Broken Frontiers: Choosing the Number of Drafts for Fiction

When writing a short story, we try to elate something to the reader in a short point. When writing the novel, we are free to wander on occasion. To write any piece of fiction, we will have to keep in mind the drafting process. A first draft may appall us; that does not matter. What matters is that we leave the project better with each draft. In order to do this, we must address the number of drafts for our fiction piece.

The short story is a brief story. The novel is the king of fiction. Both work in drafts, both tell stories, and both need a suitable drafting process to them. Consider this: in the short story we have less words to impress the reader; while the novel allows us more room for common mistakes. We may have a comma happy demon inside of us. Or we work on the novel one day and through it out the next. We should consider what the comma happy demon is trying to say. We are not failing by having too many commas; that is a common mistake that can be weeded out in the drafting process. We should never throw out a single scene that is still first draft. We can alter it, but we need to move on. It is important in the drafting of fiction to let everything sit while we continue down the road to completion. We do not have to sit on a mistake; but we do have to allow ourselves to edit things out later.

The first draft should be fun. Often we think of the second draft as a pain in someplace not spoken. The second draft can be fun. We need not cut half the novel or short story. We want to focus on things like pacing, theme, characterization, and style. It would be a mistake to eat a ten course meal all at once; we work on the drafting step by step. We choose, initially, how many drafts we want.

Once we know the number of drafts, we must consider what we want to do. If we have four drafts we can focus on grammar in the first, plot in the second, theme in the third, and added details on characters in the fourth. This allows us to take the story in stride. We improve as writers by having a set number of drafts, a plan for each draft, and setting a time table for doing this (writers need time tables or else the work will be avoided).

Consider these options the next time the novel looks to big to edit, or the short story to scattered to submit. We can submit our stories, but we must have a good plan. The plan does not have to be this; we can work one out for ourselves. But we do need the plan.