Tag Archives: writing

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

How did you learn to write?

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Most writers, of course, learned to write in school—the teacher stuck a pencil in their hand and showed them how to form the letters. Another teacher later on taught them about words and sentences and parts of speech and punctuation.

Of course, everyone learns those things, and not everyone goes on to want to be a writer. Personally, I learned a lot from writing—a lot. I wrote all through high school. I wrote in my freshman year of college, and then I drifted away from writing for several years while I finished school, got married, and started my family, though somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted to be a writer.

And of course, I’ve learned a lot in other ways as well. Writer’s conferences are a lot of fun and extremely useful, but most of the time aren’t designed to hit the techniques very hard (unless you go to a more one-on-one track). Critiques from trusted friends (and strangers!) have been invaluable.

And then there are the books, of course. I hit the public library and read almost every writing technique book they had, my favorites being How to Write a Damn Good Novel and How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II by James N. Frey, and Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, among others that escape me now.

But honestly, even these things are kind of advanced—they don’t, for example, cover basic things like showing vs. telling. And, um, I’ve kind of forgotten how I learned that.

So how did you learn writing—the basics and the advanced stuff?

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Technique

A place for everything: showing vs. telling

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Join one critique group and you’re sure to have someone point out an instance of telling in your writing with the admonishment: “SHOW DON’T TELL!”

Now, I’m going to tell you right now: that’s quite often good advice. I’m not one for slavishly adhering to rules, but when I read a book that routinely tells me about what people are thinking rather than showing me that they’re thinking it, it drives me crazy. It’s like reading about a story rather than reading the story itself.

One common place I’ve come to focus on is showing vs. telling is in character’s emotions.

Bad telling:

She felt tired. She always felt tired. Every day, they had this meeting and she just wanted to sleep.

Better showing:

Her eyelids sagged, but Marie didn’t notice that she was falling asleep until her head began to droop. She jerked upright again with a quick glance around the boardroom. No one met her eyes—many were dozing themselves. The midafternoon stockholder report was always the most difficult time of day to focus, whether she’d gone to bed at two or ten.

But it had almost always been two.

Showing has the power to bring a reader more deeply into the story—making them live the experience rather than just read about it. Vivid details and description can do that.

BUT (and there’s almost always a but) there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes, vivid descriptions and details get in the way of the story. Sometimes, telling is the way to go. (Gasp.)

I know, it’s horrific to even read. But every once in a while, something needs to be told. Good reasons to tell: the details aren’t significant, won’t add to the setting, slow down the story or get in the way of emotions.

Bad showing:

She stood among the racks of children’s clothing, but her eyes didn’t see the blue and yellow horizontal striped miniature polo shirts, or the pink polka dotted dresses with ruffled lace bloomers hanging on rack to her right. Nor the green, blue and orange plaid button downs, the purple beaded socks, the bedazzled jeans with magenta embroidery, the baby khakis with real zippers and buttoned pockets, in every size from preemie to 4T, folded on the shelves to her left.

What was her son doing now?

See the problem? Unless you’re trying to show us your POV character has an eidetic memory (300,000 word novel, anyone?), this level of detail probably isn’t necessary. In fact, showing the scene can be so time consuming that it drags on and becomes boring—and probably worst of all, it severely undercuts the emotional impact of the next line.

Better telling:

The bright colors and happy patterns of the children’s clothing department seemed to mock her pain, as if the miniaturized shirts and shorts could read her mind to see what she’d done, and taunt her for poor choices.

What was her son doing now?

In this case, we really don’t need to “see” every detail of the children’s clothes. Now, a better way to accomplish both might be for the character to actually handle the children’s clothes, noting the details (perhaps she’s a seamstress who appreciates clothing construction and patterns?), her thoughts slipping back to her son.

My favorite instance of confusion about showing and telling was prompted by a contest judge. She(?) marked the sentence “Sighing, Margaux pulled the hairpins from her hair” with “SHOW us the sigh.” (Note, too, that this was the only initial participial phrase in the chapter.) Well, okay:

Margaux’s thoracic diaphragm contracted, expanding her thoracic cavity and creating a vacuum in her lungs. Air at atmospheric pressure rushed in to fill her lungs. Once they were at optimal capacity, and a good proportion of the oxygen content had transpired into her bloodstream, Margaux reached the full depth of her frustration with her disheveled coif. She contracted her external intercostal muscles, audibly forcing a stream of air through her nostrils, and pulled the hairpins from her hair.

Clearly, sighing isn’t something that has to be shown like that. In fact, with some actions, simply using the verb is enough to show them.

Yes, yes, you’ll be told a million times “show, don’t tell” before you’re published, but really, telling has its (very limited!) place, too.

What do you think? Is there a place for telling as well as for showing? When do you use them?

Photo credits: shh!—Ann; shout—Maciek Łempicki

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