Back to Questions

What process do you go through in arriving at a final draft?

I usually begin a novel with just a little idea, perhaps no more than a character trait. That idea will lead to another until it snowballs into a full-blown story. Since I do not plan or outline beforehand, I normally don't know what's going to happen next. I go through several drafts. The first draft is very unorganized, often with ideas at the end that are inconsistent with those at the beginning. In the second draft, I organize it better because I now have a pretty firm grasp of who the characters are and what is going to happen to them. By the time I get to the last rewrite (which may be the fifth or sixth pass), I try to convince myself that the story is all true, and that I am simply telling it, not making it up. After numerous rough drafts, I send the final copy to the publisher, but that's still not the absolute final copy. I then work with an editor, and I may do some more rewrites. Somehow I've now written 18 books. I'm always amazed when I finish a book and realize, hey, this actually is what I set out to do.