Oh my first drafts are definitely of the crappy. So much so that sometimes I have to wrestle myself away from hitting the delete button. The bruises are worth it.
LOL! Rose that was so funny because it is so true. Nome, I found that the first draft, for me anyway, is always crap boardering on unreadable - but it gives me a frame work to build upon.
If you never start from crappy, how will you ever know you are improving with every attempt? Practice may not make perfect, because I doubt perfection truly exists. But practice, coupled with a willingness to fall flat and feel silly before getting up again (and again and again), will make better. In this I have faith.
I would almost accept this is a dictionary definition of the term first draft! Just get your ideas out on the page. Never mind that it isn't ready for publication from the word GO. In fact, after writing, I like to let work sit for a week and then go back to it. It gives me a better perspective.
I'm with everyone here. Finishing your first draft is fantastic, but it's really only the beginning of your journey, though I imagine there are some writers who will say they don't need to do much revision. I'm not one of them. I love the whole process of revising, seeing the work develop to its full potential. In fact, I'm heading off to a writing retreat for a week on Monday to complete a final draft before sending my novel off to the editor. The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan (Ireland). It's an artist's retreat donated to the island of Ireland by theatre director Tyrone Guthrie. Google it, it's a wonderful place. Sorry, I went on a bit of a tangent there. Don't be dissillusioned by the 'state' of your first draft. See it for what it is - an ugly duckling that will transform into a beautiful swan. Good luck with it.
I don't tend to work with "drafts." I don't believe in wasting time writing a story if it's not the absolute best I can make it the first time around, so that's what I do. Any revision I do afterwards is minimal and not really "revision." Granted, I'm in the minority, and most people don't advise writing like this especially if you're in it for publication. Many people really can't write if they feel they need to make it perfect the first time around (I'm the opposite, I can't write unless I feel it IS perfect the first time around!). So it's perfectly normal for a first draft to feel incredibly lousy. That's how most people write. That being said, after a few years pass, I look back on my older writings which were the best I could write them AT THE TIME I wrote them, and depending on how much my writing style has changed, yes, they can be dreadfully lousy. So I do in fact at times have "drafts"--it just takes me a few years to be able to see where I need to improve something. Even if something is the best I can write it right now, sometime in the future I can probably do a better job. I look back on things that were genuinely fantastic to me when I wrote them and shudder now, but there's no shame in it because they were the best I could do BACK THEN. That just means I've improved since then. If you think your first draft sucks then that probably means you've improved too; otherwise you likely wouldn't be able to see how it needs work.
I hate reading my first drafts. While I'm writing them, I think they sound great. Then I set it aside, write something else, come back to this first draft and want to chuck it out a window. But that's good. That means I've improved and I know that it can be written better.
Two problems: I have all of my story inside of my head, but I can't seem to get it on paper/screen. I have tried to sit down and plan it out but it seems that I can't, well just write it. I did manage to get over 400 words out today. I thought if I started with the first chapter then I would at least have that to play with, and I just needed to write. 400 words might not seem like a lot to someone, but it was a hurdle for me because I am a procrastinator. I guess my real problem and my question here is: I am not a great writer, yet, and when I start writing my first draft it comes out horrible, I will give an example, but not of what I have wrote because it is bad and I will be to embarrassed, but here is an example of my beginner writing style. Jeff walked to end of the hall and opened the door, he went through looking at every thing in the other room as he went in. The room was dark but the moon was shinning in through a crack in the blind. He walked to the kitchen and opened the top self on the left, and as Kevin informed him: the gun was there. Jeff stuffed the weapon into the back of his pants and..... Anyways my problem is I tend to write it as I see the scene in my head and it comes out very sloppy and I know this is the first draft and it will be sloppy, but should it be this sloppy? Do any of you do the same thing? Would this be considered a pre first draft? I hope everyone can understand my hardship here. Thanks.
Ernest Hemmingway said 'All first drafts are ****.' I always agree with this statement, first drafts are always bad for everyone.
