How bad can a first draft be?

A friend of mine once called first drafts the 'words on paper' draft. It's your starting point, nothing more. Don't worry about the first draft, nobody but you ever has to see it. Get your ideas down and create some sense of where you're going with it. Finishing a first draft is a huge first step.

First drafts... well, I only have one to go off, but it's barely readable in places. Large chunks of it are really me just working out what the story is. And it's got notes directly to myself in a couple of places (e.g. "Daniel looked around and <something, maybe he see something, just as long as he's not scratching his balls>").

So, yeah. Pretty bad.

It must be perfect, and publishable. No piece of grammar or punctuation can be out of place.

Seriously, just get the words down. That first draft is where you bleed. It's where you learn if you have what it takes to actually be a writer or if you're just someone who talks about being a writer. Writing half a manuscript is easy, easy, easy. But if you finish a manuscript, even if your first draft is a steaming pile of manure, you've just done something 90% of the people who start a manuscript don't do. Then you go back and spill some more blood on the rewrites....

light said:

So guys... I once started writing a novel. I wrote like 20 pages and kept restarting because each time, it wasn't perfect.

Then I read somewhere that first drafts could be bad and we're not supposed to restart just because the draft doesn't look perfect.

The advice made sense... so I started once more, but this time I didn't really care about quality. I wrote a bit but then felt that my writing was just too bad and so I dropped it.

Aaargh. It's frustrating. How bad were your first first drafts? Is it okay if it seems sort of horrible at first?

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I am very grateful to Ellora's Cave author Elaine Lowe whom I threw my hot mess of a first draft of Wicked Wonderland and she pointed out the problems with it for me to fix myself. That's what crit partners and editors do they don't change it FOR you, but they point out things that are maybe not good and leave you to choose whether to fix them and how to fix them.

My first first draft? Unreadable. My current first draft, close to shit. Look at 8 years of improvement!

Really, don't expect your words to come out perfect on the first draft. And, light, if you're just starting to write, don't expect anything to be just right. Just get to writing, don't read your old stuff until the entire book is finished. Then, you revisit and start working on the second draft, and the third and such. Everything comes out in the revise, but you need to get the first words down.

My first drafts are utter garbage. Like, really. If anyone other than me read one, I'd be so embarrassed. The quality of my later drafts is debatable as well, but, unlike my first drafts, I can at least read through them without wanting to blind myself (or smash my computer) to end my misery.

I do sympathize with struggling to write when you know it's garbage, though. It can be difficult. I've stalled out right now on a project for that very reason.

light said:

So guys... I once started writing a novel. I wrote like 20 pages and kept restarting because each time, it wasn't perfect.

Then I read somewhere that first drafts could be bad and we're not supposed to restart just because the draft doesn't look perfect.

The advice made sense... so I started once more, but this time I didn't really care about quality. I wrote a bit but then felt that my writing was just too bad and so I dropped it.

Aaargh. It's frustrating. How bad were your first first drafts? Is it okay if it seems sort of horrible at first?

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1. there is no real way to quantitate "badness" so there is no real answer. "pretty bad" I suppose, but what the hell is pretty bad? I don't know, but pretty bad and finished is better than pretty bad and never even finished at all, no? A lot, a LOT of would-be writers never stop tinkering and re-writing, it is a very popular form of procrastination. So it can be bad, and beginning work tends to be, but at some point, along with how to start, how to build tension, etc., you need to learn how to finish--might as well keep plowing along and learning all of them at once.

2. whatever you read is part pep-talk, but also speaks in part to editing styles themselves, which vary widely. Many people write straight through; King mentions doing this and then coming back to edit. Koontz supposedly edits each page to death, and is done with that page, before he moves to the next. (I say supposedly because I've heard that here, never seen him claim this in an article....not doubting it, just clarifying that is secondhand info). Some people do chapters at a time. And you can do whichever of these works, AS LONG AS YOU FINISH. If you get hung up re-editing over and over, then you maybe need to write to the end before you let yourself tinker.

