Writing a novel is a funny old business.

You start with an idea. A delicious, shiny, marvellous little nugget of an idea. A seed, a spark, or however you like to think of it. You plan the characters, the plot, the twists, the turns, and all the clever things you’re going to do with it. Well, you do as much as you can, anyway.

And then you have to actually write the thing.

This is when most people quickly give in. But not the rest of us. Oh no. But I can understand why they do. The planning, drafting, writing, rewriting, questioning every decision you’ve ever made, and then rewriting it again is hard. By the end, you’re no longer entirely sure whether the manuscript is improving or whether you’ve simply stared at it for so long that you’ve developed a form of literary Stockholm syndrome.

Over time, I’ve come to think of the drafting process as an emotional obstacle course. One minute you’re a genius. The next, you’re wondering whether you should take up basket weaving instead. It can be quite insightful in writerly WhatsApp groups, as you see each author cycle over and over again, utterly blind to it themselves.

So, here’s my very personal journey from draft zero to draft five. The highs, the lows, and the bits where you wonder why on earth you thought writing a book was a sensible thing to do.

Draft zero: the glorious beginning

Ahhh, the zero draft.

This is where the magic happens. Or at least where the possibility of magic happens.

Possibly the least talked about part of the process, what exactly is a zero draft, anyway? It’s basically the roughest version of your story. It’s where you explore the idea, discover your characters, and try to work out what on earth you’re doing. It doesn’t need to be polished, coherent, or particularly readable. It just needs to exist.

For me, it’s a bit like wandering through the dark with a torch and a vague sense of direction. You know there’s something out there. You can feel it. But you haven’t quite worked out what it looks like yet.

The wonderful thing is that you have permission to be rubbish. You can leave notes to yourself, write placeholder scenes, and allow your characters to behave in ways that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The important thing is to keep going.

Because a half-written masterpiece, sadly, is still a half-written manuscript.

Emotional state: Unreasonable optimism, occasionally interrupted by panic.

The lesson: Get the words down. Worry about the rest later.

Draft one: oh. Is that what I’ve written?

You’ve reached the end. THE END!

There might be dancing. There might be cake. There might even be a brief period during which you believe you’ve written something extraordinary.

Then you open the document again, and you’re mildly horrified.

The story in your head and the story on the page aren’t necessarily the same thing. There are plot holes. Characters disappear for six chapters. A subplot turns out to have absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

And that beautifully atmospheric scene you love? It might be doing precisely nothing. This is where you begin to see what you’ve actually got. A first draft is raw material, not a verdict on your abilities as a writer.

The temptation is to fiddle with sentences because that’s easier than admitting the entire chapter might need to go. But sometimes the problem isn’t the sentence. It’s the plot. Or the character. Or the fact that you’ve written 80,000 words and the story still doesn’t quite know what it wants to be.

Lovely.

Emotional state: Pride, followed by a mild existential crisis.

The lesson: Your first draft is a beginning, not the finished article.

Draft two: the great big rebuild

This is where the hard work really begins.

Structure. Pacing. Themes. Character arcs. Motivation. All the things that turn a collection of scenes into a novel that actually works.

You start asking the big questions. What is this book really about? Are the characters behaving believably? Does the ending make sense? Why does chapter seventeen feel like it’s been written by someone who’s wandered in from an entirely different novel?

Sometimes the answers are obvious. Sometimes they’re hiding behind a false moustache.

You might have to cut scenes you adore, rewrite the opening, or dismantle a subplot you’ve been nurturing like a particularly precious houseplant.

Every change has consequences. Fix one problem and three more pop up to take its place. It’s a bit like renovating a house while you’re still living in it. You take down one wall and discover the plumbing is in the wrong place.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, you wonder whether the book was ever any good.

But here’s the thing: being able to see the problems is progress. You now know more about the story than you did when you started.

Emotional state: Determination, interrupted by bewilderment.

The lesson: Revision isn’t just about polishing sentences. It’s about discovering what the story needs to become.

Draft three: enter the beta readers

Right. You’ve worked on the manuscript, wrestled with the plot, and hopefully removed at least some of the unnecessary faff.

Now it’s time to let other people read it.

Your precious manuscript. The thing you’ve spent months pouring your heart and soul into.

Good grief.

Beta readers are invaluable because they can see what you’ve become too close to notice. They can tell you where they’re confused, where the story drags, and where a character’s behaviour makes absolutely no sense.

The trouble is, they don’t know what you know. You understand why your character made that decision. You know the significance of that detail in chapter four. Your reader only knows what’s on the page.

If several readers stumble over the same thing, there’s probably something worth investigating. But not every suggestion will be right for your book. Your job isn’t to implement every comment like a frantic little editing robot. It’s to listen, look for patterns, and decide what’s genuinely helping the story.

