Inspired by this interview with Nora Roberts, wherein she talks about her writing process, I have a question for y’all: what does your first draft look like?
In the interview with Clarissa Sansone, Roberts says,
“I’ll vomit out the first draft: bare-bones, get-the-story-down. I don’t edit and fiddle as I go, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Once I get the discovery draft down, then I’ll go back to page one, chapter one, and then I start worrying about how it sounds, where I’ve made mistakes, where I’ve gone right, what else I have to add, where’s the texture, where’s the emotion. I start fixing. And then, after I’ve done that all the way through again, I’ll go back one more time, and that’s when I’m really going to worry about the language.”
I’m so curious about what that bare-bones draft looks like and how it reads.
I don’t personally examine my own writing process closely because I don’t want to scare it or make it feel shy. But usually when I have an idea for an entry or an essay or whatever it is I’m writing, I open the nearest text editor and type whatever words are bubbling up in my brain. Sometimes that email from my Blackberry, or the text editor on my computer, but generally if I’ve had an idea for something, I have to write it down or it is gone, gone, gone. And if I’m not specific enough, I leave notes for myself that are mystifying. I have one that says, “Grate sidewalk sinktrap.” I can only assume I was about to write something really squicky, since there are few things more eeeeeyew-worthy in my world than the sink trap. I get the shivers just thinking about touching it.
Sometimes an entry of a few hundred words is born out of a note that consisted of five or six. Sometimes I can find a review in a two-word note in a margin (if I can read my handwriting). Sometimes I type out something in nonsensical order and then read later and wonder what I was smoking. But because this is a blog, unpublished entries don’t get better by sitting. They get stale. So my first draft is often one of only two, maybe the only one before I try to find any typos.
I’m sure this is relentlessly boring for you, but I’m meanwhile very curious about your drafting process, what your first draft looks like. Do you start at the beginning and seat-of-your-pants to the end? Do you outline and then draft? Do you ramble on and find the one good part and use that? Does it vary every time? How does it work for you?
Lucinda, thank you so much for that! It’s very encouraging for those who write a Shitty First Draft and think it’s a lost cause.
I write completely out of order. Whatever scene I’m working out in my head is one that goes down on paper. Sometimes it spawns another and sometimes it just doesn’t fit into the final story. I do outline, but if scenes don’t start running through my head once I get beyond a certain point then I know the world or premise need some shaking up. If I’m not interested, nobody else will be.
I’m a chronic perfectionist. I have to write and rewrite every chapter. I’ve been known to rewrite a chapter 22 times. So moving from one chapter to the next is painfully dragging process for me. 😛
I can’t just “fly into the mist” by the seat of my pants. I get lost. But I can’t do a detailed outline either—and I HATE writing multiple drafts—though I do, sort of, since I’m one of those weird throwbacks who writes first drafts in longhand. (Need to type in a synopsis right now) That typing in is my 2nd draft. At that point, it’s usually pretty clean, but WAY too long, (since I don’t really know how long it Really is, since it’s on looseleaf notebook paper rather than the computer), so my next pass—which really isn’t a draft—is cutting the thing down to size and making sure the pieces that are left still flow together. And that’s it, unless the editor asks for revisions. I want to get all the pieces in there the first time through.
I think about a story a while before I start writing, and take notes. Mostly about the characters and the universe they live in, since I write fantasy. I have to figure out how the magic system works. And how the magic itself works. Then I figure out some plot points—nothing in too much detail, just the main turning points for the plot at least to the halfway point, and get started.
Usually, I don’t write the synopsis till I hit that third chapter. By then, I have a better idea of what those main points will be, and I need to figure out an ending so I can send a proposal in. I know, sort of, how it will end. (It’s fantasy. There’s going to be a big battle of some kind against the bad guys, and the hero and heroine will declare their love, because it’s romantic fantasy.) But I need to know in a tad more detail how it will end for the proposal. I need a rough, sketchy frame to hang my story on, and that 6-10 page proposal synopsis works pretty well for that.
