I like my first drafts rough, exquisitely rough. Brillo pad. Chin of Chuck Norris. First season of Stargate SG-1.
I know most writers have to get things written up mostly right before they can move on. I get that. I wish I could do the same, but that’s not how I work best.
Too often I try to be like most writers and I just end up editing and revising as I go. Now, that can be a problem for anyone if overdone. But it’s a huge problem for me.
I have to keep my momentum and enthusiasm. Especially since I really like revising and editing and can spend a long time doing it. If my enthusiasm diminishes too much, I’m going to lose weeks of work to Dofus or Ancient Empires Lux or Madden or ennui. Self-doubt will kick in. I will start wondering if there’s a better way to handle a character, background details, plot points, and so forth.
The story bogs down, the pacing slows because my writing slows. All my energy is lost.
This I do not like.
So maybe you’re wondering how rough, because maybe you write a rough draft like everyone else and you think I’m a little crazy. I’m not kidding about the chin of Chuck Norris.
Once I start rolling, I try to type as fast as the story comes into my head. I don’t worry about using the best words, proper grammar, cliches, appropriate dialogue. Sometimes I don’t make full sentences, and I’m not talking intentional fragments. I just slop down whatever so I can keep moving with the story playing in my head.
For me, a rough draft is like trying to transcribe a movie as it plays.
Sure, I slow down at times and have to think through a scene. I may need to reflect on a character’s choices or what have you. But I find I do that a lot less when I’m rolling on the fast draft. (I do most of my story pondering while lying in bed falling asleep or avoiding getting up. Though I have been known to spend 15 minutes washing my hands a few times a month without any sense of the passage of time.)
My normal procedure for a novel: Write first two chapters and a one page gist/synopsis of some sort. Then write out a plot, the sort you might put on note cards (as I do virtually). No way I’m flying blind. I’ve tried that. Doesn’t work for me. I run into problems about 10,000 words in. Happened to me all the time before I plotted and subsequently completed my first complete novel. Happened to me this year as well when I tried to discovery write again. Same ceiling, ten years later.
So, first I must set my basic framework. (I don’t plot with any detail.) Then I massively diverge from said plot as I go. Sometimes enough for me to have to go and alter the plot, but usually I just leave it sitting there in case I need it. I think the way it really works is that my gist/synopsis, however long it might be, is the first telling of the story. The plot is the second telling. The rough draft is the final telling, which must be cleaned up, of course.
As I go, I concentrate on writing out all dialogue and basic actions. (Oh, the dialogue is awful!) I will describe scenery and set the atmosphere. But sometimes, I’ll leave scene description out to be added later. Or I’ll just write a quick list of phrases or objects: David entered the dark room, roses strewn about, candles, a music he’d never heard before. Demons, red scales, wings of Spanish moss. Then later I will make this into a good description of the scene. Hopefully.
It often turns poetic. Sometimes, I’ll thrown down some beautifully written lines. But most of it is just really messy and written without care.
“So what’s the problem?” you say. “Just write in your fast, messy style and get on with life. Get some work done.”
The problem is two-fold.
First, it can be difficult psychologically to write a bunch of pure crap. You look at what you wrote yesterday and you think: “Them words is shit, man. They shit.”
Ennui sets in. Depression. Fatigue. What have I done!? I am a fool!
Second, when you write a rough draft like a fourteen year old writing his first novel, maybe his second, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time revising when it comes to the second draft. Well, not so much revising as complete rewriting. A lot of wasted time. This is why I try to slow down like other folks, but then my story goes nowhere. So rock, hard place, my balls crushed.
All I’m really doing is drafting story. I’m not drafting my final presentation.
You cannot know this if you haven’t played role-playing games with me, but my off the cuff imagination is .… off the cuff. I think best when I moving fast. I just let loose and then the good stuff comes out. Characters become cooler. Situations and settings deepen spontaneously. And so forth.
All my novels have required correction for slow beginnings because in the past I have written up the first several chapters just right to get a feel for the writing before cutting loose (with more or less success). Cutting loose, as I said, can be tricky and I usually fail to do it consistently until the last third at the book. When I sense the end is near the crappy writing starts flying like a tornado in the sludge field of a CAFO.
So, I must write a fast story draft. It will be rough. For years I just accepted this is how it would work. Sure it would be nice if I could go even faster and didn’t waste time rewriting the story to remove all the bad sentences and bring order. If my rewrite was more addition and less subtraction followed by addition. Also, would be nice if I could read back over what I’ve written without dealing with the cognitive dissonance of my bad writing.
Fortunately, at last the idea for a new method has come to me like Jesus with a box of chocolates asking for a second date.
A plan, alas for you, which I will not describe until Part 2.
Hopefully, you have found this amusing. (I think all writerly quirks are.) More so, if you are wired to write like I am in any way, perhaps you will find this inspiring or helpful.
Galactus would never select me. I’m a terrible herald. Norrin Radd I am not, though I, too, seek Shalla-Bal. I have been sitting on important news, failing to alert you, dear reader and friend, that my novel of heroic sword and sorcery adventure, Wrath of the White Tigress, will soon debut as the first novel from Typing Cat Press! [1]
