When Your Draft is Genuinely Terrible
Jan 19, 2026"What do I do if my first draft is genuinely a heaping pile of garbage?"
We've all had a moment like this. You've finished the first draft, maybe even let it sit and cool off for a few days or weeks, and then you dive in to figure out what you need to revise before the book goes off to your editor.
You start reading that first draft, and as the pages pass by, horror overtakes you.
Oh no.
The book is BAD.
Not just "all first drafts are messy" bad, but soulless. Heartless.
Generic and boring and voiceless.
What do you do? How do you recover? How do you avoid slipping into despair about the mountain of work ahead?
How do you handle the creeping feeling that you've lost your ability to write a compelling story?
This was my experience reading through the first draft of my 2027 Romance novel.
Here's how I went from "oh shit" to "I'm so excited to dig in!" in less than a week.
1: Articulate Why the Book is "Bad"
If you want to bounce back from the "oh shit" feeling of your book being in worse shape than you thought, you cannot let yourself wallow in generic, sweeping statements about your book. Statements like:
It's broken.
It's terrible.
It's a hot mess.
It's SO BAD OMG.
Even if they feel true, none of those statements are helpful.
And I'm not just talking about your emotional state -- yes, those kind of statements will make you feel terrible, but they also don't give you any sort of direction for how to FIX your book.
Instead, push yourself to articulate exactly why the book is terrible. What's happening in the book that makes you say it's so awful?
Get as specific as you can. Thinking the book is boring is more helpful than "it's bad," but knowing that it's boring because the main character sits around thinking all day instead of doing anything gives you so much more direction for how to fix things.
As I read my first draft at the beginning of January, these were some of the reasons I felt the book was bad:
The voice is generic -- the world isn't filtered through my main character because my MC doesn't have a clear perspective.
The MC isn't driving the plot - I have no idea what he wants beyond maintaining his status quo, which feels boring as a reader.
The main external plot has no tension. Everything is solved too easily.
It's unclear why the characters like each other (which is a big problem for a Romance novel!)
In general, the book feels like it doesn't have any heart or depth to it.
The love interest's character is completely all over the place - who even is he?
2: Diagnose the Cause of the Problem
Now that you've articulated why the book sucks, your next step is to figure out what specifically happened to cause those problems. What's going on in the story (either on the page or what's in your head about the book) that left you with those major issues?
This is helpful for three reasons:
1 - Knowing the root cause of the problem will lead you to a more targeted, more effective solution. This will allow you to actually fix the problem instead of simply changing a bunch of stuff at random and hoping it works. It's the difference between taking some pain killers for an injured arm and hoping for the best vs taking x-rays and (potentially) doing surgery to properly set and stabilize a broken bone so it heals properly.
2 - You might find that several of your problems stem from 1-2 main causes. This is super helpful to know, because then you know that you can solve lots of issues with just a handful of new decisions for the book.
3 - When you know WHY the problem happened, you have a better chance of avoiding it in the future.
Here's how this showed up in my draft:
When I looked at my list of issues with the book, I realized that most of them stemmed from one major problem.
I wasn't obsessed with my main character.
Usually when I write a book, the idea starts with a character who I become obsessed with. There's something about them that I simply can't stop thinking about.
For my third novel, The Coldest Touch, I couldn't stop thinking about how emotionally painful it would be to see the death of anyone you touched. I wanted to know what it would be like for her to not be able to hug her mom without seeing her die. What it would be like to not have the comfort of a touch when she was struggling. What lengths would she go to in order to get rid of this power?
So much of the book flowed from there. I knew immediately I wanted her love interest to be someone she could touch - how could that be? Well, I'd always wanted to write a vampire novel...
For this current book, the WHO was pre-determined. He's a side character from With All My Haunted Heart. Since I already knew him a bit from that book - and we'd sold the idea based simply on it being his book + an interesting premise for the romance set-up - I thought I was good-to-go to draft the thing. Especially since I'd gotten the outline approved by my editor.
But... I don't actually know this character that well. There isn't anything about him that makes me go OMG I NEED TO TELL HIS STORY. I didn't pause to figure out what emotional wound he could have that would captivate my interest, curiosity, and creativity.
And because I didn't have those things, he comes across in the story as completely generic. He could be anyone, which is a major problem. He needs to be a very specific someone for the book to be compelling.
Because my MC isn't someone whose mind and emotions captivates me, he has no big goals. No major motivations. His voice is generic and bland.
