Writing the first draft - what is your method?

We are so spoiled by modern technology. I have to think all of these answers would be so different fifty years ago when you had to write stuff by hand or punch it out it on a typewriter.

Martin Silenus in Hyperion had a fantastic quote for the concept you mention:

“In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.”


I feel like for drafting, a typewriter would be harder than writing by hand. Everything would have to be in order. Harry Potter was apparently done on typewriter. Gene Wolfe's early novels were written on a typewriter, too, I believe; then later an acorn; nowadays he has a Macbook.

I do a lot of early draftwork as handwritten notes, because it's sometimes easier than organising on Word. Been awhile, but I also wrote a few essays at uni by hand. Basically you start with a sheaf of papers and each page is an idea (nonfiction) or short scene (fiction). There's plenty of space across a whole page to do edits and if you need to rearrange scenes or ideas, you just shuffle your pages. It would certainly be a bit killer for lengthy novels, of course.

I have writing days and editing days. I know that I probably, theoretically, should attempt to get everything down on paper before I turn to editing but somehow this never works for me. When I finish a chapter I will generally let it sit for a few weeks to give myself some distance from it before doing an initial revision.

It usually takes me about 3 days to write each chapter, but that’s a combination of writing and light editing. My goal with the first draft is to get it into a “not awful” state.

After that are multiple editing passes.

indianroads said:

It usually takes me about 3 days to write each chapter, but that’s a combination of writing and light editing. My goal with the first draft is to get it into a “not awful” state.

After that are multiple editing passes.

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Seconded. Although I'd change "multiple editing passes" for "MULTIPLE editing passes".

I'm not sure I can recommend this, but here's what I did. I just wrote, I kept going and going, pushing myself. My main goal was to finish first knowing full well that this first draft was going to be rubbish. That's what all the greats have said, the first draft is NEVER golden. I can't tell you how many times I've started projects from novels to short stories to novellas, none of them I finished. For all those previous projects I kept going back and rewriting, too nervous that what I had wasn't good enough. But when I focused on finishing despite the quality? I actually completed something. Granted, it's NOT fun going back and trying to fix what's wrong, but in the very least you've finished. I definitely recommend keeping a writing journal so that way you can write down stuff that you wanna double back on if you choose to go with this method. But I'm proud of the progress I've made on this project so far.

Here's what happens to me. I get an idea. I toss and turn it in my head. The storyline slowly starts to reveal itself. The number of plotholes is unbelievable. Honestly, I don't have the answer to 90% of the questions I raise myself. But there are a few plot points I want to hit and I know I have to work between the scenes to get there. Generally, I know the ending (which always changes, but I know what I want to work towards).

Then I get writing and I just belt it out. I used to be the type of person who'd rewrite the first chapter of a first draft a billion times. No more. Now I just think of what I want to say, no matter how utterly shit it is, and I follow my characters down this story. They're completely different to who I'd had in mind. My first draft is about discovery.

Of course, then the question of the second draft is raised and I look at the mess I've made and cry for a solid week, but that's another story

I typically begin every writing session on page one, revising and obsessing and then slapping myself silly for doing so ...until I hit 50-60 pages. By then I'm battered and bruised enough to accept throwing down a skeleton to finish the first draft. I work from a detailed outline, sometimes scene by scene, so you'd think I'd skip the obsessing early on.

Alas, you'd be wrong. Sigh.

MiniGoblin said:

Would anyone here recommend this approach?

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If you aren't scared of revision, yes. I recommend a word vomit—excuse the term, haha—and once you have the words down on paper, DO NOT READ IT. Keep writing. You will repeat yourself. You will change facts from paragraph to paragraph. There will be plot holes. None of that matters; that is what editing is for. Writing is all about getting it done. You do what works. This method works for me. If you're constantly worrying about if it's good enough, I promise, you will never complete a story. Take it from me; it happened countless times. Self-doubt is the most crippling thing for a writer. Once you learn to overcome it, you're golden.

"Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound." —William Goldman

I think that the best thing to do is write the book and as you go with it, show it to as many people as possible.
Ofcourse most of them will not be critical and not pay any attention so they will say '' Ohh my gawd how beauuutifull, keep writing i wil deeeefinatly buy YOUR book....''
But hey, 1 out of 10 will give u constructive feedback or perhaps even think about what to write. But anyways, i divert.

