About the Department

The Department of Second Drafts supervises a collection of tools for writers of all sorts: novelists, essayists, screenwriters, Substackers, researchers, poets, cartoonists, copywriters. Long-form, short-form, formless. The Department was founded by writers, for writers. Whatever kind of writing you do, we are here to help with the process.

Writing is deeply personal, and everyone does it differently. Some writers need to keep detailed research notes, build an outline with pointers to those notes, cite their sources, transcribe their interviews. Some need their complex mystery to be fact-checked before a listener finds a gap. Some need to build a whole world, to create people and planets and universal rules that exist not only within their own mind. Some just need dark mode. Our goal is to create tools as building blocks so you can use the ones you need, however you like.

Why second drafts? Most writing exists to be shared, and getting it ready for an audience can be daunting and difficult. In some ways, this is where the real work of writing begins.

We can help with that.