I start at the beginning and write straight through to the end. If there’s a major adjustment I need to make in the plot/motivation, I’ll stop and go back and fix it right then, but lesser fixes and things I need to look up get noted on a separate sheet of paper and fixed/looked up when it’s typed in. Some things get written into the margins (mostly where I think the story’s supposed to go the next day). Most stuff gets written on those separate pages.
I’m a hybrid plotter-pantser (I’ve heard it called a linear writer) who doesn’t like too much detail, but needs a little organization to stay on track. The main thing for me is that I write in order, from beginning to end. And in longhand. With my plot points figured out early on, but not much more than that.
I have a technical question…all the responses were great until I got to the monkey joke (ha ha ha)
but then I “lost” the blue background. The background where the names are is red, as are the names, so I can’t see who is posting. The messages have a tan background with black font, so I can read those. This is new. This happening to anyone else?
Never mind. It seems to have mysteriously fixed itself.
Sigh. I hate computers sometimes!
LOL. I refuse to read my doctoral dissertation that I published in 2001. I KNOW I’ll find something in it that needs to be fixed.
Unfortunately, us “pantsers” are at a distinct disadvantage when we’re in our “sophomore” stage. You have to finish the first book before you can start looking for agents and pitching to editors, so it really doesn’t matter what your process is/was, but after that you’re selling on proposal, and proposal = being a plotter. Eventually you may get back to a point where you can sell without a proposal (if you’re damn lucky), but that usually takes years and years and books and books.
Everyone says: Embrace your process. It’s your process. You write the way you write. There’s nothing you can do about it, it’s just the way your brain works.
I’m sorry, but this is Bullshit. And IMO it’s bad advice.
Embrace away if your process happens to be that of a plotter. But if you’re a pantser . . . learn to plot now. The sooner you figure out how to do this without strangling the inspiration muse in the process, the less traumatic it will be (trust me, taking this on “under the gun†as I’m doing sucks the white wonder out loud, as my mother would say).
[verification word: hell89]
That. Was. Me.
Five years ago, the first time I decided to get off my ass and do this thing. Got absolutely wrapped up in writing and re-writing the first few chapters.
This time, I wrote the entire thing long hand, in notebooks, for fear of getting way too intimate with the delete key. But I finished this time. Working on first edits now, so I’ll let y’all know how many sets I go through later.
Must. Outline.
Without the outline, I would be in a world of shit. That isn’t to say I don’t make alterations as I go. Sometimes a plot or character element in theory doesn’t work as well in practice, so it gets changed. But if I didn’t know exactly what happened when, things would get ugly, very ugly. Or very, very boring.
Once the outline is done and I’ve finished my research (always research), I start writing pages. I give my husband three-chapter blocks for his notes (he’s also a writer), get his notes, revise the chapters, then plow ahead until I’m at the end of the book. Then he reads the whole thing all over again (I’m a lucky, lucky woman) and I revise once more.
I don’t think anyone believes there is a single process that works for all writers. That’s why we’re batshit crazy.
My first draft is also a “just get the words on paper” draft. I love Nanowrimo for this: there’s something about all that energy and the deadline, even if it is a personal one, that sets fire to my writing that I just can’t access the rest of the year. (Though I’ve found having a contract for a story, and thus a deadline, works in much the same way. Thank God for deadlines or I’d never get anything done!)
The most common words I read or hear about writing are: “It’s different for every author.”
I saw a panel with 3 mystery writers last spring. Two of them outlined first, but both said they don’t adhere to the outline. The third said he wrote organically and enjoyed painting himself into a corner.
I hate feeling cornered, so I tend to outline, but have a hybrid method: write-outline-write—change outline—write some more—make a new outline—vow to finish first draft come hell or high water.
I majored in creative writing and journalism and my senior advisor asked me to turn in 25 pages of a new novel; I turned in 100. She was so fascinated with my creative process that she asked me to write my senior thesis on that instead.
I go back and look at what I wrote in that thesis, and while most of the elements are the same, I’ve started asking myself the “why” questions faster and more often.