Keep asking others for input, and feedback.
There you go, my 2 cents

Since I usually have comprehensive outlines, I'm a brain-yakker. I get to the end and then go back to edit. It goes through a couple of revisions. One from beginning to end. The other, end to beginning. By then, I'm ready to ship off to the editor.

I'm a retired design engineer who has taken up writing. With that background, I'm a plotter, not a panster. I have no bones to pick in favor of one method or the other, it's the final product that matters, not how you got there.

As a plotter I play with the story line for quite a long time before getting serious about it. Then I do a rough outline which will let me know if there's enough meat there for a a novel or whether it will be a short story. If it passes the novel test, I write out a detailed outline - chapter by chapter, then do character profiles, and (in my WIP for the first time ever) draw maps. Then I start writing.

Afterward I do a postmortem on my process and look for ways I can improve.

One thing I'm trying with my WIP is before I start the formal writing for a chapter, I write out a list of plot points to be covered. This method seems to be working fairly well - I've only used it for the past couple chapters, so I'm unsure if it's something I'll keep.

The easiest thing I've found is to write on without going back to the beginning of each page to strike up editing, like I used to. That doubled the amount of time I spent on the first draft and that's not effective or productive. The first draft should represent the words: getting them on paper, no more, no less. I've found that the proper cadence and thematic roots and character sculpting, the things that make each book unique, come after the first draft, and really several drafts thereafter. Thus, for your first draft, I agree: just write. Don't worry about making them pretty or perfect. That'll never work. Because with each draft you learn something new, about your world, its characters. It will change, and it's going to change obsessively, but for the better. If you accept that, that can free up tension in your mind.

Every single published author I meet has said the same thing: FINISH THE DRAFT. Even if it looks terrible at first. Just sit down and write and write until you finish. It's a thousand times better to have a bad first draft that you can edit, than an unfinished work that you get stuck on trying to perfect without making any progress in the writing. Just get it done, and then go back, read, and edit as much as you need. But made sure you get to the end! And good luck!

MiniGoblin said:

I seem to have fallen into the trap of writing the first few chapters thinking I have made good progress, only to then stutter. I now find myself - over three weeks later - reading what I have over and over again. This includes changing, adding and removing content because, as a “self doubter”, I am afraid that what I have is just not good enough. I’m now lost in the fear that I cannot continue until what I have is “perfect”, if that makes sense.

After doing some research I have found that one way of supposedly getting your first draft done is to forget about the finer details and just dump literally everything into the first draft - even content that’s poorly written or added for the sake of making progress. In other words, just get it done and save the finer details for the second draft/first edit.

Would anyone here recommend this approach? It would be awesome to gain insight into everyone else’s method/approach for completing their first draft

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I agree with the approach of pouring everything into the first draft and completing it before editing. Even overwriting so there's plenty of material to trim.

I just finished my first book after being in that I infinite loop of writing the first 5 chapters over and over. Like lots of people have said: the first draft only needs to be done. That's it's only job.
Honestly, my first draft was trash. I didn't keep a single scene from it. But it was so important to get that on the page.
To keep myself from getting that editing urge, I kept a list of everything I screwed up (plot holes), or left out, or notes on what I wanted to change. An editing to-do list. It helped a lot to acknowledge that my first draft was awful... But my story wouldn't be. Eventually.
Good luck to you and anyone else fighting this battle. It's worth it.

The first thing I think about when making a first draft is that I have nothing but a blank page when I start. Potters start with clay and then they can form it into whatever they want it to be. Me, I'm a writer--I have to create my clay first. That clay is my first draft. So it's important I get my ideas onto the page in whatever order I can that allows me to keep writing.

After this, I follow the Nora Roberts' adage: I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.

MiniGoblin said:

After doing some research I have found that one way of supposedly getting your first draft done is to forget about the finer details and just dump literally everything into the first draft - even content that’s poorly written or added for the sake of making progress.

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Personally, I can't write that way. I have to feel that my existing work is clean before I can move on or I end up dwelling on the possibility of mistakes in other portions of my MS. I think it's all about what works for you as a writer.

I keep a print-out above my desk during first drafts, that says "Done is better than perfect."

Some scenes might be just placeholders, or even a summary paragraph of what needs to be in the final version (because yeah, sometimes that's easier than writing things you KNOW are rubbish, just for the sake of having done so) but without having the skeleton of a complete structure in place I have no idea whether it works as a cohesive whole. If whole sections needs shifting around, I find it much less stressful to do that when I haven't spent weeks polishing a chapter that it turns out needs to be scrapped in the end anyway.

