Tag Archives: first draft

Technique

Do you “write” a second draft?

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Because I don’t.

Don’t get me wrong. All of my books (well, that I want to publish, anyway) have a second draft. In fact, I just finished one. I think every book—yes, every.single.one—needs at least a second draft. (Mine have a bare minimum of seven.)

Draft

I just think the term “writing” a second draft is . . . odd. When we talk about “writing” the first draft, we mean pounding out those 70,000 brand new words (because my first drafts are almost always 70,000 words, strangely) one after the other. By that standard, it seems like “writing” a second draft would mean setting aside those words and starting over to write out 70,000 new ones. (Or more; my first 3-5 drafts grow up to 30%.) Possibly it might mean using those words as a guide, perhaps in another window of your program, as you start a fresh document, writing the book from scratch again.

Does anybody out there do that?

To be clear, I’m not really referring to the necessary restructuring a discovery writer/pantser might face after a first draft. I mean people who have a structurally okay-ish manuscript in need of lots of work, of course, as all first drafts are. DraftingDo we really just throw those words away?

That seems ridiculous to me.

Certainly, my manuscript changes drastically from the first draft to the second. Literally no scene is untouched. Some scenes may be restructured in major ways. Some, I realize, are missing altogether. A few (more than a few this time around) may be in the wrong place.

But I just can’t fathom the idea of starting over from scratch. Because even if you’ve written the novel once before, it seems to me you’re just going to end up with exactly what you had before: a messy first draft.

So, no, I don’t “write” a second or third or fourth draft of a novel. I revise, rewrite, edit and polish those drafts. But I only “write” the book (hopefully!) once.

Do you “write” a second draft?

Photo credits: DRAFT—Jeffrey Beall; garbage—Sebastien Wiertz

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Technique

What do you leave out of (or in) the first draft?

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Accepting that first drafts aren’t final drafts is a big milestone at the beginning of the journey to becoming a writer. The first couple things we write, we think that we have to—and will—get it perfect on the first pass through. It’s devastating to receive the news that our draft isn’t perfect—or even that good. It’s disheartening to think that what we thought needed a minor word-level edit actually needs a major character-and-plot-level overhaul.

But finally, we accept that our first drafts are just that—first drafts—and our writing is found in the rewriting of it. And for most of us, that means we don’t put quite as much effort into our first drafts, focusing more on getting the broad strokes down than getting the phraseology perfect.

So when we’re drafting lazy, of necessity, we leave in some things that we know we’ll only end up taking out later—or we leave out some things that we know we can add later.

A few examples:

  • Leave in:

    • clichés
    • scene summaries (of scenes you do intend to show in real time)
    • near-match words
    • scenes that may or may not turn out to be tangents
    • the boring bits
  • Leave out:
    • descriptions
    • dialogue
    • punctuation
    • grammar check
    • spell check
    • voice (I think we may talk more about this later in the week)

What do you leave in or out of your first drafts?

Photo credit: Aaron Brown

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Technique

Draft lazy, revise to perfection

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This is just an idea I came across while blogging this week. Many times, we pressure ourselves to write beautiful, literary, vivid, compelling tales on our first try—our first attempt at a manuscript, or our first draft. We let that blank page sit there while we search for a fresh, creative way to express that our character is tall/short/angry/sad/sarcastic/etc.

Note to self (and everyone else): stop it. Stop worrying about getting it right—nay, getting it perfect—on that first attempt.

The purpose of drafting is not to write it all down in its final, publishable form. The purpose of drafting is to write it all down.

The fact is that pretty much no one writes a perfect first draft. The skill of writing is seldom found in the drafting. It’s found in the stick-to-it-iveness to rewrite, the skill to identify the basic and clichéd and to search for a new way to say it—but not at the detriment of actually getting it all on the page.

One of my critique partners put this really well after her husband imparted some priceless advice (emphasis added):

“You also can’t make chicken salad out of an invisible chicken.” Then, after dispensing this tidbit worthy of Confucius, he went off to watch ESPN. I sat in stunned silence. This made it so clear to me! He was right of course. I can’t fix something or make it what I want if it’s still in my head. It was his nice way of telling to quit whining and write the darn thing down.

So we all now have my permission: draft lazy. Use clichés and trite expressions if you can’t think of anything better quickly. If you can’t find the “right” word on the tips of your fingers (or with a quick thesaurus & dictionary check), use the wrong-but-close one. (Feel free to mark anywhere you do this so you remember to fix it later.)

Is this just making more work for yourself in the revision process? Maybe—but then again, you can’t revise and perfect something you haven’t written yet.

What do you think? Do you draft lazy?

Photo by Matt Majewski

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Technique, Works

How do you write?

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I have to admit it: I’m one of those writers who doesn’t really do much of anything until I absolutely fall in love with an idea—anything from a character to a scene to a setting. My ideas come from dreams, friends, books, movies, TV, etc. But until an idea really grabs me, I can’t sustain my interest enough to spend three or four months on drafting.

light fire matchesBut man, when that idea strikes, it’s hard to make myself do the normal day-to-day, keeping-the-house-clean, being-a-mom stuff. All I want to do is write, and yet no matter how fast I write (my record is 5000 words in a day), it’s not fast enough. The rest of the book stretches out in front of me, scenes and lines and snippets that threaten to slip away before I can get there. So I race on.

An idea struck three weeks ago. So far, I’ve gotten down almost 23,000 words. (Woot! Check out my progress bar in the sidebar.) I’m excited to be drafting again (first time since April), and if I finish the draft by October 21, I’ll have drafted three books in a year. That’s pretty cool.

It’s interesting how different each book is, you know? Not just plot-wise or character-wise (although these three books have the same hero/heroine), but process-wise.

This time around, I’ve accepted that what I like to get in there are people, action, dialogue and plot twists. Cool. On my last MS, I tried to get everything in there on the first draft—sensory details, settings, character descriptions, etc. etc. This time, I’m embracing my favorite parts—I mean, I’ll put in the other stuff as needed, but if a scene is all dialogue/action, and it takes place in a vacuum, I’m not going to cry about it in this draft.

inspireFor me, that’s stuff I can add later, in each layer of editing. In fact, I’m taking this week off drafting to go back to the first MS I wrote during this year to add in more of those descriptions and sensory information, since the second half of the book is rather bereft of those (silly me, thinking all the character and setting descriptions were established in the first half, and we wouldn’t need anymore after that!).

How about you? What inspires you? Do you try to get everything in one draft—and if not, what do you leave out to add in later?

This week is probably going to be a bit of a catch-all week as I try to get things done between editing bouts and housecleaning—and, of course, working on the PDF from our website series. But next week, we’ll start another new and awesome series. I think 😉 .

Photo credits: matches—Kicki; inspire—Mark Brannan

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