Your draft should be in pretty good shape now, and you really are nearing the finish line.

However, eager though you may be to show your masterpiece toagents in order for them to snap it up, you don’t want to rush things and shoot yourself in the foot.

Take another break – at least a week if possible, and then come back for a final fine tuning.

You need to be really ruthless now, seek out clichés, telling instead of showing, lazy description, meandering prose. Cut it out. Cut it down. Look for inconsistencies and iron them out.

Here are a few more areas you can fine tune:

 

Dialogue Mechanics

Dialogue is important. It brings the reader into the moment, it feels alive and happening. When is the first dialogue on your story? If it’s not in the first few pages, you could consider moving it forward.

Many new writers overuse replacements to the word said, resulting in something like this:

“You look depressed.” observed Jennifer.

“I am,” answered Barry.

 “You should just cheer up,” concluded Jennifer.

“Whatever,” grumbled Barry.

These colourful replacements border on the cardinal sin of telling not showing, and are obtrusive, dulling the pace.

Instead of relying on words like this, use description of the action to keep things moving and keep the reader right in the action. Also, don’t forget that ‘said’ tends to be invisible to readers when they’re in the flow (unless there are really a lot in a row), and often you don’t need anything to describe who’s speaking, as it ought to be obvious from context.

“You look depressed,” said Jennifer.

Barry picked at his nails and sighed.  “I am.”

“You should just cheer up,” Jennifer put a bright look on her face.

“Whatever.”

 

Paragraphing

You may think that paragraphing is not really a central part of writing. Words and sentences, that’s real writing – paragraphing is what happens inbetween.

Well, how dense or open your prose is will make a big difference to how pacy it feels and whether your reader feels like they’re wading through or skipping along.

When you scan over your work, is most of the page filled with words? If so, it may benefit from more whitespace, giving your story space to breathe. Shortening paragraphs is an extremely effective way to tweak the pace and atmosphere of your novel.

 

Don’t labour the point

This means don’t repeat yourself, and don’t keep trying to get the same point across in too many different ways. One well thought out way will be stronger on its own than several obvious or weak ways.

For example.

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. She loved red wine. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. Her desire for it ached. The way it warmed the back of her throat. She loved it so much. Her fingers twitched towards it.

In this example we are told three times that she loves wine, and by the last time you just want to scream ‘Yes, I know!’

It’s much stronger with the second two removed:

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. She loved red wine. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. The way it warmed the back of her throat. Her fingers twitched towards it.

However, if you want the prose to be really tight, we shouldn’t be telling at all and in fact we can do without any of them, and get the same impression from the description alone:

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. The way it warmed the back of her throat. Her fingers twitched towards it.

You've done it! You've written your novel! Congratulations, you are now a member of a relatively elite club. So now your adoring audiences will be beating down your door to buy your novel and make you rich.

Or... you can go to Step 15. Submitting your novel to an agent.

Congratulations! You’ve finished your first draft! You deserve a big cigar, glass of champagne or whatever it is you celebrate these things with. Feel free to take a few days or a week off, you’ve earned it.

But then, back to work! You may think that now you’ve thrashed out a first draft, the hard part is over, and you’re reaching the finish line. Afraid not. There’s a whole lot more slog to go. But don’t be disheartened! You’re still further then 80% of people who say they’re going to write a book. Don’t give up!

Most of the large scale structure of your book should be relatively fixed by now – if you planned well, it will mean less serious redrafting is needed (for example cutting out entire chapters of characters), so you can focus on fine tuning.

We’ve already looked at some of the mistakes that will instantly mark you out as an amateur, now let’s take a look at a few aspects of writing that you can perfect to take your writing from mediocre to excellent.

Note - if you're looking for a guide to the various different drafts of a novel, you might be interested in this article.

Have you over explained your characters?

The core of this is the good old ‘show, don’t tell’. Make sure you’re not explaining the character’s personality to your readers, as they’re likely to find it dull and distancing.

Compare:

‘Jane was a slob. She hadn’t tidied up in months.’

‘Jane kicked the mouldy plate off the bed and rummaged around for the least stiff pair of jeans from the piles strewn on the floor.’

In the first example, the author makes a statement about a character, and then backs it up with a little evidence, but they’re still just giving their word. In the second example, the author is keeping out of it, just describing the action and letting the reader draw their own conclusions about the cleanliness habits of Jane.

Also, new writers often feel they need to give the entire life story of a character early on, but this isn’t a good idea. It stalls the action, and anyway, it’s more natural to get to know people in a slower, more gradual way. When you meet someone new, you don’t immediately learn everything about them, that happens over time.

By just giving consistent broad brushstrokes, you allow your reader to use their imagination and fill in the gaps, in many cases creating a character with more layers than even you thought of.

Another useful technique for building character is to use what your character notices to give information about them. When they enter a room, do they notice all the pretty girls; the stains on the carpet; or do they note all the exits and times to reach them? What they notice tells us a great deal about their outlook and priorities.

Is the Point of View clear?

A nice way of thinking about point of view is ‘whose skin are you in?’ 

This doesn’t mean that you need to write your story from the 1^st person (using ‘I’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’), or even that you have to use the same character’s point of view through the whole book (although the latter may not be a bad idea if it’s your first book – learn to walk before you run).