I have a four-pronged method:
1. Scenes come to me like in a movie. I write them down. They’re out of order. They may or may not make the final cut, but I use them as mile markers for the story to get from point A to point Z.
2. I write a first draft that is about half the length of the novel and is nothing but telling. I tell everything, backstory, the rules of the world I’m building, everything.
3. I flesh out the telling into actual scenes, change the inconsistencies, correlate everything, incorporate the scenes from #1.
4. All the while through this, I’m writing extraneous scenes that explain things TO ME. I know these scenes will never go in the book, but they give me a texture to the tapestry I’m weaving so I get a sense of the depth of the story.
Then I revise, cut, edit, proofread like normal.
That is so true. Balancing creativity with productivity is killer. If writing is your job, you have to be able to fulfill your obligations whether your muse is cooperating or not, so you lose the luxury of exploring your world at your own pace that you had when writing was a hobby. (keeping in mind that it’s still my hobby…)
Whether you like her books and opinions or not (I’d guess mostly not, from my meandering through the archives here), I have to say that Holly Lisle has some pretty good, well-organized advice about how to handle the merging of creativity with organization and production.
She has a swack of free how-to articles on her website, and has also self-published a swack of really useful how-to books for sale (create a plot, get to know your characters, create a language). I actually like her nonfiction better than her fiction.
My husband is really, really going to hate this, but I’m on my way to Office Depot, RIGHT NOW!!!
I forgot to mention that I print out the previous day’s work and edit by hand. I absolutely cannot edit on the computer. I do a lot of writing in longhand. I probably wouldn’t do that if I had a laptop. I like to sit in the den with my husband while he’s watching tv. Sometimes it helps to talk to him when I’m trying to work things out. Interestingly enough, I’m a very fast and accurate typist, but I still have to grind it out in longhand. It just feels better. I hope to get a laptop soon. It’ll be interesting to see if this is still true.
Lori, thanks.
I do have an outline. I don’t stick to it. After I got the first story on the screen, I realized that writing a synopsis after the fact proved difficult. So, the next story, I wrote the synopsis first. If the story changes after editing, it should be a simple process to edit the synopsis. Well, I hope. As it stands, I have one complete manuscript, one WIP in ugly, no one can look at it first draft, and two stories in synopsis complete with back story so I know exactly who my characters are.
Roslyn, I do a lot of writing by hand, too. It helps me sift things out, forces me to go slower and detail things.
I tried this. It drove me bonkers. I figured, with 3 (at the time) books published, I should learn to write like the big girls.
It didn’t work for me. For 2+ years the Muse sulked in her corner & refused to come out & play. Then I said to myself, “Self—this is rubbish. Write your book, your way—barf it it you must, but for chocolate’s sake, WRITE SOMETHING!”
The need to write like a big girl? I let it go and am writing once more, happily not plotting except in my brain, certainly not outlining.
If something works for you, do it on purpose (thanks, Dolly Parton).
I usually start writing, stop about 1/3 through and outline the rest, then keep going. But this current WIP tossed all that out the window; I realized 30,000 words in that I’d made the protagonist too reactive instead of active, and too damn fearful of everything remotely nasty for me to really care about her. So…big-time rewrite. (This took me 6 weeks to figure out, by the way: I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell what.)
But now it’s all sorts of dark. And I’m not sure where it’s going. But I’m going to trust my Muse and keep on truckin’.
I’m more of a pantser but I edit as I go. I would love to be like Nora and not worry about making the first draft “perfect,” because I do end up changing stuff, throwing out scenes and paragraphs and lines I needlessly agonized over.
Man. I wish I could power out an awesome first draft without going back to reread, rethink, reorganize.
I also write myself notes I don’t understand later. “Sex window burglar.” What?! Obviously, my mind is not a steel trap.
Wow… my process is similar to Nora Roberts’s, though I’m an outliner. My first drafts are horrible. I know all the major turning points of my story before I start writing, but I don’t know exactly how to get from point A to point B to point C and so on. The first draft is where I figure all that out. I never edit or fiddle with the first draft, because often by the time I’ve finished the first draft, I’ve discovered that I need to rewrite the beginning or large swaths of the middle from scratch. Therefore, early editing is a waste of time.
