first draft

Discussion in 'General Writing' started by Lemex, Jul 5, 2008.

  1. drifter265

    drifter265 Banned

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    A draft of anything is always going to suck. What a draft is is you're trying to get down what you have in your head; an essence of something. Trying to capture that on a piece of paper is never going to happen. Thus, every draft will never match up to it and you'll always be saying to yourself, "that's not right."

    I don't even know what you're asking, to be honest. Let's review:

    Of course they are. Did you think they would come out perfect or something or even remotely like how you had it in your head? You probably forgot about a bunch of things like character motivation and the fact that your MC had to have a way to eat and live and survive and so forth and not just live on some plot you created that they'd just mindlessly do.

    I think a lot of other people do, but I don't. I'm perfect. Everything I do is perfect. I'm a GOOD writer. I NEVER have to make more than the first draft. I just send it in and they publish it and they go, "Oh my God! This is perfect! Send me more!" they'll say. And I'm like, "Uh, okay," and then I do and $$$.

    But no, really, I think everyone does poorly their first time writing a book. I think one of the hardest things to realize is to see just how hard you suck at something when so badly you want to be good at it and you realize how much farther you have to go to get there; that you want to be good NOW and not do all the work that comes before it. Except me of course. I'm perfect.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2015
  2. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    My first drafts are likely just as bad, if not worse, than Twilight.

    Is it liberating? Yes. On the flip-side, I know I'd have to edit 200+ pages of crap at the end, but I try not to think about it. :D I might consider doing the 'edit-as-I-go' approach eventually.
     
  3. Woof

    Woof Senior Member

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    I edit as I go with prose. It means my first drafts come up pretty tight but the flip side is that it takes a lot longer to get words on the page: I can be too critical of what I've written sometimes and never finish. I also think it bears relation to how you plot. My plotting often barely covers two sides of a napkin, so I need to keep fairly heavily on top of what's going on to make sure I end up where I wanted to end up. Better plotters may find they can hammer out first drafts without editing because they know exactly where they're going and they've done all the prep work.

    That's me, OP, but it's important you work with what gets you to an end point you're satisfied with before you start picking the process to pieces to optimise it.
     
  4. sprirj

    sprirj Senior Member

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    I honestly can't answer this question as I'm still on my first draft. I'd like to say it is utter rubbish and move on however, like my fellow 'forumteers' my first draft appears to be my final draft as I also edit as I go.

    One thing I do is multiple drafts, almost like parallel universes, and will then merge them into something enjoyable to read. This is a totally dysfunctional way to write, but so far it works for me (says a lot about me)
     
  5. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    We've never just read through a single draft of any of our stories: there's always something to fix, usually something big either needs fixing or then we have to implement new ideas. Not to mention how it seems there's always a few sentences we could word better or cut out.

    Seriously, if our WIP is done after 2 more drafts, I'll be surprised. And yeah, I really don't think you could even recognize the current draft as the same story as the first draft, which was grade Z shit. Oh well, guess I can't complain too much as long as we keep progressing :D
     
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  6. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    There are many arguments for multiple drafts. Here's one more. Once you've developed a cohesive narrative (which means at least one draft has been written) now you have a playground to mess around in. When I go back to a specific section, look at a paragraph, and get wild- that's what matters.

    For example.

    John woke up.
    John ate breakfast.
    John went to work
    John got fired
    John came home early to find his wife in bed with the neighbor
    John killed himself


    Now that I have the entire story, I can go back to any one of those scenes and make it non generic. It doesn't have to be just a breakfast scene anymore. Maybe John is going crazy with his toddler child. They're having a cereal fight, something that makes John both juvenile and sweet. I know this is important because John's life is about to get very shitty. I want to travel back in time and let John really live his last moment of happiness.Then the wife comes down and screams at them. There's my first display of domestic oppression (foreshadowing John getting fired).

    This is similar to what @Ka_Trian said with their helmet. That's not necessarily a detail you will realize before finishing draft 1, because their world is not yet fully realized.
     
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  7. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    We all have our preferred methods, but I'd say there are only two rules writers must stick to, if they want to publish a good story :

    1) You must finish your entire story.

    2) You must edit your finished story to make it the best it can be.

    If this means re-imagining, re-writing (or cutting) large portions of what you spent months editing to perfection at the time you wrote it—so be it. Grit your teeth and do it. This has nothing to do with creating perfect sentences, paragraphs and chapters. It has to do with whether these perfect pieces of your story actually do create a perfect whole—and you won't know if you have a perfect whole until it's done. Stories and characters and style can morph into different shapes during the course of writing, and your finished product must read as if none of these changes ever took place. How you get to that point is up to you, but you need to get there.

    Don't be in a rush to publish, just because you can. Make sure the story works, and works well.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2015
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  8. Masked Mole

    Masked Mole Senior Member

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    Most of my first drafts are very similar to the end result. That's mainly because I write the sentence that I believe is best every single time. That makes a first draft time-consuming, but I don't have to edit nearly as much.
     
  9. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    I find this hard to believe Selbbin. Unless you polish like mad before you post. Or unless you mean the overall flow or plot of the story.

    Mine have gotten better over the years. I've gone from twelve plus drafts to about three.
    I'm a pantser when it comes to short stories and a bit of a planner when it comes to novels. But no matter the process I'm usually writing to find out why I'm writing. I'm looking for the little subliminal bread crumbs left in the first draft to help reshape the theme. To take it from something general to something more concrete.
    Also I usually have to fix up character motivation in subsequent drafts. My characters are never really typical genre characters going on a specific journey or anything. There's no real thingamagig to want/hunt, no overlord to overthrow. Usually they're battling their own trapped lives/demons, their own loneliness, their own madness. Motivation becomes tricky and subtle.
     
