How do you look at first drafts?

[AllisterGrim]

Thomas Edison had tried thousands of things to make the first light bulb. A reporter, marveling at his determination, asked him how he could possibly perserve in the face of so much failure. Tom's response?

“I didn’t fail. I just found ten thousand ways that didn’t work.”

So much depends on perspective.

When I first tried this whole writing thing I started by reading books on how to do it. I was determined to avoid all those amateur mistakes that condemn a manuscript to the reject pile. I would never tell when I could show. I clensed my work of the infodump. Did a -ly word end up in something I wrote? Bless me Father for I have sinned. In retrospect I was using all this advice to make my inner critic stronger. The problem is he started doing steroids and muscling his way into everything

I found I couldn't get through a WIP without losing faith in the whole basic premise, or I would rewrite a scene endlessly. I was writing first drafts the way someone would defuse a bomb. I tried outlines. I tried stopping myself from editing. Nothing worked.

Then I decided to look at the first draft as if it were sky diving. I wanted to write a fearless first draft. My only rule became if its scary or uncomfortable it gets jotted down. Now I don't care if there are -ly words, or bad prose, or if my Mom would approve. I don't even care if the basic idea seems stupid. If I write a character badly, I tell my inner critic to come up with a better scene or to shut the hell up. Any time I'm wondering if I'm headed the wrong way, I push even faster. I want scary. I dare to be awful.

In the end, I have a glorious mess, but the ideas have more of that energy they had when I was first concieving them. The words seem to burn a little brighter even if the sentence they 're in is awkward. The approach isn't new. But the metaphor of it being a bunji cord jump liberated me enough to make it work.

I started wondering what other analogies people use. How do you see the first draft? What metaphors do you use to help you?

[DeleyanLee]

Hurray for you!

Personally, there's only ONE thing that matters in the first draft--get the story in my head down on paper. No rules, just write.

[Zoombie]

There's a reason I call it the vomit draft.

Except sometimes, the vomit smells nice and arranges itself in a pretty pattern. But it's still vomit, and you have to clean it up. And then it magically becomes gold!

I say I have the best metaphores for these kinds of things. Nice work finishing your first draft.

My "analogies" wasn't all that...analagous. Some fellows from the website I put my begging at came by and put a gun to my head and said, "Finish the story, or the brain gets it!"

Well, my hands had no choice. They really like my brain, see.

[dawinsor]

Sky-diving is a great analogy, and fearlessness is exactly what you need. I don't think I've found a good way to survive the first draft yet. I do survive it, in that I finish it, but there's always a stretch in the middle when I'm ready to weep, the thing looks so bad to me. I comfort myself by saying that once I finish, it's as bad as it'll ever be and now I can start making it better.

[Stew21]

I have down and dirty first drafts. I started referring to my bad writing as "FDU - first draft ugly".
I've found to just write it - no matter how bad is the only way for me to get the story out so I have the words and tools I need to fix it.
I'm hopeful that eventually I will write enough novels that the first drafts will get better naturally and won't require complete overhauls in second.
But for me, right now, the only way I can write is to have an Ugly (and I do mean ugly) first draft!

[JoNightshade]

I think for every first draft, my experience has been different. But if I had to generalize, I'd say that for me a first draft is like wandering through a beautiful garden and picking up things that interest me. Later I go back and rearrange things into something meaningful, but the first time around is just about getting to know my subjects and what they want to do.

[joyce]

With my first novel, I felt just like you. You'd thought I was performing brain surgery or something, the way I picked and edited the thing as I went along. I was so busy fixing I thought I'd never just get finished writing. I tried reading stuff, but found I still made all those stupid mistakes anyway. This second one I just kept writing regardless of how it sounded. Surprisingly, now in my first edit, I'm finding it's not as bad as I thought it would be. From now on I'm just going to write and fix all the crap later. Good luck.

[Viral]

I do vomit drafts also. I think it helps to write when I'm only semi-coherent, because my inner critic is usually to exhausted to care what I'm writing about. Some of my strangest and best ideas have cropped out from writing in an unstable mindset.

[TheIT]

Mountain climbing. I don't outline, but I have certain scenes I'd like to reach like aiming for base camps further up the mountain. I wander around for a while, always climbing up (hopefully), and try to hit those scenes. In the two drafts I completed everything finally clicked, almost like I went over the peak and was rolling down the mountain with the rest of the avalanche. If I was more organized, I'd say I was skiing. At some point the uncertainty of what to write next went away. I just knew what scene needed to be written next. The story carried me forward.

My other art analogy is Michaelangelo. When asked how he carved fantastic sculptures out of marble, he replied something like he just carved away what wasn't part of the sculpture. Given the amount of words I throw at an idea, I build the marble block in my first draft. In revision, I'll carve away what's not part of the story.