However, it is critical that the reader knows whose point of view they are following in any given scene, and this shouldn’t change within a scene.

This is because changing point of view character within a scene is very disorientating for the reader and it breaks their suspension of disbelief, as they have to mentally adjust.

Writing from a particular character’s point of view is more than just where they are standing; it’s also about what they notice. As mentioned above in the section on characters, different characters will have completely different experiences from exactly the same environment. 

For example, you’d be unlikely to have a teenager commenting on the ancient gothic architecture (unless that’s a strong part of their character), and an old lady might notice a gang of louts hanging on a corner, but have no idea what the gang bands on their arms represented.

Also, remember that you may be able to mind-read the Point of View character even if you’re writing from the third person, but you absolutely cannot read the minds of anyone else (unless your PoV character happens to be psychic), so you’ll have to get across their opinions through what they say, how they say it, actions and body language.

How proportionate is your plot?

How does your prose balance? How much is action, dialogue or description?

In general, no sentence should be included if it isn’t critical to the plot, but this doesn’t mean there’s no time to stop and smell the roses. As long as the roses have some relevance to atmosphere, and they are described in a way that reflects the mood of the scene.

If you’re going to spend a lot of lines describing something, make sure it’s relevant. For example, don’t spend two pages describing the interior of one building and two lines on another, unless the first building is central to the plot. Because you can be sure your readers are going to think it is.

Likewise, if your character is doing something, such as cooking, or fixing a saddle, don’t describe it in too much detail unless it’s important to the plot or builds atmosphere. Just because you find a hobby interesting, doesn’t mean your readers will.

On the other hand, if there’s an action scene which is central to the plot, shows key aspects of a main character and throbs with atmosphere – then break it down into moment by moment detail.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to follow about how much description to have and how much detail to include in a particular spot – it’s all about balance.

With the second draft in the bag you can see the finish line. It's time for Step 14: Refining the Final Draft of your novel.

For more guidance on novel writing, click here.

Now, it’s been a long journey already but we’re finally ready to start a first draft. If you’ve completed all your planning well, this first draft should take a fraction of the time it would without the planning, and will also be as tight as a third draft of an unplanned manuscript.

By following the blocking from the previous step and referring to your character viewpoints, location and plot notes, you should fly through the first draft.

Here are the four worst new novelist mistakes, try to avoid them in your first draft!

1. Too many adverbs

Overuse (many creative writing tutors say any use at all is overuse) of adverbs will scream amateur louder than anything else.

In case you don't know, adverbs and words which modify (if you don't know what modify means you should probably consider switching to photography) a noun. They often end in 'ly'.

Examples:

 ·        He said, knowingly.

·         She dropped the knife, meaningfully.

The problem with adverbs is that they are often redundant, re-stating something that is obvious from the dialogue or verb. And if it's not obvious in the dialogue or verb - why isn't it?

Adverbs are often a marker of lazy description, and showing, not telling (see next mistake).

They’re also a key indicator for weak verbs. You can think of the ly as a crutch.

For example:

 He walked weakly to the door.

Might be replaced by:

He stumbled to the door.

2. Telling not showing

If you haven't heard this yet, brace yourself. It's the mantra of creative writing teachers everywhere. 

It's very common for new writers to try to explain things to their readers, as a kind of omnipotent narrator, rather than allowing the reader to experience everything themselves through the protagonist's senses.

For example, if you tell me that:

Martin Cousins was a very dangerous man.

I'll be yawning before you get to the next sentence. So what? And anyway, so you say.

However, if you say that:

Martin's knife sliced through the soft flesh of his latest victim.

Then the point is made vividly and we might even have a shiver of fear. Also, we're not being preached at; we're observing the cold, hard facts with our own eyes.

3. Overly formal dialogue

The main problem with natural dialogue in fiction is that it's nothing like natural dialogue in real life. If an author did put genuinely genuine sounding dialogue into their work, readers would be bored silly, because normal speech is full of half-finished sentences, interruption, meandering and assumed knowledge.

So fictional dialogue needs to be much more succinct, with clear direction and eloquence, but to still give the impression of being natural.

Some tips to making speech sound less formal is to use fillers (well, umm, I guess), pauses, interruptions and contractions (do not = don't, I will = I'll).

4. As you know, Bob

This is the common phenomena of writers using a character to explain a plot point to another character who already knows it.

To take an unlikely example, let's say knowing the ingredients of a Screwdriver is critical to the story. 

The amateur writer might decide to have two barmen, one of whom says something along the lines of:

'Well, as you know Nick, a screwdriver is a mix of vodka and orange juice.'

If Nick already knows it, why is his colleague telling him something so obvious? 

That's what the readers will be saying anyway. It comes across as wooden, and it's lazy. And it's just a sneaky way of telling (see above).

Characters should never say anything that the person they're talking to knows already. This isn't to say a character can never explain a plot point, just make sure they are telling it to someone who genuinely wants and needs to know.

First draft complete! Now you can go onto step 13. The Second Draft.

Serious about becoming a novelist? Save yourself waste time and energy by getting the right tools for the job.