There are things we all love about first drafts aren’t there? A first draft is an experiment, a chance to start exploring a new world, new characters. Or maybe you’re going back to a world you already know, adding to a series and meeting old friends. You get to see where your questions and ideas take you: into fun research rabbit holes or weird dead ends that mean you need to find new paths.
As a developmental editor, I talk a lot with writers who have ideas about their writing but aren’t sure if those ideas made it to the page. As I’ve been wrestling with my own first draft, it is a problem I’ve frequently come across for myself. Then there are the inevitable questions: in my head, these ideas are laid out beautifully and the flow will make perfect sense. Do they when someone else reads them? Is this too much information or not enough? Have I literally just dumped a huge blob of words into my computer instead of the lovely sculpture of delicately crafted words my imagination thinks they are?
This, my friends, is the true difference between a first draft and a final draft. We all start with the big blob. The sand in the sandbox. Telling ourselves the story, as Terry Pratchett put it. It isn’t something to be ashamed of or worried about, but the natural beginning of all books.
How do we work with first drafts?
So how do we turn sand into a sandcastle? Or marble into a sculpture? That blob of words into our book?
As always, we start with the knowledge that it will be different for everyone, and we can’t get worried or upset with ourselves if our process doesn’t match someone else’s in our writing group’s, or what we see people say on social media. Remember, consider if their ideas work, but don’t use it if it doesn’t work for you.
Set Your Own Goals
Plenty of people set goals to write a certain number of words per day. I can see why. You get a definite sense of forward momentum and progress when you can count out how many words you wrote in a day. I’ve never kept track of my words per day. It’s always worked better for me to just give myself a block of time and get to work- usually involving mixing research and writing because of the book I’m doing. Looking at my progress over the course of a week tends to work better for me, since I’m deleting as much as I’m writing at any given point.
I’ve recently been rereading some of my writing and I know when I get to the editing part it will be pretty savage, but I’ve just accepted it as part of my process. My goal for my first draft is just to make sure I have all the information I want from my research in the draft. Turning it into something that sounds intelligent and fine tuned is a goal for a future draft.
Accept Your Process
Do you know what your process is? If this is your first draft of your first book, you may have no idea what works for you. It may take a lot of false starts, plenty of experiments, trying lots of methods before you even know if you’re a plotter or a pantser (or something in between)!
My suggestion is that you accept this. Why would you know right away what works for you when you’ve never done it before? Or maybe you’ve done one book and this is book two- are you sure what worked the first time will work again? Maybe, but it isn’t a guarantee. The characters may fight you, the plot may make things incredibly more difficult. Try something new with this draft if it’s your second book and see if it works for you. If not, you can always go back to what worked in book one. If this is book one, you’re trying new things as you go. It’s going to be scary and messy but try out some different techniques until you hit on one that helps the ideas flow.
You want this first draft to be amazing so you can power through the rest of the book process. But it isn’t going to happen that way. Accept that now. Revisions and edits are just as much a part of writing as everything else. Embrace the lack of perfection. It is the essence of a first draft.
Skip the Hard Stuff
Something all writers need to do, whether fiction or nonfiction, is fact check. That could mean looking at maps to check your city’s geography or something far deeper. It’s necessary, but do you have to stop in the middle of your first draft to do that research?
No.
If you’re moving along and the ideas are flowing, I suggest it’s a terrible idea to break your flow up by stopping to do these or any other research ideas. Leave yourself a note and move on with your story! Don’t have a name for a minor character? Write on! You’ll come back later and fix it. You can highlight where you want to come back, say “NAME”, or use the Tk trick. Since the letters ‘t’ and ‘k’ almost never appear next to each other in English, many writers will just leave ‘TK’ as a way of letting themselves know to come back and add something there. Then they can do a search for those letters and find those spots easily.
Edit Later
This one is more controversial. I recommend not going back and editing your work while you work on your first draft. Just let all the ideas flow out and see where they go. But I know some writers who need to edit their work from their previous session, even if it is a short beginning edit, before they can move on. If you know that’s what your process is, then that’s what you should do. If you’re new to writing I recommend trying first not going back. Save any editing for once your draft is done and see if that is easier on you. You can always try it the other way in the future.
Just Keep Writing
Do you need to write your draft in order? This one is up to you and your writing style. I know plenty of writers who have scenes spring into their minds that they’ll write first that aren’t the book’s opening scene. On the flip side, one author friend of mine absolutely has to write her books in chronological order or it doesn’t work for her at all. Some of this goes back to knowing whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, but I don’t think that’s all of it. Maybe it has something to do with how well you know your characters or your plot at the stage in the book you wrote the scene. Maybe it just is how your imagination worked that day. But if a scene comes up in your head, I recommend getting the words down on paper. There’s no guarantee you’ll remember it when you get to that part of the book otherwise. If you’re anything like me, the guarantee is you’ll forget!
First drafts are tricky, and almost never wind up on the page the way they looked in your imagination. That doesn’t mean you should give up and scrap the project, or you’ve done something wrong! Remember a few of the keys of writing: consistency and discipline are required; and the characters and words will take on a life of their own the more you work at it. Where your imagination started doesn’t necessarily mean that is where your characters intend to end up.
From a block of marble to a finished sculpture, imagine the pressure a sculptor has to get it right! At least in our first drafts we know our rewrites aren’t going to require another huge, heavy, (and expensive) chunk of marble if we need it! Don’t you feel better already?
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