the innocent, first virgin copy to the best of my ability with the thought that edits one...two...three...etc. will be that much easier. I hope it's only one edit. Write quickly but well. It will make the edits easier.

That might work for some people. Isaac Asimov was famous for writing a section in his head so thoroughly that by the time he'd gotten to the typewriter, it as already perfectly formed. So very little editing was required. Others, like you, so distrust that initial effort that you must write with that imperfection from the outset. But you mentor was right: Tell the story first, knowing that there are things that have to be sorted out afterwards. I think you'll be surprised at how little tinkering you'll have to do.

 

[tde44]

Most of my writing is novel length thriller/mystery and the occasional scifi.

I think on average I do 5-6 revisions. I am a severe underwriter, with first drafts typically being in the 30-50k word range for a story which will end up - eventually - between 70-90k words.

The first revision is mostly to adjust/correct for plot holes, timelines, etc. The second is to flesh out the story, add subplots as needed, and overall consistency.

 

[Rzero]

I have a hobby where I leave out quotation marks as a gift for my future self to find later.

That's so funny. My number one most frequent typo is forgetting to close quotes. I'm getting better at finding and fixing them, but there were so many in my first beta that my first reader asked if that was a stylistic choice.

How do you edit your drafts? Do you change things in a draft or do you only fix small mistakes and make corrections? How many drafts do you usually do for a story before you consider them completed?

I edit a ton while I write, so I end up with a first draft that's not so rough. It slows down the process in terms of daily word count and whatnot, but I have a lot less to worry about while editing later. I also plan ahead with outlines and notes out the wazoo, so I do very little rewriting for plot and pacing purposes, which is good because I freaking hate doing full-on rewrites. Editing, I don't mind so much.

As to how many drafts a story will end up with, I don't know. Tons, I guess, but they don't change very much after the first draft. I reread my work over and over, though, and I can't help but tweak and reword things here and there every time I read through it.

At least that's how it's worked so far. I'm currently in the process of adding 11 scenes and replacing 1 in my second book, Curios, but the way the book is structured, I won't have to do any rewriting around those scenes. They'll just file right in between the others, so it feels more like I'm finishing an unfinished draft rather than performing a major edit.

 

[alzie]

'That might work for some people. Isaac Asimov was famous for writing a section in his head so thoroughly that by the time he'd gotten to the typewriter, it as already perfectly formed. So very little editing was required. Others, like you, so distrust that initial effort that you must write with that imperfection from the outset. But you mentor was right: Tell the story first, knowing that there are things that have to be sorted out afterwards. I think you'll be surprised at how little tinkering you'll have to

Your comment...'others, like you, so distrust that initial effort...' I don't distrust that initial effort, which I see as the creative aspect of my writing, but for me, that initial effort has to be written well. I'm a bit put off that you think you know what makes me tick. You have no idea.

I tried 'writing on the fly'...'stream of consciousness'. While it propelled the story along at a quicker pace, I got lost in my own story and had to step back to rewrite, i.e., make sense of what I'd written before I could proceed. In my situation, writing that initial effort well works better for me.

 

[JLT]

I'm a bit put off that you think you know what makes me tick. You have no idea.

I confess that I don't know what makes you tick, and apologize if I gave you that impression . It was my best interpretation of your statement: "I have to write the best first version, the innocent, first virgin copy to the best of my ability with the thought that edits one...two...three...etc. will be that much easier."

Every writer has their own method of writing, what works best for them. It's usually based on lots of experimentation and false starts, leading them to eventually work out the system that allows them to express their best thoughts. My own method is reflected, oddly enough, in Tommy Armour's famous rules of golf:

1. Play the shot that you have the best chance of making well.
2. Play the shot that makes the next shot easy.

It seems to reflect your writing style, if by "shots" in the second rule means "editing processes." You make them easier by having your first "shot" as good as possible. Am I interpreting this correctly?