Writing The Next Draft - Laurel Cohn
It is an enormous achievement to have a completed draft of a manuscript. It can take many months or years to get there. Then it’s done, right? Well, that draft is done, but it takes multiple drafts to get a manuscript up to publication standards. How do you approach the next draft? What does redrafting involve? The short answer is ‘structural editing’. But what exactly is that? How do you go about it? And how do you survive it?
As a developmental editor, I work with writers preparing their manuscripts for publication, helping them to strengthen their work and deepen their understanding of not just the story they are wanting to tell, but also of what it means to be a writer. Over the years I have found that many writers aren’t well prepared for the journey involved in developing their manuscripts and I have created this course to demystify the structural editing process and help support writers with a completed manuscript take their work to the next level.
Structural editing involves looking at the story as a whole and considering aspects such as story arc, expression of themes, character development, point of view, backstory, voice and pacing. These are elements that most writers have given considerable thought to as they are writing. However, it is an understanding of how all these aspects are working together to deliver the writer’s intent – or not – that lies at the heart of the process. In other words, the structural edit concerns recognising what is working well in the manuscript and what isn’t.
In The Next Draft course I introduce writers to my five-step approach to structural editing: shifting from writer to reader, looking at the big picture, reading the latest draft, mapping your story, and approaching the next draft. With practical strategies and tools, exercises and examples, the course is designed to guide you through the redrafting process. The sessions are spaced to allow you to undertake the steps introduced in a supported way.
It can be tricky to traverse the sometimes challenging inner terrain that underlies critical engagement with your own work. In acknowledgement of this, the course also covers seeking and managing feedback, recharging your batteries, surviving rejection and that perennial question, When am I done?
Editing your work, just like writing it, is a craft that requires specific skills, patience, commitment and practise. It is a necessary part of the development phase of preparing a manuscript for publication – you can’t avoid it. If you allow yourself the time to understand what the next draft involves, you will not only improve your work-in-progress, but gain a deepening appreciation of the creative process and the gems to be discovered within it.
Laurel Cohn is a developmental book editor passionate about communication and the power of stories in our lives. Since the late 1980s she has been helping writers prepare their work for publication. She runs a small editing and manuscript development service with four editors on her team and is a regular workshop presenter for Queensland Writers Centre, Writing NSW, Writers Victoria and Byron Writers Festival. She has a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies.
Join Laurel for her ever popular development course The Next Draft with Queensland Writers Centre from July this year - and survive the next draft of your work-in-progress. Book in now at www.queenslandwriters.org.au/events/the-next-draft.
Join Laurel Cohn for her 6-part development course The Next Draft from July 2022. Book in now at www.queenslandwriters.org.au/events/the-next-draft.