[MMWyrm]

You guys have good analogies. My first drafts are also vomited out. I don't usually finish them, however. I stop my first draft as soon as I know exactly how the story will finish up and then swoop back to start the second run through. That usually entails fixing time lines and playing with POV characters.

[dempsey]

How do you look at first drafts?

Through a chemical hood.

[AndreaGS]

I do fairly detailed outlines, chapter by chapter - determining what happens each chapter to move the story along.

But I don't usually write down HOW it happens, so I'll have something like "So-and-so escapes from the palace". So first-draft writing feels to me like plunging through a forest on a narrow, fuzzy path with false offshoots and puzzling obstacles (the dreaded writer's block!). But I have a destination in my mind that I really want to get to, so I have to keep pressing through the brush to get there.

[Death Wizard]

My first draft is about brushing/rolling the paint on the walls, and my revisions are about cleaning up the mess I made afterward.

[astonwest]

How do you look at first drafts?
With great pain...

[HeronW]

How do I look at first drafts? Through two mirrors and the smoke from burning black chicken feathers while looking over my shoulder and hopping on one foot. :]

Which is easier than going after the novel wannabe after letting it set quietly behaving itself and I creak a jaundiced eye on the pages. Setting a new font helps to catch errors, reading aloud catches repetition and flubs. It also helps to set the pace and establish if I've lost continuity somewhere. I read to my partner too and get feedback as to what's this and what if that.

[The Scip]

My other art analogy is Michaelangelo. When asked how he carved fantastic sculptures out of marble, he replied something like he just carved away what wasn't part of the sculpture. Given the amount of words I throw at an idea, I build the marble block in my first draft. In revision, I'll carve away what's not part of the story.

When I was reading through the thread I had this same analogy in my head, its how I have always thought about writing and drafts.

[Kerr]

This is a great thread because, like Allister, I learned to edit and in the process, the flow all but stopped. My worst problem? Whenever I come up to a dead end, I can't resist the urge to look backward and start fiddling. I tell myself I just need to read a bit to get on course, but it's all I need to start fiddling. And if I don't stay with the forward motion, it's gone. It's like exercising, three times a week or you feel like you're starting over every time. Now, I'm finding going back to notebooks while at work has released me from this fiendish editor that lives in the computer.

[ChaosTitan]

I think I can safely refer to my first two novels as "first draft vomits." I didn't really know what I was doing or how to structure a novel. Those two novels (although the number is subjective, since the second novel has yo-yoed from one book to three books, to two books to one again over the course of three years) have been rewritten so many times, I get confused over which draft contains which scenes.

Somewhere along the road, I got better and I haven't vomited a first draft since. Sure, I've had to revise and tweak, but never to the degree of those first novels. Now my process is more like cooking a good meal. I've got my ingredients when I start, but I always add new things along the way. And once the meal is done, I can sit down and pick it apart, and know what to fix the next time around.

[JJ Cooper]

I don't mind going aganist the grain here.

I do 10 chapters (around 15,000 words) and go back to give it an edit. This helps me tidy up an inconsistencies with story line and setting, helps me to identify if the pace is right, gives me ideas that I can explore and jot down for later sub-polts. Ensures I have introduced the characters correctly or tie them together etc. Overall just helps me continue on with the next 10 chapters. I believe if you have the determination to see it through till the end, then why not edit as you go. I also find when I'm finished that it is in good shape and I don't have to spend a lot of time going over the entire novel with revisions.

Of course, each to their own and whatever works.

JJ

[David I]

I write polished first drafts, as if I will never need to revise.

Then I find I have to revise a bit. But I can't move forward if I think something behind me is wrong.

Important Note: I am not recommending this. It's more like a curse than a good idea. It just happens to be how I work. I'd gladly trade it in if I could.

[DWSTXS]

I look at my first draft like.................like, I am God and it's the first day......

[Judg]

In my first draft, I'm trying to manufacture clay to throw on the wheel. But I've learned to stop trying to do it at a frantic pace and enjoy the process a bit.

[EelKat]

I just write.... and write and write and write. I figure, it's the first draft, who cares? I don't want to stop the creative flow. I don't stop for anything. I don't correct typos, grammar mistakes or spelling errors, I just write. Who cares if the first draft is 90% crap and full of errors, it is after all, just the first draft and I can edit it later. Editing time is the time for worrying about making it good. Well, anyways that's how I deal with first drafts.

[ClaudiaGray]

When I took pottery, the teacher told me, "Every potter throws (creates) a thousand bad pots. You may as well get yours out of the way." That was hugely liberating to me in pottery, and it's been one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. I figure we are all going to write several hundred bad drafts -- every time I'm unhappy with a scene or a chapter or such, I think, "Well, that's one more bad one out of the way."

