Your First Draft

By funkybassmannick · Mar 4, 2013 · ·
  1. New writers have a lot of questions about how to develop their skills as a writer. Many of them, however, have not finished their first draft. Developing your skills is really a task for second draft and beyond. First draft is all about getting something on the page.

    FIRST DRAFT REQUIREMENTS:
    1. Stale Characters
    2. Confusing Plot with lots of holes
    3. Stilted dialogue
    4. Minimal thematic material
    5. Infodumps, especially in the first few chapters.
    6. A lot of telling instead of showing
    7. Repetitive redundancy, where you describe the same thing twice or more
    8. Repetitive use of the same unusual word
    9. Excessively using adverbs
    This is a tongue-and-cheek list, but I hope it gets my point across. In the words of Hemingway, "The first draft of anything is shit." If you write a sentence and think, "Holy crap, that is the worst sentence written by anyone. EVER." Follow that thought up with, "So I'll fix it later," and let it be. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer, and it doesn't mean your story sucks. It means it's in an early stage of development. Keep writing, and keep moving forward. Everything can be fixed in later drafts.

    By simply writing, you are naturally improving your writing skills. There are so many difficulties you encounter in your first draft that it's like doing an obstacle course. You don't need to climb that rope wall with style, you just need to climb. In doing so, you will develop strength and endurance.

    This is the best advice that I can give you regarding your first draft:
    Sprint To The Finish.
    Treat it like an obstacle course and get the best time you can. ​

    Completing a first draft of a novel is an important milestone for a writer. Before, it was all in your mind or written out in jumbled notes, but now you have a complete version. Your story is finally outside of you. It's tangible. Even though it probably sucks, it is now clearer than it ever was in your head, and what needs to be improved becomes obvious to you. Now you can begin to develop your writing skills.

    I remember when I finished my frist draft. I stayed up so late that my dad was getting ready for work. And even though my writing was so atrocious that I vowed to never show a word to anyone, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. I had learned so much about crafting a story along the way that I was at least twice the writer I was when I began.

    So if you are writing your first draft and have questions about writing, Sprint To The Finish of your story, and you may answer your own questions.

Comments

  1. Scorsha
    Thank you so much. I dont know how you just wrote this yesterday and I found it today but it was what I needed to hear.
  2. hnamartin
    Great advice! Now if I could just implement it...
    I was riding on this mentality for quite a while with my novel, but when I realized I didn't know how to do what I wanted to do, I stopped writing and started reading again to get ideas. Should I just forget the studying and finish it up? I kind of rather step forward with some insight then write some garbage I'm not going to use anyway.
  3. Mckk
    But that's the point of the blog post - you gain the most insight BY writing. It's the difference between studying and actually applying the knowledge - a doctor can study for years about how to be a doctor but until they get their hands dirty and walk around the ward, treating patients, they'll simply never be a good doctor. Books can't give you that - only experience can. Writing is no different.

    Truth is, if you wait til you have some insight before you step forward, and refuse to write "garbage", then you won't write at all. 99% of what you write will be garbage, frankly - this is not unique to you, this is for every writer. I deleted 200,000 words before I got a near-polished manuscript. Sure you can say it was a waste of time, but without those 200,000 words that no one will ever read, I simply wouldn't have what I have now, at all.

    People have to fail before they can succeed - it's like going skiing but refusing to fall, saying "I'd rather have some skill before I go on the slope and end up humiliating myself by falling" - well, you just won't ski at all, then, will you?

    But you see, it's not a choice between studying and writing - such a "choice" is a comforting illusion that allows you to excuse yourself from writing. It was never a choice. You always have to do BOTH! Why should reading and studying prevent you from writing on top of it?

    Writing is your best teacher, so just write.
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