I think the point of a first draft is just to get the words on the paper. It's after that first draft is finally on paper that you should start worrying about how bad it is or isn't and work on editing only after you've gotten the entirety of the story out of your head. ~Lynn
They way I'm currently seeing it... the first draft is just to find out what the story is. When you rewrite, you can worry about how you're telling the story. I'm not even letting myself think about how bad the first draft might be right now, otherwise I'll end up tinkering and never finish it (my first attempt at a novel died that way, the second "charge-through-the-first-draft" is most of the way through the first draft).
A draft is a draft is a draft. You could call it an outline draft, a rough draft, scrap draft, or a get-the-blinketyblank-out-of-my-head draft. You can call it George if you like. In the beginning steps of writing, I learned to avoid numbering drafts. It got too depressing. As long as you're getting words on paper, and know they need to be polished, you'll be fine. Sometimes, the nomenclature is just another way to procrastinate.
I write out my outline first, just a way to get my ideas on paper (or computer if you will). It is essentially just a way to sort events into order. Then I go through and bulk it up with details of the events, maybe seperate it into scenes. Then, and only then, do I get around to actually writing the story.
(A draft is a draft is a draft. You could call it an outline draft, a rough draft, scrap draft, or a get-the-blinketyblank-out-of-my-head draft. You can call it George if you like. In the beginning steps of writing, I learned to avoid numbering drafts. It got too depressing.) LOL...that's how I feel. I like to call mine George...lol. I started mine a couple of weeks ago and it is very slow going. It feels like I am minning for words sometimes.
Look, the harder you think about what you want to say the harder it is too let out. Close your eyes and try to let it just flow out. You're thinking to much on it sucking and you need to breath and let your body and mind tdo the talking with out you thinking
Don't be embarrassed because what you write doesn't come out great at first. We've all been there. Sometimes you just have to get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper or a computer screen before we start refining it and turning a flood of ideas into a story. Don't let the fact that you're less than satisfied with your first attempt deter you from working on your story!
I agree. After finishing two novels, I find I am better at editing something that is in front of me. Doing NaNoWriMo was a great help as I was under pressure to get down 50,000 words in 30 days, at the end of that it was relatively easy to improve it and edit. Getting sufficient material down in some sort of order was the struggle - the first novel took two years! I call mine draft 1, draft 2, draft 3... and save each one in case I need to back track.
Who cares what the heck you call it as long as you're getting something done? Terminology doesn't matter until you start sending it to people.
Agreed. My first draft is descriptive and such, but not nearly as much as I know I can make it. It is filled with grammatical errors, holes in the plot that desperately need to be filled, and the beginning is so boring and abrupt I am surprised my readers on fanfiction.net were able to get hooked to the darned thing. My point is, as soon as I feel inspiration, I type like a madwoman, get it onto my laptop, and LATER I go over it, when inspiration has fled and my work begs me to clean it up and make it pretty write like you wanna, just make it better later
Hello, I feel what you are saying- that is how I am like with my writing. The best advice I can give you is to just write. It takes practice, and I am sure you will probably not like the first 'pre-draft' you write. Heck, I rewrote parts of chapters several times and I am not happy with it at all still. Another suggestion is really to just surf around the forum and read the advice given on the help topics. One truely can never learn too much! And well, try to relax about how your writing comes out. I find this the toughest to be honest. But I find that if I just keep going ( I do admit that I fix misspellings, but that is all) as some time passes, it gets a little easier to write the story down. The more I fuss over sentence structure and how it sounds, the more bogged down I get, and then I am just going in circles- write a sentence, fix it, write next one, go back and edit the first one, and next thing I know, so much time went by, and I only have a paragraph written that I still don't even like. Learn to have fun writing, even if you don't quite like where its at. You can always polish it later. Also, I find that if I take breaks from writing my main story idea to something completly different, just like a little short story that focuses on one point can be a good exercise as well as a nice little break. Good luck!
Your example sounds like, what I would like to call, your General Draft. Basically getting out the general ideas of what you want to happen in your story. My suggestion is to go as far as you can, generalizing, and when you are done, go back through, and use it to make your basic outline. Like breaking down what you want to happen when, and in what chapter (if it's a novel/chapter book). Even if you have to move stuff around, change the beginning, the ending, add something that you think is important or forget the first time. It's alright! IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PERFECT THE FIRST TIME THROUGH! Then you can start your clean writing. Editing, keeping, discarding. It's all about your own process; find what works for you. The only wrong way is giving up.
