#first-draft

[writingcooperative]

What I learned about editing my first draft into a compelling story. Continue reading on The Writing Cooperative »

Written by Christopher Madsen

[mindbat]

Keeping Score: 2 September 2022

Keeping Score: 2 September 2022

Draft is done! Long live the draft! Finished the first, very messy, draft of the new short story this week. I already kind of hate it, even after writing the last scene like the previous one didn’t happen. Both those scenes, I think, are going to see heavy edits in the next draft. For now, though, I’m simply typing it up. Yes, typing: I wrote the first draft longhand, in a little notebook,…

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[mindbat]

Keeping Score: May 14, 2021

Keeping Score: May 14, 2021

I finished the rough draft of the short story! It topped out at 5,157 words, which is a little longer than I’d like. Most of the markets I want to try to sell into have a cap of around 5k. But I should be able to trim it down enough during editing that it’ll squeeze under the limit. So I’m setting that aside for a couple of weeks, to get some distance on the story before I try to revise it. I’m…

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[jenna-hunt]

Vortex - The Infinite (on Wattpad) https://my.w.tt/zdo9lHctwW A vortex has opened up in the centre of Marin's home, and strange occurrences are coming from it. A creature formed of stars roams the halls. The trees are moving. And Marin's family doesn't want to leave.

[tapwrites]

First-Draft-itis

“First drafts are allowed to be bad.” This saying is a great mindset to be in when starting a new story. It gives you permission to not worry about editing, or if it’s well-written. In a first draft, your job is to get words down, nothing more, nothing less.

This is the way it has to be, to get anything written in the first place! But this could lead to problems later down the line.

The reason you can do things this way is what comes next: revision. This is where you tighten up the prose, maybe get a little alpha reader feedback, figure out what larger changes will have to be affected throughout the story and start working on the big stuff.

It’s best to do the big stuff first--what’s the point in fixing prose you cut out completely later on? But tightening the prose so that it’s actually legible can kind of be done as you read it through for the first time. And I basically can’t read anyone’s prose nowadays without marking it up with changes and notes. So personally, I’m okay with that.

You repeat the process a couple of times, and you’ve got a pretty decent story. The characters are well-drawn, the world is hinted at in the background without long paragraphs of exposition, so you start sending it to beta readers.

This is where things get tricky. Beta readers tend to be writers themselves, or people in the business at least. They are more critical, with eyes like hawks and an understanding of good story structure.

And while the Alphas tended to enjoy the story thoroughly, the Betas have found glaring, overwhelming, story-crippling problems. Things you’d never even considered. Things now so obvious, you wonder how you or no one else even saw it before.

Not 100% sure I got Betas and Alphas round the right way, but you get the idea.

Welcome to First-Draft-itis

What I’ve found in reading countless stories of my fellow writers is that there is a pattern to these kinds of issues. They all tend to be logical fallacies--aspects of the plot or the world or even the characters that, on further inspection, don’t make all that much sense.

A first draft is often written based on the seed of a story, a premise, a concept, a character sketch you want to build a story around... Some of it comes from what they’ve already thought about ahead of time, but for most writers a lot of it is conceived as they write. And this is where the problem starts.

In that first draft, you’re not worrying about the implications of giant rabbits able to turn rust into gold. You don’t need to think about where they’ll get giant salads from, or how the gold-based medieval economy would collapse under the weight of rust-based exchange. It sounds cool, so you write it.

This is the right way to write a story. If you enjoy writing it, chances are it has that je ne sais quoi that will capture the reader’s attention as well, and keep them engaged.

But this style of writing leaves you vulnerable to not necessarily making sense. You’ve read the story a dozen times, revised a little each reading, taken countless notes from readers of all kinds. So how have you never noticed these glaring mistakes that underpin the whole thing?

Too Close to the Trees

The reason, of course, is that you’re in too deep. You’re not worried about the logic of it all, you’re writing a story. You’re writing a piece that imparts an emotional journey to the reader, not a historical text.

So when the Beta readers--or anyone that picks up on these kinds of things--point these things out, you may be inclined to get defensive. “That’s not what my story’s about,” or “suspension of disbelief,” or “that’s just how it is.”

It’s your right to ignore a particular note. In some cases it really isn’t an issue. Maybe you’re not writing hard-SF, but more of a campy Space Opera. “This is a surrealist comedic piece about myxomatosis, not a deconstruction of the Wall Street Crash.”

The thing is, if the basics don’t make sense with a little scrutiny, there will be plenty of people so distracted by your neglect of realism that they’ll not even see any of your carefully crafted emotion-inducing story elements.

So these harder-to-swallow comments should at least be considered. And if you decide that for the story you’re trying to tell it’s not a big enough problem to invest some time in, that’s your prerogative. You just need to spend a moment to step outside the forest to get a better view of the situation. Just make sure you’re not dismissing them out of hand just because you’ve put so much time into polishing it as it is.

Second Draft

If worse comes to worst, you may need to man up (or woman up) and write a fresh draft of the thing. This has two benefits:

For larger problems, it’s much easier to fix from scratch, from the ground up, than it is to tweak words until they make sense.

And while it sucks to have to write a whole “new” story, it can be much less daunting to rewrite something you’ve already spent time on than something completely fresh.

Just think of your first draft as further research and development!

And please, don’t forget to thank your Alpha and Beta readers, no matter how much work they made for you. They’re an important part of the writing process, and help you grow as a writer. And at times, they can spend a long amount of time figuring out the little bugs (and big gaping holes) so that you don’t have to!

