You’ve written a novel. It has a beginning, middle and end. What should you do now?

You’ve toiled over your manuscript and – doubtless – paid the price in sleepless nights and missed social engagements.

Perhaps you locked yourself in an attic and didn’t come down till it was finished. Maybe you followed a strict discipline of a certain number of words per day.

Whether you completed the entire thing during November for National Novel Writing Month, or it’s taken you years, you now have a complete draft. So what happens now?

This blog will outline how you can improve your manuscript and get it into a suitable state to pitch to publishers.

What happens after draft one?

You have a complete first draft of your novel, congratulations! That in itself is a major achievement.

Not many people do what you have done. You should allow yourself a little celebration.

Then what? My advice would be, do absolutely nothing. Give yourself a well-earned rest. I would recommend at least a couple of weeks, preferably longer, if time allows.

Take a break

Taking time out from your story is good idea for several reasons:

• You deserve it!
• It gives your brain a chance to recover from the marathon effort it takes to write an entire book.
• When you look at your story again, you will view it with fresh eyes.
• If you feel ready to show the draft to others, this gives them time to read it and feed back to you.

Concentrate on other sorts of writing

You don’t however have to take a break from writing entirely. Regular writing keeps your creative juices flowing.

You might want to resume, or get into a habit of, daily freewriting.

Write some shorter, unrelated pieces, experiment with different genres, maybe keep a journal, and have fun.

Share the draft

Now comes the scary bit. For many of us, writing is deeply personal. The last thing we want to do is expose our work to scrutiny before we’re ready.

But there are good reasons why showing your draft to a few trusted people will help you improve it.

When you’ve had your head in a project for so long, it’s impossible to view it objectively. You know what you want to say, but you really need feedback from others who can read your novel with fresh eyes.

So, once you have a complete draft you’re more or less happy with, and feel brave enough to show to others,  the next step is to line up a few beta readers.

What are beta readers?

Beta readers are people who will read an early draft of your novel and give honest feedback. These might be friends, fellow writers, or just people you know who enjoy reading.

The important thing is that they will review your book from a reader’s perspective and give an honest opinion on your draft.

Choose people you can trust to be honest with you. The sort of people who read widely and quickly are ideal.

You’re not looking for a detailed proofread at this stage. You are after impressions and gut feelings. You want to know if your book works for readers.

What do beta readers do?

They are likely to spot plot holes and inconsistencies, point out where things don’t make sense to them and they may come up with some really useful suggestions.

Beta readers will usually offer this service free, so you need to make it easy for them. Give them the manuscript in a format they prefer. Give them plenty of notice and allow a few weeks for them to get back to you before you chase them.

For Blue Tide Rising I enlisted the help of six beta readers who read the draft at different stages. For some, I printed themanuscript and got it bound, for others, I sent them an electronic version.

You might find it useful to give your readers specific questions to focus on. I recently sent my new novel to some beta readers and I asked them:

• Are the characters authentic?
• Does the novel hold your attention?
• Is the plot convincing?
• Does the structure work?
• Does the beginning draw you in?
• Does the ending work?
• Are there any bits that you feel are superfluous?
• Are there elements that really don’t work for you?

How to act on feedback

Chances are your early readers will pick up on things you already had doubts about, or put into words issues you were vaguely aware of but couldn’t quite nail.

Don’t shy away from criticism. Try not to take any of the comments personally. All feedback from readers is valid and – hopefully – constructive.

You don’t have to act on every suggestion. My rule of thumb is, if several readers pick up on the same issue, chances are they’re right. If just one person flags something, it might be down to their own personal preference.

One reader might hate a particular passage, another may love that same extract. Everyone is different, and everyone brings their own opinions and baggage to the table.

Take a while to digest their comments, decide what to take on board and what to ignore, then think about ways to make those fixes.

How to take criticism

It’s human nature to focus on the negatives. Try to view what your readers tell you objectively.

An invaluable lesson I learnt when studying for my MA in Creative Writing is the value of peer review. A major part of the fiction module was critiquing each other’s work.

Each week we’d submit a piece of writing for the other students to comment on, which they did in the session. This is nerve-wracking at first but soon becomes second nature. Any discomfort you feel at the start soon disappears, as everyone is in the same boat.

My fiction group comprised people from diverse backgrounds, ranging in age from early 20s to 70.

As my main character in Blue Tide Rising was a young woman in her early 20s, I found the feedback from the younger cohort of students invaluable. They were able to point out inconsistencies in speech patterns etc.

What next?

Once you have reactions from a range of readers and you’ve given your novel a little while to gestate, it’s time to return to your draft and get editing!

You may want to write a complete new draft, or simply tweak the one you already have. However you choose to do it, you can go through the feedback process more than once, so keep some of your beta readers back for later drafts.

I’ve just had my second novel back from readers and I’m into my next draft. My beta readers helped me pinpoint the things that needed fixing and taking that break from the narrative has helped my brain work out how to fix them.

So it’s now back to the grindstone to make those changes and polish the draft before sending off to my publisher. They’ve given me a deadline of the end of the year. So I’ll probably press send at midnight on New Year’s Eve as the fireworks shoot into the sky!

For my next blog, I’m going to tackle how to prepare your novel for publication. How to get it into a state to send to agents and publishers. If you want an alert when I publish it, subscribe to the blog by hitting the subscribe button on the home page.