It depends what you call a first draft and how you go about it. If you write 90k words without planning, you don't revise or edit just write, you might end up with something full of inconsistencies, cliches, SpaG errors, unrefined ideas and language, in other words a very rough draft that needs a complete re-write. If you plan and edit, it'll take longer but you might end up with something reasonably coherent that just needs polishing up and occassional re-write and shuffling around of scenes, povs, stuff like that. It depends entirely on your process.
The important aspect of a first draft is for you, the author, to be able to understand it. A complicated story can be difficult to fully understand until it is written, typed up or drawn out visually. You can use the first draft to identify continuity issues, plot holes and things that would be out of place in the fictional world you're trying to build. As long as you can establish a clear structure, you will then be able to build on it for future drafts, adding extra details, removing excess details, figuring out what sorts of things your characters do and say until you're ready to sort out details such as spelling and grammar a lot later on. And if you've got too many ideas for one book, split them into several stories. That way you can focus on one adventure at a time - you could even write the same story twice from two different perspectives with the endings tied together in each book.
I don't think the planning really has anything to do with it - but definitely if one doesn't revise or edit, the first draft is going to be a hodge-podge.
it's not supposed to be either shitty or perfect... just whatever you put down on paper first time around... some writers turn out near-perfect drafts from the get-go and others' first drafts need countless edits before they'll be ready to submit... don't let whatever is 'normal' for anyone else affect how you write or how you feel about how you write!
It depends entirely on your process, and you won't discover your process until you actually start writing. I make every draft an attempt at the final one, though I don't stop to edit along the way (at least, nothing major). Instead I think about what I'm going to write before I write it, so it's a bit slow going but slightly higher quality comes out of the keyboard. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't have to go back and find all that useless action, accidental POV breaks, objective summary, filtering, and a host of other writing goofs I still manage to make. The first draft doesn't have to be garbage. It depends on how much you just let it flow out or how much you edit along the way. People swear by either method, and many use a hybrid method (myself included). But you won't know what works for you until you write. So get to it!
My case is a lot similar to yours. Anyway, my point is that writing a first draft isn't going to cut it out unless you have things planned out. If there are some characters, scenes, and events that you already decided will be included, start writing them. However, with all the other material on hold, you might have to return to change the text to make it compatible with the other material. So, yeah, you have to have a general idea planned out. However, only you know if your material is ready to be written. If you still spend time thinking about changing the plot, then you might not be ready yet. Again, it is up to you. Just make sure you keep writing. Whether it be outlines or scenes or summaries of things to-be.
Have to totally disagree with this. One doesn't have to plan out anything. You may have to, but many others don't.
I agree with @shadowwalker . Some type and watch whatever comes out, not everyone likes to plan down to the most minute detail wait's going on in their stories.
There are many different ways to write a novel. The main point that I take from your post is that the method that you've been trying isn't working. And in all that time, you've probably tried a lot of minor variations on that method, so I think that you can conclude that that novel is not going to be written by that method, period. It's time for a very substantial change. You've rejected the idea of writing a completely different novel, so that substantial change is out. That would have been my recommendation, but I'm not in charge here. So the substantial change needs to be in the method of writing. You've come up with a proposed new method that is a substantial change from the old one. None of us can say whether it's going to work, but none of us can say what method will work. So I say go for it. Edited to add: Oh. I didn't answer the actual question. I think that lousy writing, occasional shifts into authorial notes like FIGURE OUT WHY JOE IS AT THE HARDWARE STORE, characters who change names and professions and marital status halfway through, thirty thousand word digressions that are going to be deleted as soon as you start the second draft, so many plot holes that you have to move them to a separate list because you can't focus on the novel with all the authorial notes, and all sorts of things like that, are just fine in a first draft.
Like Maia said, a first draft is getting things down on paper. Some writers, and I'm not one of them, put down a near perfect draft from the get-go. It takes me several revisions to get mine right, but that's not what I think about when working on my first draft. All I'm concerned with then is to just get the story on the screen first and then smooth it down later. Now that you've finished your first draft concentrate on polishing your work.
