Do you ever write a draft and then look back at it and realize that you did not in fact write a draft – you wrote two thirds of a draft? Are your manuscripts bloated with comments and notes to self that say things like “you forgot to foreshadow this” or “insert that one scene where blah blah blah happens”? Have you ever had to stop a critique partner mid-read because you realized you left out an enormous chunk of one of your subplots, and nothing past chapter 12 is going to make any sense until you fix it?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you might be an underwriter, and this post is for you.

Writers tend to fall broadly into one of two categories when it comes to the size of their first drafts: overwriters and underwriters. Overwriters tend to have way too much material in their first drafts – like, sometimes several hundred thousand words too much. Their revisions tend to be more focused on cutting down the story than building it up. I don’t know how they come up with it all, and frankly, I’m jealous.

Underwriters, on the other hand, create bare-bones first drafts that can be tens of thousands of words too short. My first drafts average in length between 50,000-65,000 words, and typically gain another 10-15k in the course of the first major revision. I will straight up forget to write major scenes that occur at the climax of the novel, even with the outline sitting right there on my second monitor looking at me like, am I a joke to you?

I don’t know how this is possible – if I did, I wouldn’t still be doing it. My revisions tend to involve going through and flagging all the places where I missed a scene or something didn’t get developed enough, then adding it in. But I am learning to cope, and I have to say, my writerly life has been a lot better since I figured out I have this tendency.

As I’m currently in the throes of a second draft, this stuff is very much on the brain, so today I wanted to write a little bit about some of the realizations I’ve made about being an underwriter, and suggest a few tips to my fellow underwriters that have made my life easier.

Your second drafts might still feel like first drafts

Because the revision process of an underwriter involves adding so many scenes that weren’t in the first draft, it might still feel pretty rough even after you’ve revised it once. If you feel like your second draft still looks and feels a lot like a first draft, well, that’s probably because a lot of the scenes in it are first drafts. You just added them! Overwriters get to spend their revisions focusing on improving what’s already there, but as an underwriter, I usually end my first drafts with the feeling that the whole thing isn’t even on the page yet.

If you’re an underwriter doing revisions, consider flagging the scenes you’re adding somehow, like highlighting them or leaving a comment. After you finish yours second draft, take a rest and then revisit those scenes and rewrite or edit them one more time, so that the whole draft has now received the same amount of revision. Will this add time to the process? Yes, but the result will be a manuscript that feels far more cohesive than it otherwise would.

The plus side of all this is that as an underwriter, the rewriting method of revising is likely to be especially effective for you. Since writing fresh material is often easier and more rewarding than editing in the traditional sense, this is a gift from the writing gods. Cherish it. I’m all about reframing weaknesses as strengths, and this is a great opportunity to do so.

Make notes as you go

Have you ever been typing along and had a brilliant idea as you’re writing, and despite not being sure where it goes, you jot it down in the margins before moving on? I always feel so dumb reading those back, because despite not knowing where the scene I imagined belonged at the time, I almost invariably realize later that the scene in question needs to go right there. It’s a missing scene – one my brain, for some reason, didn’t feel like writing at that moment.

If you’re not already doing this, start now. Find a method of note-taking during drafts that allows you to keep track of where you were exactly in the book when you had an idea. Sometimes I make these notes on the outline, too. Another idea is to keep a companion document that has a section for every chapter of your draft where you throw all the ideas you had while you were writing it.

The point is to learn to allow yourself to pause to write your ideas down. When you’re in the flow of writing, this kind of sucks to have to do, but it will save you colossal amounts of time down the road. Just remember to look back at them later when you’re trying to fix up plot holes; you might find you’ve already fixed them, you just didn’t know it at the time.

Use plot-based goal setting

Keeping track of your word count or page count is all very well and good, but if you find you’re frustrated with the number of scenes your first-draft self has been leaving out, you might want to try setting plot-based goals instead. So, instead of setting a goal of writing X amount of words, set the goal of getting through a certain number of scenes or chapters, or writing up to a certain point in your outline.

This does two things for you. First, it forces you to look at your outline. My underwriting tendencies always get worse when I neglect to do this. Second, it attaches a mental reward to the idea of finishing each individual scene in your outline. Your tendency to skip past things will likely be diminished when your sense of accomplishment is coming from having crossed scenes off your list, rather than word or page count milestones. (I especially like to use this method around the climax of books, which I’ve learned is one of the points where I’m most likely to forget scenes or leave out important details on my first drafts.)

Like I said, I’m still figuring some of this out. Let me know, are you an overwriter or an underwriter? And whichever you are, how do you cope?

Happy writing!