From First Draft to Finished Product: How the Editorial Process Really Works

Sometimes it seems like the editorial process is shrouded in mystery, but it doesn’t need to be. This guide describes the typical stages of drafting, seeking feedback on, and revising a manuscript. Understanding these important steps will help you get the most out of the editorial partnership—and create the strongest possible version of your manuscript.

Step 1: First draft—You did it! Finishing a book-length work (typically 75,000 to 100,000 words) requires commitment, doggedness, and, let’s be honest, a little bit of insanity. You’ve spent hours staring at a screen, trying to catch the wondrous wisps of your story with your clumsy hands and keeping the faith that eventually you’ll be able to type “the end.” And then one day you do. A first draft is rough, unwieldy, underdeveloped in some places, and bloated in others. It is a beautiful creature at the beginning of its life. Time to hire an editor, right? Nope, not yet.  

Step 2: Revision—It can be surprising to learn that “the end” is in fact just the beginning of the work ahead for a writer hoping to turn an idea into a finished book. “Writing is rewriting,” and in rewriting and revising the raw material in a first draft, a writer comes closer to figuring out what she intends to say and how she should say it. Characters might be combined or cut, plot lines developed or abandoned, and exposition trimmed.

Step 3: Feedback—When you’ve used every tool you have to refine your manuscript, the next step is to seek feedback from readers you trust. That may mean asking members of your writing groups who “get” your voice/concept/audience or hiring a professional editor. At this stage, the draft is still not ready for line-by-line editing. Instead, you need feedback on what’s working—and what’s not—when it comes to structure, plot, character development, pace, tone, clarity, prose style, and more. This valuable feedback will help guide further revision. I offer the Comprehensive Manuscript Evaluation at this stage of the process—see below for more information on what this service includes and how it can help you power through revision.

Step 4: Further revision—Armed with detailed feedback, you get down to work on the big (and sometimes difficult) changes that will make your novel or memoir tighter and stronger and help it deliver on its promises to readers. Be sure to give yourself lots of time to work through this phase. Thoughtful revision is where the magic happens.

Step 5: Revised draft—After you tackle these revisions, you will have a revised draft of your manuscript. This may be the third draft or the twelfth or the twenty-fifth, but the point is that you have addressed the structural issues in the story, developed the characters, remedied problems with the prose, and are satisfied with the manuscript in its current form. At this stage, your manuscript is ready for line editing (additional work on sentence structure, word choice, flow, and consistency) and copyediting (which deals with grammar, spelling, usage, punctuation, and other mechanics of style to give the prose a final polish).

Step 6: Final draft—When all the revision is finished, and line editing and copyediting are complete, you have a final draft in your hands. At this stage, you might begin researching agents and draft a query letter pitching your book. Or, if you are planning to self-publish, you will move forward with hiring a cover designer, book designer, and building a platform to sell your book online. Either way, you have completed the editorial process and now have a polished finished manuscript you are ready to share.