Mrs. Weidman used to importune that my writing had to have a purpose. “Why are you writing this?”, she would ask. “What message do you wish to convey to your reader?” I could always wisecrack, ‘To get it published’, and ‘My story.’ My answers may have lacked specificity, but they were terse.
Nowadays, I could answer more precisely, because I don’t write. I I record story ideas. Or I develop an idea into a concept. Or I do character development. Or I expand on my characters’ story problems. Or I outline. Or I write a first draft. Or edit the first draft into a second draft. Or do a line edit. Or I collect and analyze critiques. Or I revise from those critiques. Or I copy edit. Or I start the submission process. I’m talking about workflow, obviously.
Each phase of my workflow has a different objective, and therefore, a different methodology. In most cases, a different reminder or checklist accompanies it.
For example, for my first draft, I must have an outline; I’m not a pantser. For fiction, I don’t worry too much about research (I feel free to lie a lot at this stage.) For nonfiction, quite the opposite, I obsess on research. I know nobody but me will see the first draft. The second draft will be rewritten for the intended audience, but the first draft is for my eyes only, so I try not to edit. To help with this, I use composition (Full Screen) mode in Scrivener. I review the scene I’m working on in my outline before I start to write.
I use different folders for the different phases of workflow, and a folder for each story or article, moving the work items around from folder to folder. It may not make sense, but it’s my workflow. Right there in the First Draft folder is a document which acts as a reminder of the points I just listed.
At the start of each writing session I perform a quick edit of the previous day’s writing. It has no checklist, and I do it partly to review where I’m at, but a lot of bad writing and inconsistencies bubble up, and correcting them means that I’m less likely to feel like an idiot when I get to serious editing. It’s also an easy edit, because my daily output is not voluminous.
The second draft is developmental edit, and like a lot of editing, starts with a structured reading and note taking. It focuses on the story opening, POV, character development, dangling plot threads, rearrange plot points and scenes, continuity, see what’s missing, and some light copy editing. I use a specific checklist which has ideas borrowed (that’s the polite form of ‘stolen’) from Jennifer Ellis, as well as from David Madden’s Revising Fiction, David Caplin’s Revision, and Renni Brown and Dave King’s Self Editing for Fiction Writers.
The third draft is a line edit; it has its own checklist, too. And so on, all the way to the finish line.
Having a workflow breaks the large and almost unmanageable job of writing into a series of smaller, more focused, and manageable tasks.