I write the plot in a separate document, and once I have a synopsis, the plot figured out, I just sit down and start writing.

MiniGoblin said:

I seem to have fallen into the trap of writing the first few chapters thinking I have made good progress, only to then stutter. I now find myself - over three weeks later - reading what I have over and over again. This includes changing, adding and removing content because, as a “self doubter”, I am afraid that what I have is just not good enough. I’m now lost in the fear that I cannot continue until what I have is “perfect”, if that makes sense.

After doing some research I have found that one way of supposedly getting your first draft done is to forget about the finer details and just dump literally everything into the first draft - even content that’s poorly written or added for the sake of making progress. In other words, just get it done and save the finer details for the second draft/first edit.

Would anyone here recommend this approach? It would be awesome to gain insight into everyone else’s method/approach for completing their first draft

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So, here's a thing. Although writing any book/story always brings its own challenges, finishing that first one is a big[FONT=Liberation Serif, serif] [/FONT]hurdle. You learn a lot from writing and finishing the first book (or two). And some of it requires dumping everything on the page and getting rid of the chaff later. And, yes, that means that most of the first draft is going to be a hot mess, but sometimes that's what you need before you can go on. (Think of it like packing for a big trip. You need to put all the stuff you think you'll need out on the bed and then see what actually fits in the suitcase. Do you really need ten pairs of shoes? Or maybe only three? But what you think you need and what you actually need will likely change once you see the whole mess.)

As you get further along with your writing craft you will likely find that you don't have quite as much mess. And that's great, and something to strive for. But finishing your first/second/third book is going to have a steep learning curve. Part of which involves finishing the manuscript (getting to the end even if there's a big ball of undies shoved in the middle), and part of which involves taking the pile of words and trimming it down in a second/third/eighth draft.

That said, some folks work more productively by editing as they go, but - in general - I've found that most of those folks have learned how to do that through trial and error. Which means a few messy word-vomit drafts before you start to be able to revise as you go and still make progress.

I used to be a "This[FONT=Liberation Serif, serif] [/FONT]has to be perfect" type, but I rarely finished anything. Letting go of that "Every word has to be just right before I continue" urge was extremely helpful. And actually finishing a few things helped me immensely going forward. In part because my overall skills increased so I wasn't having to fix nearly as much. Obviously, your mileage may vary. And best of luck!

Aggy B. said:

/.../

That said, some folks work more productively by editing as they go, but - in general - I've found that most of those folks have learned how to do that through trial and error. Which means a few messy word-vomit drafts before you start to be able to revise as you go and still make progress.
/.../

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I very much agree. It's one thing to have reached a plateau after a number of years, where you're at ease with what you do, and have developed all sorts of individual tricks, it's quite another thing to be at the start of the journey. Indeed, my previous post, in hindsight, now that I've read your post, applies to the plateau situation, so I'll see how I edit it. Maybe it's place is not here.

I use the Hemmingway method (The first draft is shit). I like to just get the story out of my system, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Everything is roughed in at this point, even the dialogue is crappy. As I progress and get new ideas that affect previous scenes, I can go back and add or change something in those scenes (This is where Scrivener is worth its weight in gold). My goal, at this point, is to write as many words as I can on a daily basis. Everything is organized into chapters and scenes, which can later be easily rearranged (another beauty of Scrivener).

It's amazing how many ideas pop into my head as I'm hammering words into the story. I bounce back and forth from beginning to end, adding notes, dialogue, or action here and there. Once I'm finished, I can go back through, taking my time and polishing things up for the second draft. Here, I get rid of all those nasty tells and adverbs, and transform all the crap into semi-polished prose. Even while at this stage, new ideas constantly pop into my head, and the story grows before my eyes.

Pam

Come up with a story I want to tell, and then tell it.

I imagine how the story begins and how it will end. I then fill everything else in the middle until it's complete. It's like a 60,000 - 100,000+ piece jigsaw puzzle where every piece is it's own word. The boarder is the beginning, the pieces in the middle are the meat of the story, and those pieces directly in the middle close it out.

If that method doesn't work, then I just take some random event that I create in my head and expand on it while making sure there's a plot and valid story line with a meaning behind it.