Once I have my story figured out, I write a second draft, and that one is not allowed to suck. The second draft goes to critique partners. After feedback, I write a third draft and that goes to a separate set of critique partners. After I get their feedback, I do a final round of polish and I’m done.
The first draft takes me 3 months to write.
The second draft takes 9 months.
The third and fourth drafts take about 3 months total.
The most drastic changes are between the first and second drafts.
So how do you pitch a book you want to sell? Do you write the whole thing and cross your fingers that you’ll be able to sell it when you’re done? I just don’t see any way around forcing my muse to become a plot goddess (and she’s sooo not happy with the change in her job description!).
Oh dear god, yes! Yes!! It seems like I do all my good writing in my head while I’m in the shower, and then it all disappears as soon as I step out and face the “real” day. My only problem is that I’m 5’ so I’m invisioning having a stool in there too to reach the dry erase board. We’ll see how that pans out. I’ve frequently wondered, though, if there were such a thing as a water-proof dictaphone or somesuch.
I’ve got two novels in the works now, one in editing and one in progress. The completed novel I just sat down and wrote straight through until I was done, resulting in a 680+ page book that my editor immediately asked me to cut to size. Little did I know. But I can be long winded and wasn’t too surprised. I hadn’t planned it out at all, I wasn’t even sure how it would end until about twenty pages before the ending.
The WIP I actually took the time to write out a little 17 page synopsis before I started, learning from my 680+ page folly – I decided I needed something to keep me on track. Plus I know how the WIP will go and end, something I didn’t know about the first novel when I started it. I haven’t yet decided which way I like better. Having my own personal synopsis for my WIP is nice and it certainly helps me stay focused, though it doesn’t seem as fun as getting it all out there first. We’ll see.
One thing I know, regardless, is that my beginning will be reworked. Period. By the time I’m done with something, I always feel like I have to go back and make the beginning fit with the end. But I don’t often rework the beginning until I’m finished with the whole.
It’s been I while since I’ve posted but I had to jump in.
I was a pantser until I realized nothing ever got finished because I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel so every MS seemed like a never ending overwhelming project. Once I gave myself permission to outline, and then verve off of it if need be, I started to finish things.
Also a synopsis, I’ve found, is much easier to write before than after even if you have to edit it to match the changes in the story.
Each chapter gets edited about 4 times before it’s put away and then the whole thing gets one more work through all together.
Once I learned to high-level outline into a 3-5 page synopsis, the writing life did get much easier for me. I’ve had dozens of bright ideas that sounded good at the time, but once forced to really think them through from beginning, middle to end, they fall apart. I’d rather find that out in the synopsis stage than half way through the book. Granted, I might not be as good at identifying bright ideas vs crap ideas at the onset as other writers. So for me, that synopsis ends up saving me a lot of heartache.
I have had to revise them, but usually, it’s the other way around: I get to the middle of my book, get stuck, go back and read the synopsis to remind myself where I was supposed to be going with the thing.
And I, too, am curious to know how a published author gets to sell without at least a synopsis. I’ve gotten “blind” contracts before, but a bulk of my advance is contingent on a partial.
Stick it up right outside the shower, or on the back wall opposite the showerhead (or put it right under the shower head where you normally hang the rack for holding shampoo). It’s all about finding a dry and accessible place in your shower (just where that spot is varies widely).
Whee! Ain’t it great when you find out your not the only one?
Until today I never heard another writer say they write as I do: All over the place. If I had to write a story from beginning to end I would seize up like gears in a sandstorm.
For me I’ll often begin with chapter 5 perhaps, then move on to maybe chapter 8. Perhaps the ending pops into my head and I write that. That inspires me and I figure out what needs to be in chapters 1 and 2. Those later turn into chapter 6 and so on until the book is done. Generally I have no idea where the ride is going while I’m on it and that is completely exhilarating.
