I detest second drafts.
As a teacher, as a peer reviewer, and as a workshop participant, I detest second drafts because too often they look just like the first. Students fix typos but seldom strengthen their arguments. Fellow playwrights clarify settings and stage directions but rarely heighten the stakes for their characters. The hours that I and others spend giving feedback usually fail to produce more than cosmetic improvements.
As an author, I detest second drafts because writing them feels just like writing a first draft. I refuse to be guilty of superficial revisions, especially when I’ve received thoughtful feedback. So I start over. I decide that what I have already done cannot be salvaged, and I begin again with a blank page. Or else I move on to another project, promising myself that someday I will be a good enough writer to undertake the necessary revisions.
My despair at my own second drafts and my frustration with others’ have a single source. Leveraging readers’ comments into a significantly improved piece of writing is one of the hardest things we do as writers. Feedback comes without a user manual. It varies in quality; it can be contradictory; it is hard not to take personally. Yet we are supposed to run with it. Somehow.
Awash in critical feedback, we writers too often make the mistake of trying to address issues one by one, on readers’ terms. If someone says your sentences are too long, we chop them up. If someone says they want to know more about a character, we add a backstory. If someone says they don’t buy the argument, we look for places where we haven’t been clear—or conclude that the reader hasn’t read carefully enough.
Trying to address individual comments leads to superficial revisions, and sometimes incoherent ones. More importantly, it gives readers authority over the work. It accepts that their comments identify the core problems in the draft, when usually they don’t. Readers describe symptoms. Long sentences aren’t a problem per se; they are an indicator of sloppy thinking. Extensive knowledge of a character’s history may not be required, if their objectives in the moment are compelling enough. Clarifying the components of an argument may not be adequate if its overall structure is shaky.
To effectively leverage feedback, writers first need to reclaim our authority over our manuscripts. We write each piece for a reason. Remember what it was. We write with a vision of what the piece can be. Recall that vision. These intentions provide the context for reader feedback. They help us assess the relevance of comments. They enable us to reframe comments about symptoms (“your sentences are too long”) as contributions to an overall diagnosis (“I’m not sure what I mean in that spot”). They guide us to a plan for revising the work to better achieve our vision—rather than a plan for satisfying readers.
Reclaiming authority over a manuscript involves not only remembering our intentions, but connecting with our qualms. We all have nagging doubts about what we’ve created. Often we still can’t articulate them when we hand over a draft to readers. But our qualms also create context for feedback. We get a sinking feeling when a reader zeroes in on something we’d secretly had doubts about. Our pulse quickens when someone answers a question we’d been having, especially when we hadn’t yet been able to ask it. By paying attention to these reactions, we identify what we are most compelled, and most able, to improve in our next round of revisions.
Reclaiming authority does not necessarily preclude modifying the original purpose or vision in response to comments. In fact, paying attention to our qualms may lead us to understand that a manuscript would benefit from a bigger vision or an adjusted purpose. Recently I shared the first chapter of a non-fiction book with two trusted colleagues. The chapter asked the reader to sympathize with people living in a “toxic soup” of chemicals emitted from an oil refinery. My colleagues responded by sharing worries about the air quality in their own urban neighborhoods, far from industrial facilities—missing the point about environmental injustice that I had intended to dramatize.
I could have decided to revise the chapter to stress that refinery-adjacent communities are far more exposed to pollution than your average, middle-class city dweller. But deep down I had been worried that the book would be of no interest to anyone outside my academic subdiscipline. My colleagues’ unexpected, personal identification with my subject matter showed me how I might connect with readers who know little about refineries or environmental injustice. Although I could have addressed their actual comments by changing half a dozen sentences, my plans for revision now include addressing readers as people affected by the problem of pollution, rather than witnesses to someone else’s suffering.
Having looked at reader feedback in the context of your intentions and your qualms, you can make a plan for revision that moves your work closer to your original vision. The items on your agenda are likely to span the entire work. In my case, I had to reconceive the audience; you might accept the challenge of creating a stronger foil for your protagonist. You will rewrite, probably extensively. No matter how much of the original text you lose, though, you won’t be starting from scratch. Your intentions, your draft, and your readers’ feedback remain the backbone of draft two.
Incorporating readers’ feedback by prioritizing the author’s vision feels counterintuitive, and even a little ungrateful. The sentences may still run on. The protagonist’s parentage may remain a mystery. More likely than not, however, these symptoms will disappear—or just not matter—as you address the underlying issues standing between you and your intentions for the piece. And even if typos remain, your transformed second draft will give readers the satisfaction of seeing that their feedback has made a difference in your process.
Gwen Ottinger is a scholar and playwright concerned with issues of environment, technology, and structural inequity. She is author of Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges (winner of the 2015 Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science) and numerous academic journal articles. Her essays and commentary have appeared in publications such as the Washington Post, Issues in Science and Technology, and Undark. Ottinger is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Drexel University, where she directs the Fair Tech Collective, an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to advancing environmentally just science and technology.