  10. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Depends. I've sold a story that was basically a first draft. One of my current stories has undergone four or five edits and I'm still not happy with it, so I'll edit more
     
  11. drifter265

    drifter265 Banned

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    Wow. Was it a short story or novel? Also who buys short stories? Where do they put them up for people to read? Magazines? A collection book? I can't imagine anyone wanting to go to a library just to read a short story.
     
  12. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I think we need to watch our absolutes in this discussion. Yes, there are writers who have gotten their first "draft" published, typically those who edit as they go. We should bear in mind that professional editors will also look at these stories before they hit the shelves, but that doesn't mean multiple drafts before submission. Very few writers will hit it big with their first novel - most who get that "first" novel published have worked on a lot of them before actually submitting that "first" novel. But again, it's not unheard of. And last, editing as one goes does not mean it will take longer to finish (as in ready to submit). It simply means the editing is done along the way instead of at the end. How long it takes to get to that point depends on the writer, not on the method.
     
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  13. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Short story. I can't get imagine doing it with a novel. I wrote it in one sitting in three or four hours. Was a nice experience.

    If you want to sell short stories, look at Duotrope for markets (or Ralan's if you write SF/F or Horror).
     
  14. DeadMoon

    DeadMoon The light side of the dark side Contributor

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    I can't help but edit as I go. if i know that what I just wrote is bad, I need to fix it before moving on Kind of like if I was constructing a building, I would never build upwards without a solid foundation first.
     
  15. Aaron Smith

    Aaron Smith Banned Contributor

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    Twilight?
     
  16. Nilfiry

    Nilfiry Senior Member

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    I try to make my first drafts as close to the final drafts as possible. That is how I have always worked.
     
  17. Arya Stark

    Arya Stark Member

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    Right now, looking through my first chapter I've edited it properly 4 or 5 times now, and the scene has changed from them being in a slum like city to across the country in a thousand mile wide forest, and I've completely re-evaluated the entire story and characters to a story I think is more relatable for me to write, and so it won't be as difficult of a first book.

    Also, this is off topic as hell but Jessica Nigri told me she wants to read my first few edited chapters when they're all done, so I have like the most motivation I'll ever need to finish the book!!!!

    (Most of the people here are probably confused as to who she is, well she's really awesome and helped inspire me to write in a way. A weird way, but still a way)
     
  18. Tim3232

    Tim3232 Active Member

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    Good to see others edit and edit and polish as they go along. That's what I do. Slow but sure. Still need a little editing when finished but not so much. (though i never know when to stop polishing). So many on Nano tell you not to look back not to edit and then so many say - I've written a 70,000 word novel and it's all rubbish.
     
  19. Victoria Griffin

    Victoria Griffin Member

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    James Michener said, "I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter." I think that's true for a lot of people, certainly for me. When I'm working on my first draft, it typically feels less like writing and more like spewing words onto the page, hoping some of them stick. Sometimes I even write sentences knowing I'll delete them on the first edit, but remembering what I was feeling during those sentences creates better revisions. I would also say that the speed at which I write affects quality of my draft. When I write very quickly, I wind up with a lot more slush that has to be deleted later. When I write slowly, my language is often more precise, but less emotionally charged. So did I answer the question in there somewhere? Oh yes, my first drafts are usually terrible. My revised versions are usually better. Not always.
     
  20. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    I edit as I go. Hence, my first drafts are very good when it comes to prose style. I work on that a lot - it's what I enjoy, and probably the main reason I write. I also think I have a good facility for creating characters, so my characters are good in my first draft.

    On the other hand, I'm a pantser, so my first draft plots are a real mess. "Oh dear, this was a bad idea - there goes 10,000 words." "Oh my gawd, this was a wrong turn - out goes another 10,000 words." Etc. There's still about six tons of work to do in second and third drafts.
     
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  21. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Of course, there's no set-in-stone correlation between being a pantser and having drafts that are "a real mess". :)
     
  22. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    They keep getting better for each ms.
    For me too. I actually like the revision and editing process too, so maybe that affects the end result as well.
     
  23. The Mad Regent

    The Mad Regent Senior Member

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    As Ernest Hemingway famously said: 'The first draft of anything is shit.'

    And he's right. The point is to get your story on to a piece of paper, no matter the quality. Then you go back and start to rearrange pieces, retype sentences, cut useless parts out, and add parts to clarity certain things. The first thing you do when you get a jigsaw puzzle is splash all the pieces across a table and try to get the edges and corners. It's the same thing with a novel. Get the foundation and frame down, then refine it.

    A good analogy I heard from a writer once is that writing a novel is like being a stone mason: you get a block of stone, then chisel away the general outline (This is your first draft). Once you have the outline (in this case we will imagine "The Thinker" sitting on a toilet instead of a rock), you can start to add the fine details (This is your second draft). Then you start to add the final touches and polish it up (Final draft).

    The truth is, writing is like a muscle, and you need to work it daily for it to grow. Your first piece of writing won't be good, even if you're a prodigy (Like Ernest himself). People used to think Mozart could write music flawlessly on his first attempt, but that also turned out to be a load of bollocks. The more you write, and the humbler you are about accepting criticism, the better you will get. And then, in time, your first drafts will need less work.

    Take my posts for instance. I spend more time hitting the edit button than I do typing the post! :(
     
  24. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    That's the whole point of writing. :p Type, edit, re-edit. Type, edit, re-edit. :D
     
  25. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Mine are mostly awful, and at times incomprehensible nonsense.
     

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