[daily-dragon]

Starting a short story

I've been challenged to write a story based in ordinary modern times. But I have been allowed to have a dragon in it :P

Anyways, here is the opening shit I scribbled down today. I need to work out where this is going...

Jona looked down at her watch and sighed. The bus was late again. Everyone in line shuffled their feet or rubbed their arms in a  futile attempt to keep some kind of heat in. It was luck that it had been late for the two new comers who joined the back of the queue. The bus eventually turned the corner and lurched to a halt, scrunching grey snow under its heavy tires. One by one each commuter boarded the bus, scanning their passes or buying tickets as necessary. Jona squeezed her way to the back of the bus and slumped down onto the back row, brushing aside a crisp packet. A baby began to whale, she rolled her eyes and put her earphones on to drown out the world around her with the joyful tunes of Marilyn Manson. Jona reached for the bell but it chimed just before she pressed the button. Handy. She weaved and apologised herself through the aisle and stepped out onto a cold, grey pavement leading up to a cold, grey building on yet another cold, grey day. She greeted Cathy at reception, rode the lift up to the 6th foor and walked the mile or so of sage green carpeted corridor to her department. She closed the door behind her, hung up her scarf on the hat stand and wandered quietly to her desk, feeling the silent stares of all those around the office. "Ms. Baxter, you are late again." boomed the voice from the front of the room. "Yes sir, sorry but the bus was late again." "Well its clear the weather has been causing problems so you should catch an earlier one." "Yes sir, sorry sir." Jona said apathetically. She wasn't going to try and explain that the earlier bus was had been cancelled. She pushed the power button on her computer and took a moment to stretch her wings out before heading to the coffee machine. They always felt cooped up after riding the bus. She wasn't allowed to fly within parts of the city centre due to helicopter traffic. The Birmingham City counsel offices were included in the no-fly zone. Dragons can't fly because people with artificial wings want to fly. The irony of it wasn't lost on her though. Jona felt trapped. Three years of studying geology at Aberdeen University, 1st class honours degree and all she could land was this administration job at Birmingham's town planning department. Still, at least she had a job, many of her friends were still unhappily on job seekers. "Hey, did you get the memo?" asked a nasal voice Jona looked down at the squashed tennis ball face of a goblin in sharp business attire. "No I haven’t Dennis, I've only just got in." "It looks like the department are making some more budget cuts. They need to lose another fifty staff" he carried on regardless. "Fifty? At this rate all we'll have left is senior management and cleaners. I assume management arn't having to cut staff too." "They’ve all agreed to take a 5% pay cut to 'show solidarity'" he said, pulling out his phone and beginning to tap out an answer to a message. "Well that's reassuring" Jona said as she headed back to her desk, hot coffee in hand.

[mikeambs]

posted by Jude on First-Draft

So it's Memorial Day, which means that the US is awash with mostly obligatory tributes to military personnel. 

I hate this shit.

I didn't fight for your freedoms.  In the six years I was in, I never once defended your right to vote, or to carry a gun, or to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure (that one doesn't really apply anymore, anyway), or any of the other things you enjoy as a citizen of this country.  I just didn't.  Neither did anyone who went to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam.  It's all bullshit.  It's a fucking lie that we tell ourselves and each other so that we don't have to think about why we send young men and women to serve, suffer, and die for old men's vainglorious ideas and profit margins.

[...]

We don't do anything for anyone's freedom.  The military hasn't actually deployed en masse to defend your freedom in a long, long time.  Unless you call rich people fucking over the world's poor and powerless a form of freedom.  As you may have guessed, I don't.  It's bullshit.  And it needs to stop. 

I don't mind honoring sacrifice, but the military doesn't have a monopoly on that, now does it?  I also don't mind remembering military dead and wounded.  But we do it all wrong.  We just fetishize the suffering (like good Catholics, no?) without wondering why it ever happened in the first place.  Remembrance and memorial, it would seem, also involve reflection and assessment.  Just because someone died or was wounded doesn't automatically validate how he or she came to be in that state.  We send our young people overseas to be bored, pull duty, sometimes get shot at, and occasionally get hit.  Then we never ask why they're over there in the first fucking place, because doing so, apparently, does them a disservice.  What kind of jack shit is that? 

A real Memorial Day would involve commitments to cease sacrifices that don't actually, you know, do anything in the name of freedom.  Losing your legs so that Chevron can see higher profit margins is not noble.  It's a god damned shame.  Dying in the service of defense contractors doesn't bestow sainthood on the deceased.  It just means that a life got snuffed out for no good reason.  Reflexive military worship is a cancer on society.  Unscrupulous people use it to justify their actions and avoid any criticism.  That shit makes the act of asking why we should send young people to absorb bullets and get blown to pieces into some kind of subversion and/or sedition.  How fucking ridiculous is that?  Wondering if someone's death was worth the cost doesn't dishonor the person.  I don't know how we've confused evaluating the motives and actions of leaders with spitting on corpses, but we have.  And until we can untangle those things, we're just well and truly fucked when it comes to international affairs.

So this Memorial Day, take a minute to actually reflect on the acts and deeds of people in uniform.  But that involves critical thought instead of blind acceptance of the rightness of our leaders' actions.  Honor the dead and care for the living, but don't think that people in uniform today are actually standing between you and tyranny. 

Remember that.