Emotional state: Vulnerability, gratitude, and the occasional desire to hide under a blanket.

The lesson: Your readers help you discover what you’ve actually managed to communicate.

Draft four: the agent reads it

By now, you’ve spent an enormous amount of time with this manuscript. You’ve rewritten it, edited it, worried about it, and possibly developed an unhealthy relationship with the word count.

And now your agent has feedback.

This is a different kind of scrutiny. Your agent is thinking about the manuscript as a professional who understands the publishing landscape and wants to champion your work.

Perhaps there are structural changes to make. Perhaps a character needs more depth. Perhaps there’s something you simply haven’t seen because you’ve been staring at it for months. Often, my feedback comes back in the form of a bit of an essay from my agent about things I can deepen or cut. He’s never specific, leaving that up to me, which is somehow extremely trusting and empowering, yet also anxiety-inducing. Pretty much every time I get the feedback, I spend 24 hours thinking “I can’t do this” until I subsequently realise that I’ve done it loads of times before and of course I can. 😊

Emotional state: Hope, trepidation, and a strong desire to know whether you’re nearly there yet.

The lesson: Professional feedback can reveal possibilities you haven’t spotted yourself.

Draft five: the publisher’s editors

And then, if your book finds its way to a publisher, along come the editors.

By this point, you might imagine the manuscript is finished. You’ve done the drafts. You’ve had the feedback. You’ve made the changes.

The editorial process varies from book to book, but working with a publisher’s editors can bring yet another perspective. There may be structural questions, characters to strengthen, sections to refine, or passages that need a little more clarity.

Sometimes the changes are small. Sometimes they’re bigger. Sometimes a comment sends you back to a section you thought you’d dealt with approximately fourteen geological ages ago.

Welcome back, old friend.

One of the lovely things about this stage is discovering that writing a book doesn’t mean doing every part of it alone. Other people bring experience, expertise and fresh eyes. They can help you see the story more clearly.

That doesn’t mean you stop being the author. You’re still responsible for the voice, the vision and the heart of the book. But you’re also learning to collaborate, to listen, and to recognise when a suggestion might make the story stronger.

You won’t agree with everything. You don’t have to. But you do need to remain open to the possibility that your book can still improve.

Even now.

Especially now, perhaps.

Emotional state: Concentration, renewed determination, and the occasional are we really looking at this bit again?

The lesson: Collaboration can strengthen a book without taking away what makes it yours.

So, how many drafts does a novel need?

Five? Six? Twelve? Forty-seven and a half?

There isn’t a magic number. Every writer works differently, and every book has its own peculiar needs.

For me, thinking about drafts in stages is useful because each one has a different purpose:

• Draft zero: Discover the story.
• Draft one: See what you’ve actually written.
• Draft two: Shape and rebuild it.
• Draft three: Find out how it works for other readers.
• Draft four: Refine it with professional guidance.
• Draft five: Continue developing it with your publisher’s editorial team.

This is my framework, not a set of rules carved into a stone tablet somewhere in the publishing heavens.

The important thing isn’t the number of drafts. It’s whether the manuscript is moving towards the book you want it to be. Sometimes you’ll go backwards to move forwards. Sometimes you’ll cut something you love. Sometimes you’ll solve a problem only to discover three new ones lurking underneath.

And sometimes, after weeks of fiddling and faffing, everything finally clicks into place.

Learning to let go

Writing a novel means becoming deeply attached to something that eventually has to exist outside your head. You have to let other people read it, respond to it, question it, and sometimes suggest changes to things you’ve spent months getting just right.

That’s not always easy, but there’s a difference between protecting your story and being so protective that you won’t let it grow.

You don’t have to accept every suggestion. You don’t have to agree with every opinion. You don’t have to strip away everything that makes your writing yours in pursuit of some mythical, universally perfect book. But you do have to be willing to look at your work honestly. To recognise when a scene isn’t working, even if you love it. To accept that the version of the book in your head isn’t necessarily the version on the page. To keep going when the process feels like one enormous game of literary whack-a-mole.

Because every draft teaches you something. About the book, yes, but also about yourself as a writer.

The zero draft is the beginning of a possibility. The later drafts are how you discover what that possibility can become.

And then, eventually, you have to let the book go out into the world and transform into what readers perceive it as, not just how you designed it to be.

Which is another terrifying business entirely.

But that’s a story for another day.

Until next time…

xx

More writing advice

If you’re working on a novel yourself, you might also enjoy my posts on writing and editing the third draft of your novel, everything you need to know about beta readers, and what a zero draft is and whether writers should use one.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing novels, it’s that there’s always something else to learn (and probably another draft to write).