Writing sometimes feels like a strange disorder you just kind of cope with by being creative. Like your brain randomly decides to dump a million-piece puzzle in front of you and says, 'Solve this or we will never think of anything else, ever.' You toil away for years and by some miracle you solve it, and it's the most fulfilling, exhilarating feeling in the world. It's perfect. You did it. And your brain is like, 'OK, here's my idea for three sequels and a spinoff.'
How many drafts should you go through before deciding your novel is ready?
There's no specific (official) number, but to create a foundation that ensures you don't burn out quickly, overwork yourself, and get tired of your work, I'll say four. It's the same number I use for my students since most of them have other engagements outside writing that take up a copious amount of their time.
1. Initial or Zero Draft:
This draft is also called the 'just write' draft. Focus on putting that idea down. As the creative juices flow, let it all out. Don't worry about perfection or coherence; the goal is to capture your raw ideas and get the story out of your head and onto the page.
2. Second Draft:
This is the plot draft. Read through what you have written to see if every detail you added was meant to be. Here, you focus on the structure of your story. Ensure that the plot makes sense, the pacing is right, and there are no major plot holes. This is where you might add, remove, or rearrange scenes to improve the overall flow of the narrative.
3. Third Draft:
Character development draft. In this stage, you look deeper into your characters. Make sure their motivations, backgrounds, and arcs are well-defined and consistent. Flesh out their personalities and relationships, ensuring they are compelling and believable. This is also a good time to refine dialogue and make sure it sounds natural and true to each character. That's for this drafting stage.
4. Fourth Draft:
Grammar and punctuation draft. This is the polishing stage. Focus on correcting grammatical errors, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. Pay attention to sentence structure, word choice, and overall readability. This draft is about making your manuscript as clean and professional as possible.
Keep in mind that the goal is to define what completion means for each draft. Once you reach the goal, take a break and return to it for the next drafting stage.
Some writers pay people to carry out some of the drafting stages for them, so if you fall into that category, you might have fewer drafting stages to handle yourself!
I frequently see a discussion online about a trope for character dialogue - called “Therapy Talk.” You probably have seen it yourself in something you’ve read, watched, ect.. There’s a general idea on what this kind of dialogue is and why it feels very weird and unnatural when it happens. Often also, unsatisfying. Like the characters snap into formation and maybe even speak in very vague, generic ways to clear up a moment of conflict. The result is often unsatisfying because of it. Character conflict is the bread and butter of drama, after all. If things are just fixed with a simple talk, sometimes in the very moment this conflict occurs - it’s a let down for the audience to feel anticipation for a divisive moment to actually occur. Then, it doesn’t - and usually there is a perfect synchronized understanding between two characters as if they have the same mind. Ah, it’s solved. Great.
I’ll be really honest, I sometimes scratch my head because.. Maybe it’s just been my experiences with therapy - but it never has felt like that either. I’ve never had an emotionally vulnerable moment where a professional has guided me to a perfect resolution where I no longer suffer from the emotional problem that was at the focus of the conversation. That kind of peace usually comes as time goes on, where you remind yourself of something you might have learned or became more aware of because of that conversation and.. Even if you do derive closure from a talk like that, it doesn’t automatically make that subject less of a tricky one to navigate.
So I think this is why the phrase bothers me so much at the core because.. Having characters exchange a moment of emotional vulnerability or having emotional awareness.. Doesn’t mean it’s inherently less interesting than a very reactive character who might be acting completely at the mercy of their own triggers. Once again, I don’t find watching/reading those kinds of scenes inherently much better. Usually, these "miscommunications" or mistakes, ect.. Can feel incredibly shallow or so childish that I get frustrated by the characters being unable to access any kind of deeper reflection. The problem of these things really does rely on the author not knowing what kind of scene would benefit more or what kind of character might act in a certain way, given the specifics of what that story is or how they’re feeling in that time of it. If I get the sense that the author isn’t aware of it, the characters themselves feel very vague and you just are left waiting to see what the hell is even going on in their heads to make choices they do.
Writing character dialogue, to me, is the hardest part of comics. Whenever I reread, that’s what stands out the most to me on what I could improve. Both from a grammar/spelling/ect standpoint or the flow of the scene/conversation/ect. I have improved though, I think. Many of my early characters and scenes were almost entirely reactive, explosive yelling, misunderstanding, ect. “Characters who just yell FUCK! SHIT!” comes to mind. Granted, the characters were usually in situations that were very dangerous/violent so that kind of simple dialogue was serviceable but.. They all felt very dumb, you know? There’s less exchanges where I felt like something was really being said.
