proofreading - What should my redraft phase entail?

I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing and he's got quite a lot to say about the redraft phase. He explains his working method.

1. Write with the door closed, just for him and create a 1st draft as quickly as possible


2. Put the book in a drawer and don't look at it for 6-12 weeks, work on something else



3. Redraft

I quite like this approach. I've found myself writing quickly, rereading and correcting typos etc. and then sending out and I've always felt that a proper redraft process would help me a great deal.

Imagine I've written my first draft and then buried it in a drawer for a few weeks. Once I pull it out what practical steps should I carry out (beyond just reading it).

What should I practically do during a redraft phase? Should I transcribe each word and literally rewrite? Should I read and edit?

Answer

Although I am a fan of King's instruction and I am also a discovery writer, I do not wait before the first draft and the second, for a very specific reason.

At the end of the first draft is when I have the most detailed knowledge of my characters, their traits and personalities. I did not have this same sense of them when I began, so the most important thing I do in the second draft is getting my main characters consistent; their voice quirks, their sense of humor, their reactions and passions.

The second priority in the second draft is correcting what I call "under-imagined" scenes; blocks of dialogue with no exposition about setting, or feelings, or thinking, or pauses: untethered to the world.

Likewise, any exposition that is untethered to characters is under-imagined; it is world-building or explanations I should delete or find a way to make matter to somebody, otherwise it is boring. This doesn't apply to "immediate" description; btw, exposition about things a character is actually seeing and processing.

But if it is explaining culture or artifacts or the physics of magic or whatever, to ME that must be done in a way that is directly influencing a character (e.g. a character learning magic, or a young prince or young soldier learning from the court magician how magic can be deployed in battle, etc).

Finally, this second draft is a good time to at least note opportunities for foreshadowing. As a discovery writer, I don't know what is coming, but at the end of the first draft I do; and I can backfill or change some scenes or experiences to resonate with things to come. For example if the plot later hinges on an unexpected development; perhaps remake an early scene to also hinge on an unexpected development the MC resolves.

My second draft is for consistency, and improvement of scenes and deletion of things I wrote that turned out, in my discovery process, to not really matter to the story; meaning they did not have significant consequences in either the plot or in character development.

Then I might put the book aside to get some distance and objectivity.

ps: To answer the direct question: I read and edit, on a computer, but make a backup first. I am a programmer and have devised an archive system that keeps every version of a file I've saved; so I forget to mention this. Sometimes when changing a scene, you want to be able to see how you left it last time.