Book Review: Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: How to Write a Book, Revise a Book, and Complete a Book While You Still Love It

Earlier I had picked up Stuart Horwitz’s book, Book Architecture. I found it quite informative. I found his discussion about the series in books to be just what I needed to push my book forward. I was at a standstill. Knowing that he had other books on the topic, I picked them up. This one is called Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: How to Write a Book, Revise a Book, and Complete a Book While You Still Love It. While it was not my favorite of the three books, I still found it informative. With what I have learned across the three books, I am confident I will be able to put together an informative and enjoyable book.

Finish Your Book in Three Drafts is a very quick read. I was able to finish it in one sitting even though it 138 pages. As described in the title, the book has three main sections:

• Draft #1: The Messy Draft
• Draft #2: The Method Draft
• Draft #3: The Polished Draft

Draft #1: The Messy Draft

I am currently in the Messy Draft phase of my new book. According to Horwitz, it is important to know which draft you are in. The messy draft is all about getting the words on paper. I would say I am 80% complete with this draft. The key is to focus on the writing and don’t do any editing. Editing will take place in the subsequent drafts.

In this draft mode, Horwitz recommended counting words. He encouraged writers to hit at least 10,000 words per month. Currently, I am on track to do 15,000 per month. This is well short of the annual NaNoWriMo challenge of 50,000 words for the month of November but it is moving my book forward. Horwitz also recommended writing to a neutral audience. In other words, write for an audience who would actually read your book. He added that we should not do any organizing was we write. Again, that will come later.

Draft #2: The Method Draft

Once you have written the first draft, you can then break your work apart to put it together stronger than when you started. The Method Draft focuses on three core concepts: scenes, series, and themes. You will break your book into the smallest element and then put it back together going from scenes to series to a theme to series to scenes.

Scenes

The first steps are to list all your scenes from memory and then identify good and bad scenes. Next, you will review your manuscript to identify forgotten scenes and identify missing scenes. These are obviously weaker scenes because you forgot them. Lastly, you cut up your scenes. I am curious about how this will work for my book. I am looking forward to pulling out the scissors.

Series

The next step is to identify the series. A series can be an object, person, place, phrase, or relationship. A series must repeat and change over time. If I am getting this right, my new book will focus on college students using Evernote. A series could be formed around the different ways content can be added to Evernote. Each way could form its own series because there are different circumstances that would cause one to modify how you would do it.

Horwitz provided a strategy for plotting your series onto a grid to see where the interactions occurred. I am looking forward to this phase of the draft. I can’t wait to see how my book plots out.

Theme

The last step in the Method Draft process is identifying your theme. Horwitz stressed that your book can only be about one thing. He shared four different methods for narrowing down your theme. Once you have identified your theme, then it is time to see if your series and scenes relate to the theme and how strongly. If they do not relate to your theme, you need to cut them out.

At this point in time, you need to revise your scenes and series to construct your methods draft. As you look at your series and scenes, you may want to do some reorganizing to strengthen your manuscript. After reading all three of Horowtiz’s books, I realized what I needed to do to my manuscript. I was lacking a major series that would help tie everything together. Time will tell if I got it right.

Draft #3: The Polished Draft

In this last section, Horwitz focused on beta readers for your book. Beta readers are neutral readers who are interested in your topic and can provide unvarnished honesty. The feedback your beta readers provide you will help you finalize your book.

Additional Thoughts

Between the start of the post and this point, I accessed the supplemental materials for the book. While I read the book I felt the book was rather lackluster. However, I have a different opinion after accessing the support materials. Parts of the book came to life after viewing the supporting videos and reading the PDF files.

In each of Horwitz’s books, he approached the topic with a slight twist. I believe Finish Your Book in Three Drafts provides a solid plan for moving a book project forward but I also believe that Book Architecture and Blueprint Your Bestseller provide a lot more detail. If you are a writer or are thinking about writing, I would recommend picking up the entire series.

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Additional Reading

• Book Review: Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula
• Book Review: On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
• Book Review: On Reading, Writing and Living With Books
• What I Have Learned Writing a Book
• Book Review: Write Better, Faster: How To Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day

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