Your First Draft isn’t Bad

Ask any veteran author, and he or she will tell you the first draft always sucks.

No matter how often we hear this, new authors can get overwhelmed in their beginning drafts because the writing feels ugly.

Being overwhelmed on our first drafts hinders our progress and prevents us from finishing our stories. 

If you’re struggling to finish your first draft, keep reading. 

Stories are Built in Layers

I live in a neighborhood that’s growing rapidly. From the view of my front porch, I can see several homes in varying stages of the building process.

What I admire most about homebuilders is their respect for the home-building process. No homebuilder ever stands on the front steps of a half-built home and says, “This is so bad. I’m so embarrassed. Don’t look yet.”

They understand that a home is built in layers, and homes in the beginning stages are just that: a home in its beginning stage. They celebrate that stage, they respect it with realistic expectations, and they keep moving forward to the next stage, and the next, until the home is complete.

Stories are also built in layers, yet authors have a much differing attitude toward the beginning stages. I hear it often, and I say it often. I’m sure you do, too. “Ugh, this is so bad. So cheesy. So lame.”

Authors, start looking at your book the way a home builder looks at a home! 

Foundation Comes First

In building a home, you first pour the foundation. Then the walls are built for the entire home.

This is what we need to do for our stories as well.

Some authors like to have an outline. If that’s what works for you, then great. Do it!

Other authors have a vague idea in their head, and they start writing and make more connections.

Sometimes, it’s a bit of both.

Remember, though, that we’re just writing the foundation. There are going to be lots of chapters with only a few words, or maybe a bit of dialogue, or just a few bullet points. Whatever shape your chapters take, it’s good, because that’s all we need. 

For the foundation, you do not need the plot, the character backstory, the foreshadowing, the imagery, or the dialogue in chapter one before moving on to chapter two.

That would be like saying we need the walls, windows, plumbing, and electricity done in the family room before moving on to the next room.

What is the foundation of your story? List it out, write it out, even draw it out. It probably won’t look like a novel, but it’s not supposed to! It’s supposed to look like a foundation. It’s not supposed to be pretty. The elements that make our story pretty—the rich descriptions, the deep foreshadowing, using the precise word—comes later. The paint makes the home pretty. The carpet. The furniture. The fancy, gold faucets and diamond-crusted chandeliers. Those all happen much later in the home-building process, and they can happen later in our stories as well.

When you’re writing your first draft and there’s no imagery, the dialogue is stilted, the character doesn’t have a name, and you’re still trying to discover their backstory, your writing isn’t ugly. It’s not bad. There’s no need to be embarrassed; it’s a story that’s in its beginning stages.

Don’t Be Afraid to Leave Holes

Another concern authors have is leaving holes in their stories.

They may be stuck on certain details and are unwilling to move forward until it’s filled. They might not know what clue to leave, or what romantic gesture the prince does for the commoner, or even what scene should come next. 

A house under construction is filled with holes. There are holes where the windows and doors go. In entire rooms, only the walls may be framed. Those holes may remain for a long time! A home can be built around those holes, and your story can continue to be built even when there are holes.

Sometimes, as authors, we know we need something in a certain scene, but we don’t know what it is . . . so we wait, and wait, and wait, hoping it’ll come to us. Keep writing! You can leave a hole! Just like a builder knows, “A window goes here,” you can say, “They find a clue here,” or, “The murderer strikes again here,” or, “They start to fall in love here.” Then you keep writing.

The holes in your story don’t mean that your story is inadequate or incomplete. It just means that those details don’t need to be established at this point in the story-building process.

Don’t know the name of your made-up country? Move on. Super awkward dialogue? Move on. It’s a holding place for better dialogue in the future.

One tip I have: For something unknown, use TK. It stands for “to come,” but TK is a lot easier to search for in a document. One line in my manuscript is, “The legacy of TK Royal Family Name has endured many centuries, but soon, it will fall.” I don’t know the name of the royal family yet, but when I do, I can search for “TK” and replace it with the royal family name.

In the meantime, I keep writing!

What if I Write the Wrong Thing?

Sometimes authors stop writing because they won’t want to write something that won’t end up in the actual story. “I don’t want to write the wrong thing. I don’t want to have to cut scenes later.” It stops authors from moving forward, from writing at all.

I wish writing were like that. It’s not, though. You’ll probably write things that don’t make the final cut, but that doesn’t mean you wrote the wrong thing.

Sometimes we write scenes that are important to us, as the authors, but not important for the reader. These scenes that aren’t in the manuscript aren’t wasted; they served their purpose in helping us create fully-developed characters and a fully-developed plot.

This is like the scaffolding on the side of a building. Constructing the scaffolding is not wasted labor. It’s not essential for the family who moves into the home, but it’s essential for those building the home. 

Don’t hesitate to write backstories or prologues, even if you know you won’t use them in the story. Write a whole bunch of exposition—even if you take it out later—because writing that exposition can help you better understand your story. Don’t worry if you write a side character who ends up being cut in revisions. That side character helped you get through the story.

Remember: writing a book is often a journey in discovery. Sometimes we don’t know the right scene until we’ve seen the wrong scene. This happens frequently in building a home, and no one gets dramatic about it. Every home builder will put a few strokes of different colors of paint to discover what looks the best. They might compare several different faucets before choosing one for the bathroom or kitchen.

They might move the furniture around several times until they figure out which wall the couch should be on. Sometimes we have to try several options in our stories and see what’s best.

This is not wasted labor. You’re not wasting words. You’re not writing the wrong thing.

You’re creating a story. Part of that creation is creating things that only you’ll see, including deleted scenes, alternate endings, and commentary that explains your intent. It is unrealistic and unfair to you and your story to expect that you will be right on the first try every time. It’s unfair to punish yourself when it’s not.

Did you know? The editorial process happens in a different part of our brain than our creative process, which we use for actually writing the words. We cannot use both at the same time. When we start talking about our writing as if something is wrong, we activate our editing brain, and that impairs our writing brain. When you’re in the beginning stages, the writing brain is far more important. When you start to feel the editing brain activate, make it wait. “Thank you, brain. I see you noticed the awkward dialogue and run-o sentence. We’ll fix that when it’s time. Right now, I’m writing.” Protect your creative brain.

We said that writing words that don’t make the final cut isn’t wasted labor. And it isn’t. HOwever, editing words that aren’t ready for edits is—wasted labor.

If we paint a bedroom, only to find out there’s no wiring in your house, you’re going to have to cut holes in the wall, insert wiring, and then repaint the room.

The same thing applies when writing. An author, for example, may spend hours agonizing over which adjective she should use to describe the flowers in her character’s front lawn, only to later realize that scene will take place in winter. That is wasted labor.

Respect the layers of your story. If you do edits at a level 3 when your story is on a level 1, you’re going to end up revising again and again as you add words to reinforce your story’s foundation. That, my friend, is wasted labor.

Change the way you look at your story in its beginning stages—and all stages, too.

It’s not bad.

It’s not ugly.

It’s not embarrassing.

It’s a sketch before you paint.

It’s a model before you build.

And it’s the starting point to a beautiful story, a story only you can write.