I Googled and the answer is yes, you can buy both waterproof cases for small voice recorders or actual waterproof recorders. The cases at least aren’t that expensive so for someone who gets her best ideas in the shower it’s probably worth it.
I’m shocked to find Nora’s process is the same as mine. I know so many authors (admittedly, very few of them writing anything other than fanfiction at the moment) who work chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, polishing each, and then never going back over that because they consider that finished. I need to know how the story ends before I can polish to that extent. The thing I’m working on at the moment is like holding a handful of spaghetti, and the only way I can force the characters into line is to focus on the plot. It’s not always like that, but it’s almost like I’m bargaining with them – hey, just let me know your story and then we can go back and work on your big set piece scenes.
I use highlight and font colouring to mark out problem areas, the text is full of notes like [STRAW THINGIE] because I don’t want to stop and find out what the hoojit is that horses eat hay out of, and [MORE] when I run out of motivation to write description, sex or action in a scene. This is something I’m always advising my husband to do with his scientific manuscripts because he becomes paralysed by not knowing the mot juste and will dither for hours over that instead of flogging down text. He never listens but….
Brilliant text which doesn’t belong in the story gets chucked into a ‘spare’ file (and never revisited because the text is never as brilliant as I thought it was) but that way I don’t feel like I’m murdering my darlings so much.
I go over and over until I think it’s smooth and then it goes out to a series of friends to read and comment on and edit, and will go out at least once more before it’s submitted. Then I have a nervous breakdown 🙂
Kalen, Lori, you are goddesses. I’m already imagining the difference in my life when I’ll be able to write in the shower. Oh, the world will change.
I just realized this had the inclusion of ‘white board’. I jot directly on my shower walls. It wipes right off same as a board, though I suggest you testing a small spot before really getting after those notes!
I’m 5’3 at the most, so my shower head angles nearly straight down or it hits me in the face. Thus the entire upper back half of the shower remains dry. I’ve only scribbled a line or two, I don’t how the steam would cause it to run if I had a couple paragraphs worth. As for the hubby, well, I just tell him one day I’ll sell and I’ll buy you something and he’s pretty cool with whatever I do when it’s writing related.
Elyssa, I’m with you!
As for my style, I have the main characters and their looks and basic personalities set and some idea of how I’m going to get them from Point A to Point B. What happens in between is a mystery that gets answered as I write. I’ve had secondary characters completely hijack a story causing me to throw away the original concept and go with the flow. At the same time I was writing most bare bones, I also had a tendency to go back and edit as I reread previous chapters until I realized that I was getting wrapped around the axle doing so. (Why yes, I am anal, why do you ask?) Participating in National Novel Writing Month ( http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ) has gotten me over that so my first draft is much more like LaNora’s. The second and subsequent drafts are for mechanics and adding/deleting/fixing scenes, plot points, and continuity.
I tend to get brilliant ideas while I’m driving or a future plot point will occur to me while I’m hip dip in the current chapter. I have a wipe off/bulletin board hanging above my computer. I can sticky note or write notes to myself. In the car, I just keep talking to myself (much to the “amusement” of other drivers) until I can pull over and write myself a note. I keep a small spiral notebook in my shoulder bag for that very situation.
As for the shower…the shower is for plotting the sex scenes and if I can’t remember them long enough to get dried off and back to the computer, they aren’t steamy enough to keep.
I write like I plan a road trip.
I have my basic trip planned—how we start, some of our major stops, how we get home. But like a good trip, you take side roads, you meet interesting people, you buy trinkets—and many of my details come into play as I write from point A to point B. But not all of them.
