How to Revise the First Draft of a Novel: a Four-Pass Method

You've just typed "THE END" at the bottom of your first draft, and it's a real victory, since most novel projects never get that far. Still, you already know that what's in front of you is the raw material of a book, and this is where many writers lose their way, because they attack revision the way you'd reread a text message: fixing commas in a chapter whose entire scene might need to go.

Revision takes several passes, each at a different scale. By working down gradually from structure to scenes, then to sentences and finally to the surface of the text, you avoid the classic trap of polishing for hours a passage that the next pass will make you cut.

First, touch nothing: the drawer

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), Stephen King gives advice that has become a classic: once the first draft is done, put the manuscript in a drawer and leave it alone for at least six weeks. Spend that time on something else, another text or another project, as long as it doesn't resemble your novel.

Those six weeks are for gaining distance from the text far more than for resting. After that stretch, King writes, you'll recognize the text as yours while feeling as if you're reading someone else's, and that's exactly the state you need to revise in. You'll then spot holes in the plot or the characters "big enough to drive a truck through." The day before you typed the last line, those holes were invisible, because you still had in mind what the text was supposed to say rather than what it actually says.

When the manuscript comes out of the drawer, King advises reading the whole thing, in one sitting if possible, pencil in hand, noting everything without rewriting anything. This reading serves as a diagnosis and prepares the first real pass.

Pass 1: structure

The first pass leaves style and grammar aside to ask an architect's questions:

• Does the story start in the right place? Many first drafts begin a chapter or two too early, and if that's your case, our article on writing an opening chapter that hooks will help you find the right way in.
• Does every character change, or do some stay the same from beginning to end for no reason?
• Is there a sagging stretch, often in the second third, where the plot marks time?
• Are the promises made to the reader in the first chapters kept in the last ones?

At this scale, you move whole chapters, merge two secondary characters, delete a subplot that leads nowhere. This pass is the most painful and the most rewarding, because a beautifully written scene can't save a shaky structure.

It's also the riskiest, since you're cutting deep. Before you cut, keep a record of the previous state. In Extypis, saved versions are made for this: before each pass you save a named, dated version of the manuscript, which you can compare with the current one and restore if needed. You can then cut an entire chapter without anxiety, knowing you'll get it back in one click if you miss it three weeks later.

Pass 2: scenes

Once the frame is stable, you go down a level and ask whether each scene, taken on its own, earns its place.

Ask each scene three questions:

1. What does it change? A scene that shifts neither the plot, nor a relationship, nor our understanding of a character can be cut, however well written.
2. Does it start too early and end too late? First drafts love arrivals (the doorbell, the door, the hello, sitting down) and departures. Enter the scene as late as possible and leave it as early as possible.
3. Is it told the right way? Some summarized scenes would gain from being played out in front of the reader, while others, heavy with dialogue, would be stronger in two sentences of narration. That's the whole subject of show, don't tell, and its legitimate exceptions.

This is the pass where King's most famous formula comes into its own. In the spring of 1966, an editor sent back one of his stories with a scribbled note: "Not bad, but PUFFY. Formula: 2nd draft = 1st draft minus 10%." King says he copied the formula onto a card taped next to his typewriter, and he passed it on unchanged, nearly forty years later, in On Writing. That ten percent gives a direction more than a figure to hit: a second draft shorter than the first usually shows that you've cut the duplicate scenes, the redundant explanations and the detours.

Pass 3: sentences

Style comes only now, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph:

• Repetitions. Every writer has pet words, like a character who "sighs" on every page or a "however" every ten lines, and over 300 pages you stop seeing them because you've read them so often. Extypis's repetition detection highlights the words and phrases that come back too often and suggests synonyms, a task where software sees better than a tired writer.
• Adverbs and weak verbs. "He walked slowly" can become "he trudged," because a precise verb makes the adverb unnecessary.
• Sentence openings. When three sentences in a row start with the same subject, the paragraph turns into a litany.
• Dialogue. Read it aloud, because whatever trips the tongue will also trip the reader's eye.

If this pass feels endless, know that in 1958, interviewed by George Plimpton for the Paris Review, Hemingway said he had rewritten the ending of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. When Plimpton asked what had stumped him, he answered: "Getting the words right." Scholars who have studied his manuscripts have since counted forty-seven versions, published in a special edition in 2012, so he had even underestimated himself. If a Nobel laureate went at three paragraphs forty-seven times, your five versions of a scene are simply part of the job.

Pass 4: the surface

The last pass is the humblest: spelling, punctuation, typos and factual consistency (the gray car in chapter 2 can't be blue in chapter 14, and a character doesn't relight a cigarette they stubbed out two pages earlier).

Two practical tips:

• Change how you read. A different font, a different type size, an e-reader or a printout: surprised by the new layout, your brain starts reading again instead of recognizing what it already knows.
• Keep this pass separate from the others. If you spot a scene problem while fixing a typo, note it without reopening that work, or you'll never finish.

It's also the moment to open the door. King passes on advice from his first editor, John Gould: "Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." The first draft belongs to you alone, whereas the revised text is ready for other eyes, those of your first readers and beta readers, whose feedback will sometimes feed one more pass.

The full cycle

Here's the method in summary:

Pass	Scale	Central question	What happens if you skip it
Drawer (6 weeks)	Distance	Can I read my text like a stranger?	You revise what you think you wrote
1. Structure	The book	Does the architecture hold?	You polish doomed scenes
2. Scenes	The scene	Does every scene earn its place?	The novel stays bloated
3. Sentences	The sentence	Is every word the right one?	The text stays correct but flat
4. Surface	The word	Is the text clean?	The reader loses trust

You can adapt the number of passes to your book: some writers merge the first two, others add a pass devoted to dialogue or to a character who resists. The one rule to keep is to go always from the largest to the smallest, because style can wait as long as the structure is still moving.

In the first draft, you tell yourself the story; in revising it, you finally tell it to someone else. A drawer, four passes and a little of Hemingway's patience are enough to make that journey.