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Planning and writing the first draft of your novel manuscript is arguably both the most important task and the easiest task, among all the tasks you need to do to produce a novel that is ready for your target audience. And writing the first draft is definitely the least time consuming part of producing your novel.

How long does it take to write the first draft manuscript?

“How long is a piece of string?” is the best answer to this.

The total wordcount of your first draft of course affects how long it takes to write it. But other issues in fact have more impact on the writing time.

How many hours it takes to write the first draft of your novel usually depends on how much you’ve thought about it before you start to write. That is, if you have already written a fair bit of it in your head, the writing might take less time. On the other hand, it might not, because once you get started writing you may realise what you’d thought out isn’t want you want, and decide to completely change it.

You may have planned your novel out in your head and then it just flows, naturally, as you write that first draft. Or you may be writing it with no plan and there are stops and starts to your writing, and gaps that you know you will have to work out how to fill later on. Or you may be writing your first draft with no plan at all, and it all flows naturally and works really well.

How good you are at writing in the specific style you are using will affect the standard of your first draft and also the speed of your writing. If you’re using a style you’ve used before and are comfortable with, you’ll probably write more quickly.

You may have time to write full time, or you may have a day job and only get an hour or two each day and weekends to write. You may not be motivated to write, or procrastinate, which delays your writing sessions. All these things may affect how long it takes you to write your first draft.

How many times do you need to edit your book?

Usually a writer would after writing their first draft go through it two, three or more times to self-edit it, to improve the writing, delete errors, fill out more detail where needed, move different scenes around, etc.

After self-editing, a professional writer always sends their book to an editor to be reviewed or for a “structural edit” to give them suggestions for how to improve their book further. The writer then self-edits the book again at least once, and maybe more times than that, to get it to the stage where the writer feels they can’t get it any better themselves.

Then it’s time for an editor to do their work. It may need a one-pass final copy edit, or it may (if it’s a bit rough still) need two passes to fix all the errors and make sure there is nothing confusing left in the content.

Are there different ways of editing a novel?

Yes there are.  How a novel is edited always depends on the target audience.

The “target audience” means the type of reader who reads the genre of your book. Readers who like  romantic comedy have certain expectations of that genre. Readers of fantasy or horror or crime genres have a different set of expectations, depending on the norm for that genre. Readers of literary fiction have entirely different expectations to readers of popular fiction. And so on.

The editing does not have to be “better” for one genre or another – but how a novel is edited does depend entirely on the target audience’s expectations and needs.

How long does it take to edit a novel?

How long it takes to edit a novel depends on how much editing is needed to ensure your novel meets the needs and expectations of your target audience.

The initial writing stage is the most important part of the whole writing and editing process (because nothing can happen without it), but it is also the least time consuming part of the whole writing and editing process. For example, if your 100,000-word novel takes 100 hours to write the first draft, you will then probably spend 100-200 hours self-editing it, and a professional editor will probably spend 100-200 hours editing it as well. All this editing and self-editing is needed to improve your novel to the level the audience needs.

How can you tell if a novel has been edited well?

The best editing is “invisible”. You won’t notice it at all.

If the target audience not only starts reading the novel but then continues on reading it until the very last page, and feels satisified after reading it, this is a very clear indication that the book has been well edited.

If the target audience not only reads it all, but just couldn’t put it down till they had finished it, or after reading it feels so good about it that they tell everyone how great it was, then it’s been edited extremely well. Maybe even perfectly.

The success of a book absolutely depends on how well that book has been edited, according to the needs of the book’s particular audience.

Why hire an editor, when my novel won’t even cover costs?

For nearly all writers, writing and editing their book is not about making money. It’s about being creative and getting their voice, their story, out there, and being heard. It’s about telling a story and having people read it and tell them, hey, I loved your book, or this character, or that scene. It’s about getting that story off your chest and into a book so you can get on with your life and do something else.

But every writer wants to be read.

And readers have very set  expectations of a novel. They expect a plot that is realistic or at least logical, scenes and characters that are real and engaging, character development (because that is realistic), and an ending that wraps everything up. This is in addition to them needing to like the writing style, not be thrown by an awkward word, and not be confused by anything in the story.

Asking why you should hire an editor is like asking why you want people to read your book. You want them to, because you are a writer and an artist.

The simple fact is, if you don’t get an editor to edit your book, it is going to  have holes and flaws, and that will stop people from reading it.

So if you can possibly afford it,  hire an editor and perfect your book to the stage where it is ready to be read by your target audience, from start to finish.