First Draft Rant

[AnimeKitty]

I hate writing first drafts with a passion. If there was a way to skip them and get into the fun parts of editing, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Do any of you feel that way about your first drafts too? I'll read amazing stories either online or published then look at my own draft and think, wow this is shit. Why can't I create something really freaking cool like that? Why do my phrasings and descriptions have to sound so stupid? Sometimes I wonder if my series would be better told by someone else, someone who could actually make it fascinating and more realistic. I'm sure I've considered calling it quits hundreds of times and find faults in literally anything. Just wondering if there's a way to get past this maybe? Any tips you guys might have or if you've experienced this and found a way to get over the perfectionism. Something to make writing fun again, like it was when I was a stupid kid and felt like I was writing an amazing story.

[Yulek]

ahhh this is the perfect time to share my favourite short about story telling:

and I think it has a lot to do with expectations.
what do you want when you write and publish a story?

maybe you're not too sure about your personal goals, so you end up disappointed either way.

if your goal is fun, you can approach it differently then when you aim for success or something.

If you want something super polished, you'll probably have to do a lot more iterations and maybe get an editor/proofreader/betareader on board (ones that aren't yes men)

[AnimeKitty]

First, that was a cute and weird little story. As for my expectations on writing, I'm not looking to be professional or traditionally published. I just want to post my story here and on Wattpad so hopefully others can enjoy it. Cuz I know I've found so pretty cool and enjoyable stories to read on sites like these. I've gotten quite a few reviews for book 1 on Wattpad which helped me tremendously. I'm on book 2 now though with it's first draft which is a headache and I wish I could just snap my fingers and make it perfect. But I know that's not possible. While I'd love to make it super polished, I just don't think I have the experience for that right now, but I want to make it as best as I can. My first drafts are never my best. But I believe that's pretty common.

[blakestackman]

Completely understand - which is why I have co-writers

[Kaydreamer]

I think reminding ourselves of what a first draft is supposed to be is a very important and healthy part of the creative process.

A first draft is just you dragging a big lump of marble into the middle of the studio floor.

Every subsequent draft is you chipping away to form that lump of marble into a thing of beauty.

A first draft isn't supposed to be pretty. Hell, it doesn't even have to make grammatical sense. It can be dot points. It can be out of order. It can be spread across dozens of separate files based on character or location. It can be dialogue only. It's a working document, for your eyes only.

I mean, sure, some people write first drafts long-form, as though they're reading their book while they're creating it. If that works for them, that's great. (That's what my second drafts tend to look like, which may be a 'first draft' if you don't count dot points and random dialogue fragments as a 'draft'.) But for most, you gotta just splash the vague idea of a story onto the page, and polish it later.

If you can accept that it's allowed to look like a catastrophe, because that's the point of it, you'll probably feel a lot better about it.

[AnimeKitty]

You make a very good point here. Which is kind of why I stopped posting the chapters I was writing. I'm waiting until I write the entire story out and go over it at least once now. First drafts are better left for our own eyes. But even so, I still struggle with accepting it's not gonna be very good.

I've never wrote using dot points or just dialogue. I've always just wrote everything out and when moments come in that I don't have figured out well, I just write a little note on what should happen or a mark to come back and fix it.

I guess I just need to learn to accept my first draft being bad. And then keep writing on it and polish it up later. Thanks so much for the advise!

[Kaydreamer]

Yeah, the episodic nature of novels on Tapas and Wattpad doesn't lend itself very well to the drafting process. (Unless you treat the Tapas version of your story as akin to a second draft or something.) Many novelists will change huge chunks of their story throughout the drafting process, altering plotlines, creating side-plots, writing characters in or out, and so-on. You can't do that if you're posting things as you're writing them.

It's similar with episodic comics, but at least with comics, the art takes such a long time to make that there's a lot of scope to change the story - even if you're only writing a little bit ahead. Just the other week, I changed the upcoming primary setting of my comic to be a spaceship rather than a planetside base, removed a character, changed another character from captain to gunner, added a bridge commander, un-marked a character I originally intended to kill off, and found a different job(s) for the character who was supposed to replace the going-to-be-dead one.

That's a lot of change! Had I been writing a novel on Tapas, and posting as I wrote it, it'd be way too late for any of that. I'd be well past having established all of those things in the story, and probably be deep into Chapter 3 by now, if not beyond. But, since I've only just finished drawing the true inciting incident, I was able to make all of those substantial last-minute changes just before my comic reached the point where they're set in stone. The setting and characters are all much more streamlined now. They were good changes, and I'm glad I figured them out in time.

I'm constantly refining dialogue, all the way up to story boarding the episode it's going to be in. While I don't track draft numbers, those changes would add up to several by the time the dialogue is in a bubble and posted.

I'd advise treating your novel similarly. You don't have to have the whole thing drafted, but I'd say having at least half of it sketched out, and not posting chapters too quickly, will give you the wiggle room to make changes, to create your first draft in a more carefree manner, and save the perfectionists eye for the refinement stage. That's where it's at its most useful.

