First draft vs. final

It's possible that if I'd known how hard it was to write a first novel, that I wouldn't have done it. At the time I had a literary agent based in the UK who took me on when my manuscript was at the start of its long and winding life.

What I mean by "long and winding life" is that the MS wasn't close to being ready for publication yet she didn't tell me that. The agent just kept sending me pages and pages of notes on how to make it better and assuring me it was almost there. The truth was that it wasn't even close to being finished. The literary agency must've seen something in the story, a flicker of wonderment in the writing, that made them take me on.

My agent's notes made perfect sense to me, yet it also made me feel like I was suffocating under the weight of my own misguided dreams. How could one book require this much editing? What I now know is that even famous writers with many books under their belt start from this hard place. The difference between them and me at that time is that I hadn't yet sharpened my teeth as a writer so I had to make mistakes first.

Months went by and all the while I worked through her edits. I saw progress, yes, but I could see no end to making it better.

What she didn't tell me at the time was that she was teaching me to write. As she was editing my MS, I was learning to develop my voice, creating a believable, exhilarating plot and setting tied together with something more than duct tape. I was learning to create multi-dimensional characters that leapt off the page. I was, in short, honing my writing chops.

As a book editor, almost all my clients underestimate the work involved in completing a book.

Here are the differences broadly speaking between a first and final draft:

First draft

• You can see the makings of something good; some passages sing while others fall flat.

• Characters aren't acting from their own motivations and feel wooden as a result.

• There's a skeleton of scenes and characters with little emotional depth.

• The dialogue reads as floating heads with little description about where the characters are in time and space.

• The timeline is muddled and it's hard to tell when things are happening.

• Themes feel accidental, not deliberate.

• Transitions between scenes are abrupt.

• The story's voice is inconsistent, changing from beginning to the end.

• Scenes are rushed: something is introduced before allowing it to unfold organically.

• You're not sure yet what the story is actually about.

• There's mostly telling and not a lot of showing.

Final draft

• The words leap off the page, rising to meet the sky.

• The characters positively haunt (in a good way) the reader so that the reader finds themselves thinking of them after.

• Every scene earns its place and moves character or plot forward.

• Characters have emotions, histories, and motivations that are felt.

• There is mostly all showing and little telling so the reader can experience the story for themselves.

• Dialogue is grounded in the setting.

• The timeline is clear and deliberate.

• The opening and closing feel like they belong to the same book.

• Themes emerge organically and consistently, without being mentioned by the narrator.

• Tension rises and releases.

• The voice is consistent with similar language use.

• You can't see the seams anymore as the story elements (plot, character, setting...) all work together as one dynamic whole.

I don't blame anyone who tries to write, not knowing what's involved. It's hard to write a book! There are so many things at play, which means there's a lot that can go wrong.

Yet there's also a lot that can go right.