: Re: So I finished my novel. Now what do I do? A few days ago I finished the first draft of my current novel project after a few months of work, finishing at 83,212 words. Now what should I

@Holmes449

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Rewrite completely, immediately, and start looking into query letters.

I disagree with any idea of "not rewriting" the first draft, or only correcting spelling and grammar errors.

Definitely rewrite, completely, from page 1.

Quite often, the experience of writing a single book has made the author better than they were when they began, they've been forced to think about writing for several months. The common advice of many famous authors (including Stephen King) is to plan on writing several books before one gets published, because the process of writing makes you a better author. So when you rewrite, unlike the person that begin the book, you have completed a book and should be a better writer for it.

Secondly, by the time I finish a book, my protagonist is far better known to me, and the relatively cardboard char at the beginning can be much better written at the beginning. Perhaps as you were writing you discovered more about their personality, abilities, likes and dislikes: Hints of that can come forward earlier. I had a character I thought needed to be brutally ruthless, but as I wrote I kept finding ways to let her be ruthless when she needed to be, but compartmentalize that "work" side of herself and balance her brutality with kindness and humor.

The same is true for other characters: Perhaps at the time, you thought one of your characters was a bit player, but the plot drove you to make them more important: Then they deserve a little more screen time in the beginning.

Or the opposite: In one story I wrote, I thought the protagonist's brother would be an important player in the book, as it turned out, he never really was. I toned him down quite a bit from what I had in the beginning, while somebody else in the story "naturally" fell into the role I had planned for her brother.

Perhaps there are character developments later in the book you can foreshadow early; a character that dies (and how), a future failure or betrayal.

Thirdly, the finished book is a far more concrete story than any outline or plan of a book (if you did that at all; I don't write with a plan). So in the rewrite, you can use the knowledge of your world, the setting, and the thousand decisions you had to make, in order to make your book consistent. To cut away extraneous exposition. To recognize repetitive descriptions and get rid of them.

Fourthly, now you are reading instead of writing. Many writers write a thousand or two thousand words a day, an average reader (200 WPM) can consume that in five or ten minutes. In 30 minutes you can consume 6000 words, about 20 pages. This is much different than re-reading while writing, and makes you much better able to spot problems difficult to spot while writing, like pacing, repetitiveness, clunkiness, bad transitions, and unclear passages. By the time you finish, you have forgotten much of the "mental context of the story" that was in your head when writing, so now you can see how it looks to the reader that did not HAVE your mental context, and see that something was unclear, a scene change seemed abrupt, and so on.

Start looking into query letters.

Now that your story is complete, you can also start looking into writing a query letter, choosing publishers to contact, and so on. You can write a synopsis or one liner of what your book is about. Write (or rewrite) your outline.

But take the time you were writing regularly to finish the book to rewrite the book, make it consistent from start to finish. You can make it better writing.

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