If you’re a straight-to-publish writer, stop reading.

If you’re interested in presenting the best possible story to readers, continue.

Do you just edit your manuscripts or do you rewrite? An oft-asked question by a beginning writer, but it’s a good question.

The simple answer is, do what works for you. If you’re reasonably happy with that first draft, a “soft” edit might work. If you hate every word you’ve written in that draft, it might be time to rewrite.

I use both techniques to revise. I might surgical- or soft-edit a first draft several times then decide if I need to rewrite. However, the way I write a first draft means a rewrite at some point will be necessary.

When I get a concept of what I want to write about, I write the first scene that comes to mind. I follow that with other scenes, again as they come to me. What I end up with is a collection of scenes all related to the story in my head but missing expository material and transitions. Yes, I’ll go back and soft-edit those, but eventually I realize the only way to flesh out the story is a total rewrite with that first, lightly edited draft as a plot outline.

It’s rare that one of those disconnected scenes gets cut. Whether I realize it or not, the scenes are almost always relevant to the story and certainly relevant to fleshing out the story.

Right now, I’m rewriting, i.e., revising, the third book in my Ewington Mysteries series, Let Justice Flow Down Like Waters. The first draft was a 2024 NaNoWriMo project, which I wasn’t happy with. Though the initial scenes I write are somewhat chronological, the fact that I had no transitional or expository material meant I got several of them out of sequence. For example, I had characters discussing events that hadn’t happened yet, or had a character come to a conclusion for which I had provided no clues. Finally, I had no idea who the killer was going to be. Indeed, none of those scenes even hinted at a possibility.

On my 2025 writing retreat to Porches in Nelson County, Virginia, I brought not only a word processor file of the draft but also a printed copy, scene by scene. While I made notes on the timeline, I numbered the scenes and put them in chronological order. Now, the story made more sense, but I still had no idea who the killer was. Well, I toyed with several characters as killers, but some were too obvious, some were too obscure, but by the end of the retreat, I’d pretty much decided on a villain. I wrote that scene, then realized that I needed to sprinkle clues and red herrings throughout the manuscript.

I did a surgical edit, doing just that, but I still wasn’t happy with the result.

Face it, I told myself, this needs a total rewrite.

However, by now, I was sick of this story, sick of these characters, sick of my writing, and questioning why I ever tried mysteries in the first place.

Time to put it aside.

In the interval, a novel I’d started in 2014, Mine to Kill, after multiple soft edits and one rewrite, was ready for my beta readers with an aim toward a September release. Ewington Three went to the back burner. Off Mine to Kill went to betas, and after dealing with a lingering sinus infection, Ewington Three was on the slate for a major revision.

Most of the time with a rewrite, the aim is to shorten scenes, make them “tight” and, especially in a mystery, tension-building. The way I write, sometimes my scenes need expanding, dialogue needs to replace or enhance descriptions, and characters need back-story. Generally, my rewrites have more words than the first draft. Again, that’s logical when you have disconnected scenes requiring transitions.

Once the rewrite is done, I again set the new draft aside for a few weeks then come back to it and do a surgical edit. I might do that several times before sending it off to my beta readers. After I incorporate their comments, I’ll do a final surgical edit (mainly looking for typos; a typist I ain’t) before it goes to my editor. Trust me, if I have anything that isn’t needed to advance the story, she’ll point it out to me.

As I’ve progressed as a writer, her developmental comments have become fewer and fewer, but the feedback is still useful. I’ve only had one editor (a different one from mine now) suggest a rewrite. I ignored it. (The novel won an award, by the way.) But even after accepting changes from my editor, I’ll do what’s essentially a final line edit before formatting it for publication. Because typos.

So, a surgical- or soft-edit for me comes at the beginning and the end. In between may be a long series of surgical edits or a total rewrite. I never know from novel to novel, but I’ve ended up rewriting most of my novels after a first draft.

In writing, other than grammar and punctuation, there are few absolutes. You have to decide on the process that fits your writing style. And use it. Use it well.