3. Bear in mind a lot of early stuff WILL BE shit. Accept that, write anyway, and if it isn't up to snuff, move on. King got tons of rejections when he was trying to make it. John Saul sold book number 7, after 6 failures. It happens. But you can't hit book 7, or even book 3, if you never finish book 1 and move on.

My most current first draft has an opening sequence that needs gutting, a character I thought I needed because just because and then he disappears in the next chapter because he was useless, boring food cooking/banking/shopping/walking around and looking at shit sequences, and terrible pacing.

Chuck Wendig talks about rewriting drafts to the point where your finished product is light years away from the first draft. That's normal if that's your process.

I agree with quicklime. As long as you get done and send the ms off, it doesn't matter how you get there.

It can be as horrible as you choose to make it, or as good as you can make it. I think as good as you can make it is the best approach. It's nearly impossible to turn truly horrible anything into publishable prose.

But what it can never, ever be is perfect. Not on the first draft, and not on the fiftieth draft.

Perfectionism aside, I'm not sure really good writers can write a horrible first draft. They may consider the first draft pure crap, but talent comes through, and unless such a writer is actually trying to write horribly, it isn't going to happen.

Just write the thing. Nothing you write will ever be perfect, so that that idea out of your head. But what you write doesn't have to be pure crap, either, and won't be, if you just write and have talent.

First drafts don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be crap either. A lot of writers write as you did, editing/revising as they go. The difference between those writers and you is that they realize nothing they ever write, no matter how many drafts they go through, will ever be perfect.

I edit/revise as I go. My first drafts end up needing polishing, period. Would I ever write through to the end without editing/revising, have more than that one draft? No way. Is the writing perfect? Of course not. But it's the best I can make it and I don't have to go through the whole dang thing again.

Try different things. See what works best for you. But get over the idea of perfection starting now. Until you do that, you'll be forever editing and trashing no matter what method you choose.

light said:

How bad were your first first drafts?

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My first drafts are always dead-on perfect. Then I go back and fix them.

Many writers use the first draft more as notes than a full novel, working over it to flesh it out. I tend to have the entire book written before I start a draft, so mine tend to be really fleshed out on the first run. But anything that works for you is perfect. For you. And what's perfect for me may have no use for you at all.

Keep writing. Find your path. Follow it until there's a better, or more interesting, one.

Jeff

See the quote in my siggie.

eta: guess I should go find out who that's from...I think it's Hemingway. But more than likely it was my dad quoting hemingway.
eta2: nope not him.

But Hemingway did say "the first draft of anything is shit."

Just get the words out. The first 2000 words in both my wips are getting trashed. Not necessarily because they are bad, but as I wrote I realized they weren't the true beginning. If I hadn't just wrote the story as I saw it in my mind, the story wouldn't exist at all.

light said:

I wrote a bit but then felt that my writing was just too bad and so I dropped it.

Aaargh. It's frustrating. How bad were your first first drafts?

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The first draft is like opening a jigsaw puzzle box and dumping the pieces on the table. The real work starts once the pieces are visible and can be arranged and fit together. And in writing, the real work is the rewriting.

Now me, I don't write first drafts except at the sentence and paragraph level. The first thing I plop on the page is often what's floating around at the top of my brain, accumulated junk that tend towards the stale and shopworn. It's like pond scum*, in a way.

I'm not willing to revise an entire novel's worth of pond scum, so I start rewriting immediately. It's all one process for me. The more I rewrite, the deeper I go, and from that a far fresher story emerges, sentence by sentence.

You have to discover what works best for you, but if you find you cannot proceed because you're unhappy with what you're writing, I'd suggest working with it until you like it better, then move on to the next bit. When I do that, I not only improve the writing, but I discover things about the story and characters that influence the entire course of the novel.

*Not in the sense of being ungrammatical or incoherent, but in the sense of sometimes being shallow or unfresh.

light said:

Is it okay if it seems sort of horrible at first?

