What is your First Draft style?

My "first draft" is my final draft because I edit each page as I go. When I reach the end, I'm done, other than going through looking for typos, and tightening dialogue a bit.

But even when I wrote true first drafts, I wanted them publishable, even if I intended a second draft. I never could see the sense of trying to rewrite crap. It's damned near impossible, and even when it works it's a headache.

Psht. Midway through my first draft I opened a new document and started all over. New plot, new chapters, new everything. Screw everyone's rules! I'm a rebel.

I overwrite in the first draft because what I really want to say comes out that way. Experience tells me I can cut up to a third off a first draft, so no biggie.

Because I've done a very detailed outline, my first draft is pretty smooth. Occasionally a gush of all caps will appear, like this: S & E SHOULD RLY TALK BOUT SEQUELAE OF SERV INCIDENT HERE. Nope, not a brilliant metafictional experiment, just a note to myself for Draft 2.

I do the "two steps forward, one step back" method. I write a chapter or two, then go back and rehash it in my mind. I tweak stuff. Then I write another chapter or two, go back... delete some stuff... rewrite... Eventually I get to the end. Voila!

I write sparse but long. This is possibly the worst combination.

A mix of final-draft, notes, speculation, and gaps. Sometimes all in the same sentence.

I have never had to cut a scene (and even my orphan scenes wind up used, eventually), tho I often need to add small fleshings-out.

I write the first draft to see what the fuck I'm writing about. I have no clue what the story is towards the end.

I am still revising my first novel, so I don't have a lot of experience, and my methods might change.

This time around, I forced myself to keep writing until I hit the end because I was afraid I would never finish otherwise. It took three months and was by far the fastest draft. The result was there were parts that were overwritten and had to be cut and parts that were rushed and had to filled out. Almost everything has been rewritten at least once save for those special scenes that somehow just came out right the first time. Hopefully there will be more of those in book 2.

WillSauger said:

I write the first draft to see what the fuck I'm writing about. I have no clue what the story is towards the end.

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That sounds very familiar. The plot formed as I wrote. Probably why the beginning in particular needed so much extra work.

If I outline properly, the plot doesn't change much from first to final draft. But the writing often does. Things are reworded, changed, tightened.

Again, if I outline properly, I write more than what I need. But when I sit down to write a first draft, it goes fast. The last two (and my first two completed novels) were completed in 21 and 28 days respectively. I'm quick on getting it down.

I rewrite the first paragraph 8,376 times being sure to show not tell and maintaining my POV. I give the appropriate attention to setting and visual cues while not burdening the intrepid reader with more information than is necessary. I polish it until I'm sure it advances the story and reveals character. I buff it until it really sings.

Then I decide the story is crap, scrap it and move on to something new.

I start with a detailed outline that says what needs to happen in each scene. Then I go through in whatever order I feel like (not from beginning to end) and write the scenes themselves. I try to get them as close to perfect as possible when I'm writing them. You won't see any notes about stuff to look up later or change left in the middle of my first draft. If I see a problem (beyond grammar and typos) I fix it immediately, and if I need to research something, I do it *before* I write the scene. If I realize something needs researched in the middle of writing the scene, I stop and either look it up or go write a scene I don't need to research for. Can you tell I once had to rewrite an entire chapter because I was lazy and thought I could get away with Googling a fact later? Lol.

In the end, I still overwrite by 15-20%. Partially because my phrasing isn't as efficient as possible in first drafts, and also because I have a tendency to start scenes too early. But I figure overwriting is easier to correct than underwriting. Everything I need is there, I just have to lay on the delete key from time to time.

I'm on my first draft of my first novel. I'm pantsing it mostly, I think, because I don't know what I'm doing. I have a loose idea of the plot and major arcs in my head, then I have a doc file where I record the scenes (either as notes or as full narrative) as they occur to me.

I think it's time to take a look at what scenes I have and order them and see if the plot is still in good shape or has evolved.

Next book, after I've gotten one under my belt and know better what to expect, I'll try to outline and then write.

I write it. If it later needs editing, I edit it. No secrets, no amounts, no generalizations, I just write, edit and am done.

Jeff

My first drafts tend to be a little longer than my final drafts. Mainly, there are sentences that I tighten in later drafts. So far, I've never had a story that I've made significant changes to between the first draft and subsequent drafts. Well, unless you can't what I'm writing right now. But I'm actually rewriting the series because I wrote it years ago when I sucked at writing.

