Friday 2 January 2026
“What I Don’t Do After Finishing a Rough Draft”
Guest post from author KAREN A. WYLE
I write rough drafts in a hurry. For many years I followed the original rules of National Novel
Writing Month, even after those rules loosened up: write at least 50,000 words of a new novel
entirely within the month of November. I would make notes on a few characters and some
possible scenes during October, and sometimes do a little research, but I saved starting the actual
text for November 1 st . That meant averaging 1,667 words a day, a pace which kept me from
spending hours editing and fretting over what I’d already written. In recent years I’ve allowed
myself to start in late October, but I still aim to reach (and usually pass) the 50,000 word mark by
the end of November. More often, November 30 th or the first few days of December find me with
a very rough draft about 55K-65K words long.
Very rough. Typical problems include inconsistent character descriptions, inconsistent plot
developments, unheralded changes in point of view or character descriptions, characters
introduced early on who vanish for the rest of the book, and characters with identical names. I’ve
even had characters come back from the dead, with no intention or fanfare. Promised or
foreshadowed plot events may never materialize. On a more technical level, there are often too
many filler words such as “very,” “quite,” “somewhat,” “almost,” “feel,” and (in some uses)
“that.” These words create unnecessary distance between the reader and the point of view
character, or dilute the impact of what’s happening. Two or three or more characters may also
have identical speech habits and vocabularies, instead of their “voices” reflecting their
geographical origins, educational levels, and personalities.
So I jump right into fixing all these problems once the draft is finished – yes?
Well, no. I’ve found it’s better to wait a few weeks and approach the draft with fresh eyes. The
closer I can come to experiencing the draft as a reader instead of a writer, the better my chances
of seeing these problems. Then I can put my writer hat back on and start solving them. I can also
see where the story is too thin, where it needs a deeper dive into a character’s motivations or
trauma, where a subplot could add interest or an existing one is pointless or distracting. And I
can see whether the parts of the story that should move me as a reader actually do so.
It’s not always easy to step back after a month of working on the draft every day. There’s no
feeling quite like the creative impulse on simmer, the way my subconscious sneaks in and turns
the heat up so that it boils at 2 a.m. and compels me to scribble down a barely legible idea on my
bedside note pad. But I know, by now, that if I want the book to be good in the end, it needs this
fallow time.
KAREN E. WYLE
Karen A. Wyle is a retired appellate attorney and the author of multiple novels in a bewildering array of genres. She has been married more than thirty-six years and has two wildly creative adult offspring. She lives between two small dots on the map in south central Indiana, more or less in the woods. http://www.KarenAWyle.com
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