So, you’ve finally finished your book! But now it’s time to edit that first draft, and it’s a mess. And I’m not talking messy like your morning hair. I’m talking messy like Picasso rearranged your face while you slept. I’ve discovered that there aren’t a lot of resources out there to help with editing a first draft and dealing with those ‘big picture’ issues. So, I’ve created my own, and I’d like to share it with you!

We’re going to split the book up into the different plots, subplots, themes, or movements. Then, we will edit each one separately. By doing this, we can whittle the glorious mess down to a few mini-messes, which immediately become less intimidating.

I’m presenting a very abbreviated version of the system. If you’re interested in learning more, I have a shiny new class available through Teachable! More on that at the end. But for now… here’s my magic formula for editing that messy first draft!

Identify your plot threads

The first step to editing a first draft is to figure out what’s already there. Make a list of the plots, subplots, and themes that are in your book. These can be anything from the central plot of the story, to a side character who goes through their own small journey. A plot thread is an idea that extends through at least several scenes, and has a goal, obstacles, and a resolution.

Once you’ve figured out which threads you’d like to track (I find that between 8 – 15 is a good number), go through a printed version of your book and use colors to mark every scene that pertains to each thread. You will find that a lot of your scenes will be moving along multiple plot threads.

Create a Visual Outline

Using sticky notes or whatever medium makes the most sense to you, lay out your entire plot scene by scene. Use the same colors to mark the plot threads. After doing this, you should be able to step back and see your full book at once. By color coding the threads, we will be able to use them when it’s time to identify problems.

List the Scenes

For each of your plot threads, create a simplified list of all scenes in that thread. Also identify the specific goal, obstacles, and resolution for the thread.

Identify Problems

Now that you have your threads nicely separated out, consider each of them individually. Try to identify their weak points are. A lot of these will be things you noticed in the previous steps. Like, if you were trying to list the goal, obstacle, and resolution, you might have realized that a thread doesn’t have a resolution.

Identify Solutions

Work each of the problems you’ve identified individually, coming up how those problems could be fixed. You’re looking for very general solutions at this stage, like “Give the romantic interest more scenes,” or “Create difficulties for getting inside the castle.”

Implement Solutions

Take those solutions and create an action plan (just in the notebook for now) of how you can implement them in the book. If the solution involves adding a scene, put a note in the manuscript where the new scene should go. If you need to change an existing scene, notate that as well.

You should have some kind of shorthand, and keep a running list of all of these new and revised scenes. This is also where you’ll be using your visual outline to rearrange, add, and throw away the sticky notes.

Write and Revise

Once you have the visual outline exactly as you want it, and all of you’ve solved every problem you identified, you can start writing. Go through that big list you’ve created and write your new scenes, and make your revisions.

Note – It’s easy to get lost with editing a first draft. To avoid confusion, put these new scenes in their own document. This step is all about generating the new content you need to fix the book.

Edit Untouched Scenes

Optional. If you want to go through and do some line / language edits on the scenes that you aren’t revising, now is a good time to do it.

Put it Back Together

Go through your visual outline scene by scene, and put the book in its new, beautiful order. Opening a new document and pasting the scenes in one by one is really helpful if you did a lot of rearranging. If the scene is new or revised, pull it from your new document. If you didn’t change the scene, copy it from the original manuscript.

Hopefully, you will find this method to be helpful, and the prospect of editing a first draft will seem less daunting.

If you want to take a deep dive into this type of editing, check out my online class. With ‘at your own pace’ modules, I take you through these steps with lots of variations, pep talks, and questions to get you thinking about how to strengthen your book.

You’ll also receive worksheets, templates, practical examples, and access to the exclusive facebook group. By joining the online community, you can to chat with your classmates about this colorful system of editing your first draft.

Click here to check out the class.