I just write, edit, beta, move on to the next chapter, rinse, repeat. That's my first and last draft, except for polishing.

I start out with the plot of the story. Write the first chapter. Daydream about the next few scenes, remember them to the best of my ability and write them down. I start out with a word count, comply with that word count, let it rest for a few days, and show it to a beta for him or her to tell me if I have written a real story or if I just made a complete and utter mess. Depending on the beta's suggestion, I write my second draft, show it to him or her, take a couple more of suggestions, write the third draft, show it to my beta, and so on and so forth until my beta tells me it's OK to submit. Which reminds me, I have to check my email to see if my beta sent me feedback on the chapters I sent to her yesterday. I'll be right back.

After outlining, I start my first draft writing as close as I can to what I want the final draft to look like. My formatting is in submission format, and I do my best to keep my writing tight and professional. That said, I don't let those considerations slow the writing down. If I get hung up on something I know could be better, or realize that I used a few too many adverbs, for example, I just press on. Otherwise I'd get bogged down. I flag those spots, and come back to them later when it's time to edit and revise.

And, it's not uncommon for me to get several chapters in, realize I somehow strayed from my outline in a direction I'm not happy with, and end up rewriting the whole thing.

writing the whole thing long-hand
it started out as a short story that just grew, branched out and formed itself into a novel. i kept notes for it in 2 separate notebooks.
i started typing it after i hit about 100 handwritten pages and now i'm alternating between writing new material and typing up what i've already written.
chaotic sometimes but fun!

First draft: I write 3 chapters; review, edit; write chapters 4-6; review 6 chapters, edit; write 7-9, etc.

When half of book is written, I review and edit before starting part two.

I tend to do my writing in the afternoons and the next morning, after sleeping on it, review and edit.

In the end, it's whatever works for you. I have the liberty of structuring my days since we're empty nesters and writing is my only job.

srgalactica said:

Are you the type who writes a ton of stuff that gets cut and tightened later? Are you the type who writes first drafts that are really close to what your final drafts look like? Do you write sparse and fill in details later? Maybe you bang out those first drafts really fast.

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I don't write first drafts, except at the sentence level. I revise as I go, so by the time I reach the end, I'm mostly done except for a little clean-up work.

For this WIP, I decided to try things different than I did with all of my other WIPs. I got the idea from several things and kept making notes and then I wrote down a few scenes I wanted to happen in the beginning and started working through them.

I just write. I don't worry about too much research, if it slows me down too much I just do the best I can and keep writing. I don't edit (No matter how badly my inner editor is SCREAMING!) I just keep writing. Period.

The first ten chapters of my WIP, I didn't do any outlines. But then it started getting a little harder so I decided to do a few chapters ahead and edit the outlines as I went.

Once I finally finish my WIP, I plan on going through and reading it. I'll write down all of my notes on it and work on a full novel outline for it as I go. I'll write down notes of things that may not work, things I want to add in, things I want to take out, etc.

And then I'm going to get to work on the second draft! And as I'm writing I'll fix the grammar and spelling errors I may have made in the first draft. When I finish the second draft I will start letting a few people look at it and my critique reader and everything, and then I'll just keep editing, editing, editing, and tweaking until everyone who I let read it has hardly anything to really say about it and then I hope to query.

Is this crazy?

Wordy, overwritten, rambling unfocused descriptive sentences. I do better with dialogue in first draft. But I don't overworry about it. I'm a pretty good and savage editor of my own stuff (and that of others), so it's all fixable. I write long, and cut.

caw

I call my first draft method "Chuck it all at the wall and see what sticks." So yes, I "overwrite", get in everything that seems like a good idea at the time, and then decide in the editing what should stay and what should go. I do it because it's easier to get something in while I'm in the flow of the story, rather than pasting it in afterwards. (Though of course I end up doing that too!) And yes, I am an outliner, so I know what's going to happen. I just don't always know the detail of HOW it's going to happen until I write.

And it's always hard to say what it is that will be useful. Some little throwaway thing that I chuck in because it's cute or seems like a bit of filler that will get me to my word count target for the day may turn into something much more important. That happened to me in NaNoWriMo 2006. My first novel, and I wasn't sure I had enough material (turned out I had plenty!) and so I gave the narrator a dream to fill in a couple of hundred words. Then it turned into a recurring dream. Then it turned into the key to his character. When I finally wrote the scene that explained what was behind the dream and why it was so important to him, I actually cried, it was so emotional. All of that from a couple of hundred words of filler. I chucked it at the wall and wow, did it stick.