I don’t write notes to myself, but I do obsess over things. I write in the shower too (although sometimes I find myself writing an interview between myself and John Stewart wherein I am fucking brilliant) and I write when I commute and when I’m walking or swimming and when I’m gazing sightlessly at the television, knitting, or…you know, whenever there’s a quiet space in my head. I do this partly so that when I sit down to the keyboard, I can make my time count, but I also do it because I tend to hash over scenes that I’ve written or ones that I’m going to write—description, did I describe what she was wearing? What does that room look like? Did I describe that room? Did I mention the part where he says this? Did I tie in that one part? Can I change that description so it’s symbolic? And then, when I’m going back over a scene, or starting from page one to ‘fill in’ some of the bare patches of my work, these ideas tend to filter back into the writing. What really surprises me is how often my final destination—the one that was plotted all along—tends to show up in the beginning, when I hadn’t remembered putting it there.
When I find places like that—where it seems like something took over my body and put in a symbolic description or a piece of writing I hadn’t planned and that I don’t feel smart enough to have come up with on my own but that resonates so strongly of that final destination, that’s when the writing process feels really spooky and almost divine.
I’m rambling here—that’s the one thing I look out for in my final drafts, too. When I find that I’ve had to cut something, I feel a true sense of satisfaction—that’s when my editing skills feel the strongest—because it seems like I’m eternally adding things, and I always wonder if I’m really that interesting. (Probably not—I am, after all, an indie.)
I tend to plan things out in my head, like a road trip. I know I’m going to stop here and here and here, but when all is said and done I MUST get from point A to point Z, and all stops in between have to mean something.
But all those stops—I linger at those—I describe, I play, I discover new characters, new places, new ideas. One of the scary things about these side trips, though, is how often they really are important stops to my final destination—I have no idea how this happens, but its usually a little spooky. Almost proof to me that creating is a link to the divine.
I obsess over what I’m writing—I write in the shower, on my commute, when I’m exercising, when I’m knitting—whenever I have quiet space in my head. Part of this is so when I sit down and write, I make my time count, and part of it tends to make sure that everything going down on the page is going to be part of one big, cohesive whole. (Sometimes, I write myself an interview with John Stewart in which I’m fucking brilliant, but, alas, no one has called to take me up on that…)
And other than that, I sit down, and write from A to Z without stopping. Then I go back and backfill and look for places when I was just bugfuckingnuts bonkers and cut out unnecessary words and add details that make things prettier and generally…comb through the snarls of the big drag queen wig that is my first draft.
When everything has the basic shape of what I want, I send it to a reader, who will help me catch the nits that first comb through missed.
And then I send the next version to another reader.
And then I edit and send it to another reader.
And then I hates it because I’ve read it six to ten times.
And THAT’S when I send it to the indifferent publishing company, before I hates it so much it will never see daylight.
I just remembered something else for shower thinkers——Crayola makes markers specifically for drawing in the bathtub. They wash right off the walls, but if you use them on a dry spot you could keep your notes long enough to transfer the thought to paper or computer.
My drafting is a work in progress.
I’ve discovered I need to outline novels, at least to the extent of figuring out roughly what happens in each chapter. And I need to rigidly limit sex scenes or the story dissolves about 2/3s of the way through into an orgy.
We work out the basic stuff through role-playing in chat. Sometimes, it’s all chat. Sometimes, I’m writing prose, and Naomi is filling in her characters’ dialogue.
A sample from last night
Naomi (as Little John): About to ruin my night, aint she?
Angel: yep
N: *grumps*
A:say something
N: *takes a big gulp of beer* Haven’t seen you in a while. Finally get to sneak out of Nottingham prison?
A: “Haven’t seen you in a while,†Little John said after another drink of beer “Finally get to sneak out of Nottingham prison?â€
“Aye, but I fear neither my lady nor your sweet minstrel is so fortunate.â€
N:*sets his beer down* Will?
A: Little John set the empty pitcher down. “Will?â€
David nodded. “He was caught delivering your master’s message to my lady. I do not doubt Nottingham will use him as bait.â€
That’s the half-writing/half playing. We have the all playing, which develops the raw draft. And there are all-writing sessions as well. Tonight may be one.
For the most part, the book is where I want it to be when I write the last scene. We’ve worked all the bugs out in raw chat. Afterward, it’s a matter of going back, being ruthless with the sex scenes (I swear they multiply) and adding more plot-points where needed. Then it’s off to our editor, where we get a half-dozen revision trips through it, but the story is basically the same.