He's not a real person in my head, so he's not a real person in the book, either.
3: Normalize the "Mistake"
Even if you naturally do the first few two steps in this process, step 3 is the one most writers skip.
But it's also the one that's going to help you get out of blame, shame, and despair so you can get to the part where you're excited to dig into the work of revision. (So, don't skip it.)
Now that you know the cause of the issues in your book, take a moment to pause and find the reasons why it's totally normal that these mistakes happened.
And no, the answer is NOT "I'm a terrible fraud of a writer who should never try to draft a book again."
Here are some of the common reasons that authors end up with drafts that are far more broken than typical for them:
- They felt rushed by publishing deadlines and didn't have enough time to pause and really think through different aspects of the book
- They're writing a sequel for the very first time and underestimated how different that creative process can feel
- They decided to write a book that's a big stretch for their current skills
- It was their first time writing a first draft under contract and the pressure to get it right and that left them in a state of fight/flight/freeze that made it so much harder than normal to be creative
In the case of my book, while it's the second sequel I've written, it's the first time I've ever written an MC who was a side character in a previous book.
Because it was my first time, I didn't know that I needed to spend time becoming (healthily) obsessed with who he is as a person. I thought I knew him well enough from book 1, and that was simply a misunderstanding of what I personally need as a writer to feel compelled by a story.
I don't need to be mean to myself or throw in the towel as an author. I'm simply doing something new for the first time. Of course there's a learning curve!
And! Now I know this new thing about my creative process that I can take with me next time I'm taking a side character from a Romance novel and giving them their own book.
4: Make Peace with Uncertainty
This is probably the hardest step in the whole damn process, so buckle up, friend!
There is a gap between knowing what is wrong with your book and knowing exactly. how you're going to fix it.
If you've written several books, you may know the process you'll use to find those solutions, but you still don't know what they'll actually be.
For example, I know the brainstorming process that works best for me to find story solutions for a revision. I know exactly how to spend my time to figure out who my MC needs to be for me to fall in love with telling his story. I also have a solid process for turning that brainstorming into a clear plan for what to do in each chapter.
But even with that, I don't actually know yet what his core wound is and where it came from. I don't know exactly what he wants (since wanting to preserve the status quo isn't an exciting desire for me as a writer). I don't know how he's going to fall in love with the love interest or what makes them a perfect match for each other.
I know how to find those answers, but I don't know the answers themselves.
And that uncertainty is uncomfortable af.
It's going to be uncomfortable until I figure out those answers and have my revision plan locked into place. In the three writing sessions since that I've been able to brainstorm solutions, I've already come up with a bunch of things that I'm very excited about, so the uncertain is a bit less, but it is still there since there's still plenty of unanswered questions left.
Making peace with that uncertainty - knowing that it's an unavailable part of the process rather than proof that you suck at writing - is so important to being able to bring your best creative self to brainstorming solutions for you book.
5: Connect to What the Book Can Be
This final step is an ongoing one. It begins the moment you come up with the first small solution to the book that makes you go "oh! That's it!" and continues all the way until you finish the revision and turn in the book.
Throughout that entire process, your brain will want to fixate on the negative. How much work is ahead of you. All the different ways the book isn't working (or how bad an individual scene is).
Focusing on all the bad parts of the book might seem logical -- after all, you need to find them so you can fix them -- but reminding yourself how hard this revision will be just drains your motivation and your energy.
Instead, put your focus on how great the book will be once you've found all the solutions and implemented them. Let yourself get excited about the story it's going to become.
Let yourself spend more time living in the magic of "this is going to be SO good!" instead of the dread of "ugh, this is going to take so much work to fix."
I promise, if you do the work to continually remind yourself of the end version you're aiming for and how excited you are to share that version of the story with your readers, the revision process will be way more fun.
Final Thoughts
It's one thing to know about these steps in theory, it's another entirely to actually see an author going through them in real time.
Which is why I'm offering a behind-the-scenes look at exactly how I'm implementing these steps in my own revision process.
When you join the Behind the Scenes: Revise a Book with Me experience, you'll get access to a client portal with candid, transparent videos where I share the emotional journey of revising under deadline. The first videos were recorded when I was on day 2 of reading through the manuscript, and I'll continue recording until I turn the book in (it's due April 6th).
Happy writing,
Isabel
PS - I currently have space for new private clients. Click here to learn more and schedule your free enrollment call.
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