New Year, New Draft, New Contests!
Happy New Year!
Fresh off the resolution list of many writers is the non-exciting endeavor of editing and polishing your existing screenplay, novel or short story. After letting your finished draft sit for a week or two, its time to revisit your last story draft.
We pray it’s perfect the way we wrote it. Hope it will ‘Wow’ readers, gain rave reviews and high coverage scores. We pray it will win a sale with a publisher or producer.
Every writers expects edits will be minimal. We reread our latest masterpiece with confident naivete. Seasoned writers aren’t so naive.
We know that draft will need a final polish. We reread that draft aloud. We listen to the cadence of the words we’ve written, make notes on the lines that sound off, remove redundant phrase, rework lines of description and dialogue, adding more concise words and imagery for better story flow.
We update that draft incorporating the edits.
It’s not an awful task, but a necessary one.
Now we have a new draft. A polished draft. That polished draft needs read and critiqued by writer friends to insure its better. More complete. Did we get better critique notes on this draft? Better coverage scores?
If we did, and we’re happy with those notes and scores, we send the story out
to publishers. We enter writing contests. Wait with fingers crossed for a sale, for a ranking or award that will tell us we’ve succeeded in our story telling. We promote that polished draft as much as we can, then move on to writing our next project.
If critiques and coverage scores come back sub-par. We tuck that story back in a drawer, move on to our next project. In a month we reread the old story, repeat the steps above ad nauseam.
Such is the life of a writer.
But, it’s a new year. We have renewed hope that this year will be The Year our story will sell.
So, again, Happy New Year! Happy writing. Good luck with your drafts. Get glowing reviews.
Win contests!