Since I haven’t yet completed a novel (*shame*), I can’t say what works, but this is what’s working for me right now:
I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo. Got my 50k words but didn’t actually finish the story. Put it away for far longer than I’m willing to admit.
When I came back to it, I took the draft I had, divided it roughly into chapters, made some fairly detailed notes about what to do in all the missing scenes. Then I started to write the second draft.
That draft got really bogged down when I realized my calendar was all wonky and I couldn’t remember when everything was happening in relation to everything else. Also, the cut-and-paste monster had resulted in things like my hero drinking at a bar at 10:00 a.m. (not a stellar quality for a love interest).
So I went out and got a great big piece of posterboard and a pad of different colored Post-its. I drew a giant calendar on the posterboard (my story takes place over 5 weeks, so it all fit), and wrote out stickies and put them in the appropriate calendar spots. One color for the romance storyline, a second color for a secondary storyline about work, and a third color for another secondary storyline about the heroine and her best friend.
As soon as I did that, everything took off. I just move the stickies around if I want to change my timeline; i.e. have a work-related incident come before a friend-related incident, or swap a couple of arguments around or whatever.
75k and counting. It might not get me through to the end but I’m confident that if it stops working I can find something else that will get me going.
Like a lot of you, I write drafts like Nora, although I don’t have quite the same outcome as she does. But I’m working on it. This summer, in between kids’ swim lessons, vet visits, and house renovations, I’m trying to crank out pages of the SFD for my newest work. I know where I need to go next with the thing and have some cool ideas on how it will end, but there’s no outline outside my brain. I figure it out as I go. The challenge with this is that, with the kids interrupting every ten minutes, I don’t write in large chunks of time, so I end up repeating myself a lot. But I refuse to go back and edit, although I will go back to add scenes if I think something’s missing. I’m going to soldier through till the end before I revise.
I’m amazed at all the different processes and in awe that some people’s first draft is close to their final. My mind just doesn’t work that way right now.
spam blocker: made29 – I made 29 drafts before I got to the final one.
Wow, that whiteboard-in-the-shower thing is a seriously cool idea! I’m not sure if my husband would love it or hate it. We’re both geeks, though, so I’m guessing he’d think it was kinda neat.
I’m more of a hybrid plotter-pantser. I’ve gotta know where I’m going and how I’m getting there, or I totally freeze. I write character overviews and a rough synopsis first, and if it’s SF&F;, I also do encyclopedia-style entries on the world and the technology and/or magic system. Then I storyboard my scenes. Once all of this is in place, I can kinda let go and pants around a bit. Sometimes I’ll discover that things aren’t going in the direction I initially envisioned, so I’ll tinker with the synopsis and the scene cards to bring them up to date.
You’d think a computer nerd like me would do EVERYTHING on the computer, but when I’m writing draft for the first time, I almost always do it longhand. I’m bad about misplacing my notebooks, though, so I finally bought a tablet PC to keep all my handwritten pages in the same place. I *love* my tablet!
My first typed drafts are pretty clean because I edit the pages as I type them. I don’t use the handwriting recognition functionality of the tablet very much because the process of typing in the handwritten draft is a critical step in my editing process.
But even after all that’s done, there’s still plenty of clean-up to do. Pet phrases and echoes are a particular plague of mine. ClichéCleaner helps with some of that, and for the rest, I just have my meanie-editor husband take a red pen to the manuscript. 🙂
I’m a pantser. The only book I took time to like, carefully outline and craft out like how all the writing books tell you to, I got tons of reviews saying stuff to the effect of, “This book sucks and needed an outline.” So, I threw out the outlines, and things have perked up.
Basically, I do the rough draft, and let me editor tell me what could be better, because otherwise, I could edit the same book over and over for DECADES.
There are also waterproof boards made for divers: something like the “Innovative Jumbo Instructor/Divemaster Slate” you can find at http://www.scuba.com/scuba-gear-249/Miscellaneous-Slates.html