All that said, what works for one writer may not work for another. And while I do dabble in long-form writing occasionally, I've never written a novel. So take all my advice with a grain of salt, and pick from it what works best for you.

[impossiblesoul]

I know the feeling, missing when I was young and my storywriting was completely unhindered by any fear of its possible flaws. But no matter how shitty you might think your first drafts are, you're always getting something out of it even if - in the end - your series doesn't get adapted into something larger for public digestion. I'm almost certain my current work won't go anywhere big, but I'm always exploring ideas in my head as I write it, and it's helping me in ways I only realized in retrospect.

There's an experiment regarding kids who were drawing with chalk. They were at first doing it because they loved it, and then the researchers started giving them rewards for doing it. When the researchers finally stopped giving rewards, the children just outright stopped drawing. To me this says, "When you get focused on a new positive outcome, you lose sight of the healthy reason you were doing it for to begin with."

So yeah, perfectionism has its place, but if it starts to make you dread your passion, then perfectionism becomes an unwelcome house guest and needs to be kicked to the curb until you need it again to polish your final draft.

[AnimeKitty]

I'll definitely take your advise and try to be more carefree with my first drafts. I've already put a pause on uploading because I kept changing things and just didn't like the quality of my chapters. I'm trying so hard not to delete anything, but it's sooo hard to resist just deleting half and starting all over.🤣

You really did change a lot! Which I can relate to when I wrote my first book. I change so many things after that first edit and I'm just wishing I could skip all the first draft stuff and be editing already. I lost the fun in writing first drafts and enjoy editing sooo much more.🤣

Thanks again for the help! I'm gonna try not to be so critical of my works. While they're not the best, they're not horrible and unsalvageable. More like, just need little things tweaked, better phrasing, and grammar issues.

[jkb4753]

have you tried radical acceptance? like embracing the shit and feeling like shit and allowing yourself to feel like shit? like looking at your first draft and being like "this is trash" and not even trying to convince yourself its not, just sitting with that. And being okay afterwards?
this is the only thing that works for me, because i am excellent at talking myself out of "its going to get better!" Like I can come up with endless reasons why something sucks, so I don't fight it.

[AnimeKitty]

Yeah, I miss how I used to love writing. Even back then, I was aware of my faults but I never hated the work. I don't plan to ever grow a large audience either, but I wanna make it good enough for those who read it. I think that perfectionist side comes in and messes everything up. To be honest, what I've wrote isn't bad at all. There's some cool and emotional moments. It's just my writing style really putting a damper on it and makes it just seem like crap. I guess I just need to ignore that? I thought as we keep writing, our drafts would slowly improve. I feel like I did the opposite and they got worse. thanks for the advise though! I'll try my best not to let it get me down so much and just write the damn story. I can always have fun and edit it later.

[AnimeKitty]

I haven't tried that yet! Maybe I can try and I won't overanalyze every little bit of my work. Thanks!

[MShadowlawn]

I used to like writing first drafts, until I had to write a coming of age story about some boring stuff mixed in with some interesting stuff. I, too, cannot stand the first draft I have been writing as of late, and I think I'm a little put off of first drafts in general. Yeah, it won't be up to your standards, but you just have to force it out one way or another. I wouldn't take it as an excuse to outright rush your first draft—if you know your brain can come up with a better phrasing of something, give it a little time, but don't worry too much if it doesn't feel cohesive or if your character motives feel unintelligible at first. The first draft is an important and perilous time where we try to narrow down a field of infinite possibilities to a more modest range, and once you have it narrowed down you swing back around in what most people would call draft 2 to do a "hedge-trimming" edit where you clean up your prose and make basic things make sense.

I am one of those guys that tries to write the first draft as if it were a readable story, even if the results make me fear for my competency as a writer.

[thedude3445]

I think first drafts are fun. It's turning those first drafts into actually good pieces that turns the process into a slog for me.

[joevilla]

I'm actually a fan of drafts. It lets me get out all my ideas, and sometimes I gain new ones when I go back and reedit everything again.

[jkb4753]

It's important to remember that you can be good and bad at the same time. Your rough draft can be trash but it doesn't mean you're trash.

[AnimeKitty]

@MShadowlawn I totally understand that feeling of wanting to make the first draft a readable story. Like, I know it won't be completely perfect, but I expected it to be readable at least. Like, I thought as we write on, we improve. But I feel like this is my worst first draft ever. I just need to get through this draft so I can work on fixing it. I'm just finding it hard to want to keep going with the current draft, considering how atrocious it is.

@thedude3445 Really? I'm the compete opposite. I love editing and polishing up my stories. I hate first drafts though.

@joevilla Wish I could feel that way. I'm dreading writing on my first drafts. I wish I could jump right into the editing/rewriting stage now.