What kind of mask do your characters wear? Who do they try to hide from in their lives - and what kind of people push them to act more reactively? How old are the characters? Are they someone who attempts to appear more mature/controlled than they actually are - or are they genuinely good at being emotionally aware? And as a writer, are you actually good at conveying what emotional maturity looks and sounds like - or are you just “deciding” that it is.
All these questions (and more!) are really subtle and take a lot of time to think about, no matter how experienced of a writer you are. There’s always going to be a new scene, with different dynamics and different goals to convey. I personally love it when characters ARE at some degree, emotionally mature or self aware, attempt to have clear communication with another one.. Only to have misunderstandings happen anyway. That to me is not only normal in life but far more compelling to see where the missteps actually happened and why different characters would have a shift in their perception of a scene like that. I like intelligent characters but they do demand more sophisticated observations to convey that kind of intelligence and.. It’s harder to do than having someone blow up, shut down or not explain something.. Maybe they don’t even know why they did it. Or they did and they can’t stop themselves anyway. A good mix of characters making mistakes, saying the wrong things - but also attempting to mend those things - is what is fun to me. When there are moments where a character can’t keep their composure, they will also come across more effectively when they have contrast to that “usual” behavior. What was the tension building to lead them to that and what pushed them over the edge? What’s going to be the fall out of their actions and how do they deal with it - do they even care or are they frustrated with themselves too? Maybe their mask slips and the wrong person saw it, or the right one?
If a character is at a point of finally letting those walls down to be emotionally vulnerable with another one, those are the types of scenes that can be very impactful for creating a tangible trust between two characters. Even if the moment itself appears on the surface, gentle and clear - there is a lot of opportunity for things to still go wrong. Maybe even worse than before. You can have a participant feel betrayed by what they shared in that moment, or embarrassed they did anyway - or the person they shared it to was not the right one after all. Or maybe they were and.. It still is awkward that they said what they did and there’s an unspoken anxiety there on what could become of that. I often feel frustrated (when reading comics anyway) when the perspective of what the character is feeling is only reserved for the “thought bubbles” that the author is only privy to.. Because usually, it also doesn’t feel accurate to what is being presented from that character. It’s just telling you that’s what they’re thinking.
“Therapy Talk” is the absence of conflict and the lack of consideration of all these questions we should try to ask ourselves when writing scenes. It really has nothing to do with therapy. Or Talking. It’s a bandaid that is used to make things in a story just work or happen, even if it doesn’t do any of those things. The result is unnatural, obvious and boring. A good character scene will make you reflect on what you knew already and what you didn't pick up on before. It gives you something to anticipate with how the story goes from that moment. It should do at least some of those things to make it feel like an active moment where the characters are present and interesting with what they say, how they phrase things and what they think about for handling certain intimate situations.
Instead, the “therapy talk” moment usually has this feeling behind it that there are 100% no problems anymore and the characters have become sort of this hivemind of acceptance and clarity. They move on from it and it never happens again. It was always the right choice and they said all the right things and no one is upset anymore.
However, what if a character is portraying themselves as being more empathetic and nurturing than they really are, to pry information from another who is in a position where they are more susceptible to sharing it. The character was taken advantage of, they could be betrayed or used.. Or maybe a character is so desperate to be helpful and oversteps, through the lack of experience they might have despite trying to do the right thing for someone they care about that is struggling. Those kinds of dynamics are fun too and should be something to take into consideration. I could list even more examples like this but.. Hopefully my point kind of stands.
There’s always room for improvement and I really never have a scene that I write without any kind of dialogue struggles. It’s pretty much the #1 thing I stress about and am frustrated with. I write too much and I don’t see that aspect ever changing but I have gotten some better restraint. One thing in the decade+ I've been making comics is that, even if I fumble with the words themselves or drag a scene out too long - I hope that I still convey these personality traits of different characters to carry the scene. That’s the part that the readers are hopefully left with even if other aspects are amateurish.
Characters should feel like they have an inner world to them and they aren’t interchangeable with their dialogue styles. Scenes should be contextually crafted with their perspectives and emotional states in mind and consequences should always occur even if things go well. Even if that consequence means an improvement. A shift should occur in some way to make that scene feel meaningful and dynamic.
That’s about all I have to say about “Therapy Talk” for today.. If you read, thanks for reading!
Putting this as its own post because it deserves to be its own post.
If you want to be good at any kind of art you have to take the part of your brain that tells you “everything must be a wholly original idea formed in a perfect clean room environment” and you have to rip that synapse out of your skull, put it through a shredder, stomp on it, light it on fire, then pour it into acid, because it’s a liar and will never ever help you.