[Paichka]

II do 10 chapters (around 15,000 words) and go back to give it an edit. This helps me tidy up an inconsistencies with story line and setting, helps me to identify if the pace is right, gives me ideas that I can explore and jot down for later sub-polts. Ensures I have introduced the characters correctly or tie them together etc.

This is basically what I do.

Before I start on the next chapter, I read all the chapters that came before it. Then once it's done, I read all the chapters again to make sure I haven't accidentally changed someone's eye-color or something, that the tone and pacing is right, that I've kept that character's voice the same throughout the work, etc etc. I do minor nit-picky edits to each of the chapters as I go.

I am still planning on the huge surgery once the whole thing is one, though, and I've had a few Betas go over it with a hammer and a bag of valencia oranges.

[AFGNCAAP]

I, too, am one of those who must remind themselves not to edit the previous sentence yet--it's only the first draft! It's okay if it isn't perfect. Well, at least it's that way at first. If I can go long enough without looking back, I eventually stop looking back at all, and the story truly begins to play itself out on paper as if it were a play being acted in my head...a wonderful feeling, and worth the effort it takes to get there.

[Stlight]

The main point in my first drafts is for me to meet and get to know the characters who want me to write their stories. I also like to let those who want to leave, hurry off to catch their trains, planes and buses.

Stlight

Ha! as soon as I put this up I noticed I'd said drafts instead of draft. So, okay, yeah, sometimes it takes more than one to meet the folks.

[Shweta]

I'm actually having a lot of trouble with a first draft. For short stories, I edit as I write so that my first draft is in some ways the sixth, too. This isn't working well for longer stuff.

So, uh... I'm not expecting my first drafts to be perfect or even pretty, but how do you find the voice of a story in a vomit draft? When I do that I seem to end up with a bunch of Boring, and have to throw the whole thing away and start again.

[KTC]

With my first draft I try to write the perfect novel. I don't try to get my thoughts together. I go for final draft quality. And then I do the same when I do my second draft.

I WOULD NEVER EVER EVEN CONSIDER EDITING WHILE I WRITE. That is a no-no in my book...a big one. To each his own, of course.

[Charlie Horse]

The first draft, for me anyway, is like quarrying the big hunk of marble in which I'm going to begin chisling out my sculpture. Lots of words to chip away at. But underneath it all I know there's a good novel in there.

[Wolvel]

The first draft is just my mind dumping it out on paper. The later drafts turn it into a story.

[Judg]

I'm actually having a lot of trouble with a first draft. For short stories, I edit as I write so that my first draft is in some ways the sixth, too. This isn't working well for longer stuff.

So, uh... I'm not expecting my first drafts to be perfect or even pretty, but how do you find the voice of a story in a vomit draft? When I do that I seem to end up with a bunch of Boring, and have to throw the whole thing away and start again.
Schweta, I'm still finding myself in this too. There's a happy medium, which seems to have a different location for each person. That's what I meant about not trying to go too fast, because it demoralizes me to write too crappily. I give myself permission to mull sentences over, to catch myself before I write something like "he was looking up at her" and change it to something like "his upturned face was pale in the candlelight from the table" or whatever fits the mood of the particular scene better. I feel better about what I'm writing, and so I can chug along better. I do NOT go back and do line editing. What's the point? I might chuck the whole scene for all I know.

There's a fulcrum for you too in all this.

[Shweta]

I tihnk maybe my scenes need to work well enough that I want to know what happens next, instead of thinking "No, it didn't work like that, that's all wrong!" Also, the initial scenes are how I discover/create the characters, so they need to be true to the characters even if I'll change them later.

Regardless of whether I keep the scenes. Does that make any sense?

[Dee Carney]

I write polished first drafts, as if I will never need to revise.

Then I find I have to revise a bit. But I can't move forward if I think something behind me is wrong.

This is how I work too. The idea of having to do a lot of revising/editing after the first draft would stop me from writing in the first place. I'm not saying that a masterpiece comes out with the first draft. I just need it to be more than a stream of conciousness.

[astonwest]

I don't mind going aganist the grain here.

I do 10 chapters (around 15,000 words) and go back to give it an edit.I find myself having to do this, because of my short attention span. I'll end up writing about 10 chapters, but then run off to work on something else (a few short stories here and there, a screenplay, etc.). Then, I'll come back and edit the 10 chapters, and write more drafts.

It's a nasty little cycle, but it's worked so far.

Besides, I think my mind is stalling, waiting for an agent to pick up an earlier book in the series, before I get too many other novels written.