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Draft one is for you
Three drafts, three readers. A short guide to deciding who each pass of an essay is really for.
Noa Kestrel
·
6 min read
Every piece I publish goes through three drafts, and each one has a different reader in mind. Knowing which draft you are on is most of the battle.
Draft one: you
Get it all out. Say the obvious things, follow the tangents, write the joke that only you will get. Nobody sees this draft, so it is allowed to be long and wrong.
Draft two: the reader
Now cut everything the reader already knows and explain everything they don’t. This is where the piece gets shorter and clearer at the same time.
Draft three is for the one person who will forward it.
The final pass is for the reader who will share it. Give them one sentence worth quoting and a title they can say out loud.
Written by Noa Kestrel
Writer and designer in Lisbon. One essay every Thursday, short posts in between. Replies are open, and I read every one.
