After the third draft, I left my novel alone for as long as I could bear. It was only about a month, but even that was a help. As time passes, the clearer your vision becomes and you feel detached enough to consider your final draft with a more critical eye.
I read this draft at snail’s pace, alert for any opportunity to make even the smallest improvement. I allowed myself a maximum of five pages a day, so I was never in danger of galloping through. It was tempting to speed up whenever I reached scenes I remembered being happy with, but in fact it was those sections which needed a closer look.
Sometimes, as a result of alterations made during previous drafts for the sake of clarity and continuity, you might find the occasional scene—however neat and precise—has fallen a little flat.
Here is an invented example of a scene which might seem fine, but in the polishing process has lost some emotional resonance:
‘Graham walks through the marsh, around the reed clumps edged with liquifying traces of snow, carelessly kicking an old can. When he reaches the harbour and the dredging beds, he remembers Dad taking him and Chrissie to the beach last summer.
Chrissie picked up some oyster shells and Dad said maybe the Romans had left them behind, because there was an ancient palace nearby. That convinced her she’d find all their buried treasure if she dug deep enough.
They couldn’t make her stop. Dad wished he’d never mentioned the bloody Romans. She filled her bucket with more oyster shells while the sun roasted their shoulders.
“They might not all be ancient, those shells,” Dad said, gathering up their towels. “Tourists will have left them, I expect.”
She ignored him. Even when the sky clouded over, the sand was still flying.
“You’ll not get deep enough with that,” Dad said in the end, prising the little plastic spade out of her hands. “You won’t find any real treasure. Not in a lifetime of digging.”
Graham kicks the can far out to sea. His best shoes and new black trousers are soaked through. They might dry out in time, if he walks slowly along the coast road to the church.’
I don’t feel Graham’s emotions deeply enough in this version, neither in the present day narrative, nor in his memories of the previous summer. So I added more detail to connect the past and present and suggest a deeper sense of loss:
‘Water flies up from Graham’s feet as he darts through the marsh, kicking a muddy aerosol can, dodging clumps of reeds. The sea has not crept up this far. Even at high tide, the marsh weakens the force of the waves slapping the sea walls and the sun has dissolved the last of the snow to trails of shattered frosting.
He passes a curlew feasting on mud snails. He skirts the deeper pools with their soft dash of fish and skim of heron wings, chasing the aerosol can all the way to the harbour and the old dredging beds where oysters are packed tight in the silt.
Last summer, Chrissie found oyster shells near the site of an ancient palace and their dad told her a family of Romans had sucked them empty two thousand years ago. After that, they couldn’t get her to come home. She thought she would find silver snake bands and laurel leaf crowns, bronze buckles baked into the sand.
By the evening, Dad’s shoulders were shining red. She was golden. Her bucket was jammed with the craggy old shells.
“Probably only your first two or three are actually Roman,” Dad said, touching his tender bald spot. “Day-trippers probably left the rest.”
He pointed out the day’s litter: a Tiger Tots packet, a Cresta bottle, a broken straw hat.
“No one lives long enough to dig deep enough to find real treasure,” he told her.
And with the unshakeable confidence of her seven and a half years, she said, “I will.”
Graham boots the can hard. Before he catches up with it, he drops to his knees, needing to unearth an unbroken shell, the kind Chrissie would want to take home, if she were with him now. He remembers her losing a perfect little crab-cast and how he searched for it, under every pebble, every scrap of seaweed, all the assorted rubbish.
Later, when the can has floated beyond the shallows and the waves are already nudging it out to sea, he is still crawling on the shore, peering between stones for something whole and intact, his dark trousers soaked and his black tie trailing.’
I think the second version is better, but could keep making revisions and never be sure. Editing is never really finished. You could pick up your ms a thousand times and find something to change, something to tinker with, something you used to love, but which now makes you wince (or vice versa). There is no optimal number of drafts you should write. No minimum, no maximum. Some authors write only one, others write thirty. It’s up to you. It may be different for every book you write. It’s a personal choice. Trust your own judgement.
The best advice I can give is never say, ‘That’ll do.’ It won’t be enough. You aren’t really satisfied. If you can bear to, put your draft away again and let time help you to see where improvements can be made. You will know when your novel is as perfect as you can make it.
On a different note, here is a tip which my husband discovered recently. I hope you find it as valuable as I do. I used to believe that when I copied something with Control C in Windows, it was immediately lost once I’d copied something else. However, if you use the Windows key with V, a clipboard appears with a chronological list of EVERYTHING you have copied. You can just scroll down and find the one you want.
Forgive me if you know about this already – but if not, you will be elated!
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