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How bad can a first draft be?

Pretty damn bad.

Some writers call their first drafts "the vomit draft." A problem I see a lot is a newbie writer comparing her first draft to the written, re-written, polished, edited, copyedited, proofread, published works of the pros. Don't do that. You have no idea how bad the first draft of that book might have been.

Here is your Permission To Write Badly Certificate. Suitable for framing.

Like others have said, first drafts can be good or bad. But first drafts are often very unpolished.

I think the important thing is to write enough to get a sense of your own writing and how you work best. Some writers, like me, like to revise while we write. Others focus only on getting words down. I've written a few things that were unsalvageable, but I couldn't have learned that without giving it a try. Most stories are workable, but how can you tell without giving it a try?

In short, focus on writing now. If forsaking quality is making you unhappy, then try to strike a balance.

The first draft of my first manuscript was a brilliant masterpiece for the ages. My second draft of my first manuscript... even better! It was my "ignorance is bliss" manuscript. I'm glad I wrote it, I had fun writing it, and it gave me confidence to write my second manuscript (the one I'm working on now).

My only problem with my first manuscript was that I didn't learn anything about writing. What is that called when you think every word you write is masterful... golden words syndrome?

My advice is to treat your first manuscript as a learning tool and a way to purge yourself of bad writing. Keep it to yourself if you're that embarrassed by it. But avoid my mistake and learn to write from it.

I imagine a first draft can vary from horrible to "almost there", depending on the skill and experience of the author.

I agree with what many of the others have said above...get the words down on paper first, and then go back and start revising until you are satisfied that it is the best it can be.

I can't do the 'just get the words down' approach to first draft - I have to do the constant revision and polishing as I go approach. It's like trying to wash a floor I'm standing on. Whenever I move forward and wash the bit in front of me, the one behind me gets covered in footprints and needs washing again. I can't leave it dirty - it's not perfect! So I go back to the beginning...

The end result is that the last thing I wrote probably is first draft, but the closer to the beginning a chapter is, the more washing it's had. This means that while my agent says I submit lovely clean manuscripts, the last bit probably needs some more rewriting. *sigh*

BethS said:

The first draft is like opening a jigsaw puzzle box and dumping the pieces on the table. The real work starts once the pieces are visible and can be arranged and fit together. And in writing, the real work is the rewriting.

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This. So much so. Everything only really comes together on the re-write for me. Scenes tie in, character voice is sorted and defined. I like the rewrites, it's where the sense behind all the chaos kicks in as far as I'm concerned.

Oh lord child - how bad can a first draft be? First drafts have to be awful. Terrible. Stunningly bad. Stuff that really really needs fixing.

Otherwise why would they be called first drafts.

I was so reassured when I went to the British library (several thousand years ago) and saw some original handwritten manuscript drafts of classics.

The crossing outs, the scribbles, the notations above and below and in the margins, bathed my eyes in beauty. Because at that moment, for the very first time, I began to realise that even my heroes are only struggling humans.

What pretty much everyone said.

I think it's nearly impossible to get your first draft perfect...mainly because as you progress through the novel, you get to know your characters on a deeper level and they will probably give you input on changes to make to the first draft.

It sounds like what you're doing is a form of avoidance. I did that for a while when I was writing my first book. I was secretly intimidated by the thought of writing a whole book and did not really believe that I could do it, so I kept looking for reasons to not continue. Stop sabotaging yourself. If you can't keep away from the Delete button, write longhand.

Now stop procrastinating and go write.

Listen. It's always crap no matter how good or bad you think it is. For most writers (usually first time endeavors) it takes on average one to two years to complete a first draft. By the time those one or two years pass, you will have improved your writing dramatically. But you will never improve or realize that you have improved until you have written something.

For the love of god, finish. No! START! You can't finish unless you start and you can't start until you except that you want to finish! NOW DROP AND GIVE ME 1000 WORDS!!!!!!