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  1. Bosco

    Bosco Member

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    second and/or subsequent drafts

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by Bosco, Jan 17, 2018.

    Hello, uber new guy here w/ a dumb(ish) question. First a little background. The story I'm currently working on is not my first, I've written several and seem to encounter the same difficulty every time.

    When I begin a second draft of something it almost always becomes another first draft and ends up a completely different story w/ a few similar bits as the previous draft. And subsequent drafts of the same suffer a similar fate.

    This latest work may fare better b/c for the first time I have an absolute end I write towards, but being almost finished with the first draft and I wonder if other writers might have some tricks to keep the plot/story intact throughout the editorial process?

    Thanks!
     
  2. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    Does your story get better with each draft? I know mine does. And, man, you I wish all this trouble or rewriting and revision wasn't so worth it, but, for me, it totally is and there is no way around it. I don't think it's going to matter if you know the ending, unless all your problems tend to resolve around your endings. I edit as I write, but I've never been able to pull off in a first draft what I can in a fifth draft. So, it takes longer. Only one of your drafts is going to be published. And we often have to write the bad drafts to come up with the good ones.
     
  3. Bosco

    Bosco Member

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    I don't think I could call them better, just different w/ fewer errors.
     
  4. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    I've been doing exactly the same thing with my on-going WIP. My question to you would be: what's the real problem your story has that means you keep changing things? And if you're changing things when there's no real issue except "Oh this new idea is cooler!", then you may have the issue of not really knowing what you wanna convey with your story, what your story even is.

    Basically I propose there could be two possibilities:

    1. You know there's a problem, except you either don't know what/where the problem is, or you know it but you don't know exactly how to fix it.
    2. There are no problems, not really, but you get new ideas and think it's better, somehow.

    As to the second possibility, you're probably always gonna get good ideas, better ideas. Stick with the one that's the best for telling the story you wanna tell, or the one that makes the most sense. If there's no better reason other than "Ooh this is cool", then it's not really a strong enough reason for the change.

    As for the first possibility, that's much harder. There's simply no point in editing/rewriting until you know what your problem is (eg. why do you keep changing it?) and how to fix it for real.
     
  5. DeeDee

    DeeDee Contributor Contributor

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    Hm, I was wondering what actually happens - do you get new ideas while writing the second draft? And then you decide that those new ideas are better than the old ideas? Like: Idea1 - Little Red Riding Hood goes to visit grandma but gets eaten by a wolf. Idea 2: Little Red Rifle Hood goes to visit grandma through a zombie wasteland and gets to shoot zombies all the way through. In such a case you have two very separate and very workable ideas - one has a little girl who has to fight big bad wolf, and the other has a macho girl who gets to shoot zombies. You can set the first draft aside, if you don't feel inspired enough to write it at the moment, and just finish the second one, if you feel that's going to be more fun. But the first draft doesn't go in the bin, it's just trunked for later, when the inspiration strikes. Or, if you feel really dedicated, then you can leave Idea 2 for later, and put some effort in developing Idea 1 to success.
    If that is not the case, then maybe you just don't want to write about Riding Hood being eaten by wolf, and that's that. After all, zombies are much more exciting to deal with! :D So, just finish that. And if any new ideas appear while improving the zombie story - a wild dragon appears, and a magician with a pointy hat starts to turn the zombies into frogs! - go back to the beginning and decide if you want to keep both ideas or not. Maybe this time you can trunk the Dragon&Magician idea and leave it for later, and go on with writing the zombie thing. And then one day you may sit down and write a book about a Magician who has a pet dragon, and they go around turning their enemies to frogs, but this time maybe their enemies are not zombies but bad robots.
    In any case, finishing a story requires a little push, "butt-in-chair" technique and similar sorts of unexciting stuff that feels very much like work rather than fun :oops:
     
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  6. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    Undecided.
    Writing is like anything else, you do it badly until you do it well. In my opinion (and it's only my opinion) the idea of "Drafts" went out with the typewriter. It's hard to critique your own work even after you've got a few million words under your belt. I would suggest that you don't draft, so much as edit.
     
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  7. Bosco

    Bosco Member

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  8. Bosco

    Bosco Member

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    I guess I'm going to have to dig out one of my old stories and compare drafts. Even now w/ all the digital processing I like to print a hard-copy and put it in a three-hole binder to edit by hand.
     
  9. Bosco

    Bosco Member

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    I looked through some old work last night. I think I need to focus on a specific element w/ each draft, internal dialog one edit, character development the next, etc.

    I found my edits bouncing all over the place and some sections remained scarcely touched.

    Live and learn, I guess. ;)
     

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