Hey everyone, OP here. This is long so prepare yourself but there's a good ending to it. I read everyone's post and they were all very helpful in giving me a different perspective other than my own on writing first drafts. The best advice, though, has to be the one that sparks something in you and what makes you understand and realize the problem you've been struggling with for so long. It is that my current method is wrong and that if I want to finish this story I have to change it. What I need to do is just write the story. Although I have come to admire it, outlining is just not working. To paraphrase George R.R. Martin, I know the general direction of where I want to go just not all the twists and turns along the way. That will be my outline from now on: just the general direction of where I want to go that I've had in my head for so long. I started writing my first draft after I made my first post in the beginning of this thread and I stared at what has been my most worst fear in writing: that blank page. Looking back on it now, I feel I've dreaded that blank page so much because whenever I come to it I freeze and I realize I have no idea what I want to write and I feel like a failure; which in a way is wrong because I know what my story is about because I replay it in my head all day long. It's just when it comes to writing it down I don't know how. I feel I can only generalize it, which was probably why I liked outlining, because it gave results - which I'm discovering now aren't the right ones. So what I did to get over this blank page problem was I listed the 6 w's (when, where, who, what, how and why) and for the first chapter I thought of how would I answer each of these questions: like, "Who is in this chapter? What happens in this chapter? How does it happen? Why does it happen? When is it? Where are they?" When I had all those answered, and it didn't take very long, I saw I had somewhere to start. I just basically copied and pasted my answers into the first draft and changed the tense to third-person and when I read over it it read like a story. I've just been doing that and now I'm up to 4,250 words. And the great thing about it is how easy its been and how I'm not just sticking to one thing and dragging it on but am constantly moving from one event to the next. It most likely is formulaic but when I read over it it didn't seem I was using the 6 w's for each paragraph. It read like a story that gets straight to the point and only explains enough of what the reader needs to know to understand what's going on. Which is exactly what I wanted. I haven't once explained what a character looks like or what kind of clothes they're wearing, and before that was so important I thought and would write, "he wore a blue shirt and jeans," but why would you have to write that unless those two items specifically came up to mean something later in the story? I recently googled why japanese people drew their anime characters white and not japanese, and what I found was that to them they weren't purposefully drawing white people or purposefully not drawing japanese people; what they were doing was just drawing what they believed what a normal human being looked like - the default. That was a big breakthrough for me when I looked at that for my writing. It was that readers will just assume your characters are wearing default clothing, like a blue shirt and jeans, or look like a white person as those are all the default to those things. I haven't explained at all what my character looks like or what he's wearing unless it came up in the story and needed to be said, which is what happened. When I read over it and put myself into the reader's mind, I just assumed my character was white and was in regular clothing, which is exactly what he is. If he was black or asian or wearing a big funny hat I think that would have some importance to the story because the other characters would have some reaction to that, subconsciously or not, and I don't believe that's racist because even if to a japanese person the default human is white why would a reader assume a character in a story is anything else unless it was said so? To me, it is just brilliant that I now know I don't have to worry about that and can just have faith that my readers will get it without me having to explain it. And that's common writing advice too, to have faith your readers will get it without having to explain every little thing to them. I've started my story and to me that is a success in moving in a new direction and don't see myself stopping anytime soon which feels pretty good. I'm just going to keep following my method of the 6 w's and George RR Martin's advice: that although I may get lost along the way I will find my way back to where I want to go. Hopefully this post isn't too much of a waste of time for anyone reading it but I just wanted to express my new thoughts on where I'm at and that I've improved. That something is going right and that I've figured out a solution to my problem. Thanks everyone, I'll probably be back soon when I hit another road bump.
Well, that's the whole point of asking for advice - to get a slew of options from which to form the method that works for you.
i was going to suggest a different method, but it seems that you have that worked out, late last year i decided to do NaNoWriMo, and didnt plan one single thing for, it. i know exactly how frustrating it is staring at a blank page, especially at midnight on november first. part of me wished id planned, but i hadnt and pantsed it through, now two books in i realise there could be a lot more to this novel than i initially anticipated.
give yourself permission to suck, just don't make it your goal to suck. Write it down. Catch that tiger in the net. THEN worry about how you are going to pull its teeth (or whatever other kinky thing it is you do with a tiger, I don't know..)
I'm glad to hear this. Your welcome. I had just realized something about when writing first drafts and then I saw this post and I think it is within the same vein of thought. It's that when you're writing your first draft the paragraphs don't have to make sense or even have to be in the same tense with each other. You can just write it in anyway that you want as long as you get your ideas down. Obviously, though, however, it does has to follow the same story and be at least somewhat coherent with the other parts but I don't think it has to be as much as I thought it had to be. I am happy I realized this, and I'm happy you said that, and I hope this breaks some of my bad perfectionist tendencies that I have trouble dealing with when writing first drafts.
Personally I know the first draft of my WIP is all over the place and full of plot holes but that's not a problem for me until I go back and edit. Whenever it starts to get to me I remember what an art teacher once told me back in primary school, about needing your mistakes on the page so you could correct them, and know that I'll fix them and they may even help. What matters to me at this point is getting it down rather than getting it perfect. Personally I'd be very careful about using different tenses, even for a very rough draft. IMO not catching it early and correcting it as you go could allow you to get sloppy with it later and just create more editing for you later.
Your outline sounds like a bit of a tyrannical task master to me. Why not just get on with writing the draft and see what it turns out like? If you've really spent 4 hours every day planning I can see why you are quite attached to it, but it doesn't seem to be getting you any closer to turning out something finished.
I've been writing (in my spare time ) for over twenty years and yet... I recently read a chapter from one of my 'best' first draft manuscripts. It was so bad I nearly cried. I believe it's more accurate to say that first drafts are inconsistent. Which is why they need the hills lowered and the valleys filled. Serious geological engineering. Nothing that is built looks good while it's being built. First drafts are part of the framing process. Have you ever watched a house being constructed? They look rather flimsy and ugly before the roof tiles and brick and siding goes on. First drafts are invariably hopeful and soul-crushing. They are as shitty as they need to be, until they are hosed off and polished.
It's the difference between a bar of gold and a chunk of ore with gold in it. Unless, of course, you manage to purify it on your first attempt.
There's a spell in Skyrim that basically turns any crummy iron ore into gold ore. Sadly, such a spell does not exist in the real world, especially for our first drafts. Good thing, 'cause I would like to work for it.
Sure it exists. It's a spell known as "Editus Revisus," and requires a great deal of time and effort to cast. Works wonders, though!
So come on....when is the first time you are brave enough to press print on your novel? Is it once the first draft is complete or chapters or never? lol And does anyone hesitate before doing it, the dreaded looming over the button wondering if its too early to consider your words on paper.
For me the issue is simply the expense! But it is soon time. After the second draft seems reasonable to me.
I have to admit i printed half way through first draft. I was going off at a tangent i didn't like and needed to look back and forth quickly to gain sight of teh time line better. Scrolling the pages just hurt eyes and confused. The printed version allowed me to mark where specific events etc were. Got me back on track and up to writing again.
