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Lecture 21: Should I Write In Drafts?

Lecture 21: Should I Write In Drafts? by James Hynes

From day to day, most writers focus on the individual elements that go into the writing of fiction: characters, dialogue, plot, setting, and so on. But sooner or later, you will have a completed draft, and you'll have to start worrying about whether or not the whole thing works. In this lecture and the next one, we'll talk about working with the narrative as a whole. The next lecture covers the process of revision, but as we'll discover, that process is closely linked with the process of composition. In this lecture, then, we'll talk about composing drafts. We'll begin with the pros and cons of writing the whole narrative out from beginning to end before you start changing it.

First Drafts
Every completed writing project has at least a first draft. For some writers, that first draft is also the final draft, but most of the time, writers don't intend the first draft to be the finished work of art. In fact, it's not even supposed to be very good.

The fact that first drafts are notoriously bad is not just an unfortunate byproduct of the creative process; it's a necessity. Think of writing a first draft as mining for gold the way it was done in such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Imagine yourself squatting awkwardly in a stream, sifting through dirt by hand to get a few flakes of gold. Expecting your first draft to be perfect is about as likely as the possibility that you will pick nuggets straight out of the dirt with your fingers.

It's also true, however, that the experience of writing a first draft can be thrilling, and it's often more fun than the more grueling and painstaking work of revision. In many cases, writing a first draft is your only opportunity to experience the story in the way the reader will; that is, it's the only chance you'll have to find your way through the story scene by scene, without necessarily knowing what comes next or how it turns out.

It's the only time in the creative process when you can fully experience the thrill of discovery.

Obviously, if you've created a detailed outline of your narrative or you know how it will end, you won't be experiencing it in complete ignorance of what comes next, the way a reader would.

But even if you think you know where the story is going, you're likely to encounter any number of fruitful surprises while writing the first draft surprises that will deepen or complicate the outline you worked out in advance. These surprises may lead you to change the outline or even throw it away. They may also lead you to change the ending.

Even if you're working from an outline or think you know what your final destination is, during the early days of composition, you are an explorer moving through territory that no one else has ever crossed before.

Writing a first draft can also be fun because a first draft is not supposed to be economical.

You will probably find it fruitful to make your first draft the longest draft, putting in everything you can think of, then putting in some more. Especially at the beginning of a project, you're likely to be bursting with ideas and possibilities, and it's in your best interest to put as many of them down on paper as you can, without worrying too much about plausibility, consistency, or logic.

You don't have to worry about whether your first draft will be interesting, because chances are that no one will ever see it except yourself and a few trusted readers.

The reason for writing a long first draft is twofold: (1) The more material you put into it, the more material you have to work with later on, and (2) as we've said, writing a first draft is a process of exploration. You won't know for certain what the story is or who the characters are until you have the whole thing in front of you. The experience of writing everything down can change what you thought you were doing in profound ways.

Another good practice is to write your first draft as quickly as possible.
The time for the careful calibration of phrases, sentences, and paragraphs comes later. To begin with, you don't want to worry too much about pacing, about what works and what doesn't, or even about consistency. Keep in mind the motto of the songwriter and performer Nick Lowe: "Bash it out now and tart it up later."

Not only will speed help you get as many ideas on the page as you can, some of that energy may well survive into the finished work.

In an interview in The New York Times, the mystery writer Michael Connelly talked about his technique for writing fiction:
"I have always felt that the books I have written fastest have been my best—because I caught an unstoppable momentum in the writing."

The suggestion that you write a long first draft quickly can apply to any writer, at every level of experience, but it may be especially true for writers who are just starting out, especially for first novelists. Creative writing courses can be helpful, but in the end, you learn how to write a book by writing one. You learn by trial and error, and you give yourself the most scope for that process to be fruitful if you write an expansive, baggy, inconsistent, very likely unpublishable, and maybe even unreadable first draft.
—James Hynes
(I omitted a pageful of extra useless unimportant talk about the Process of the Writing Evolution. There was no point in copying it here for you guys to be annoyed and irritated yet again. The only interest fact from it was Charles Dickens published majority of his works in his first draft. To each author they are allowed to do it in their own way whether they choose to be fast or wait. It is always your choice, dear authors. You can choose between writing multiple drafts and never writing more than one. Don't feel pressured to follow status quo, Skylights, enjoy. —Lumna10.)

Our Drafts Versus Multiple Drafts

If you've thought about a book for a long time, when you sit down to actually write it, you may find that you spend the most amount of time on the first three or four chapters. Once you have a firm foundation for the characters, the plot, and the setting, the later chapters may come easier.

The creative process may also become easier for you as you gain experience as a writer. When you're writing your first story or novel, you're learning as you go, but as you become more experienced, you no longer have to teach yourself how to write dialogue, build suspense, and so on.

Of course, there is always more than one way of doing things. No doubt, there are many experienced writers who continue to write in multiple complete drafts throughout their careers, and no doubt there are some rare novices who dash out a masterpiece in a first draft. As always, you should do what works best for you.

In the end, whether you write multiple drafts or only one depends on the nature of the project. A plot-driven story that takes place in chronological order may be easier to write in one draft than a story that encompasses flashbacks or other nonchronological events.

Note, too, that as you gain experience, you may no longer follow the advice to write long first drafts. You might find that your early drafts of individual scenes-not to mention the finished manuscript-are shorter than later drafts. In other words, you may become an "accretive" writer. With each subsequent draft, you gather a little more material and go back to earlier scenes to fill in more details.
—James Hynes

Writing Exercise Prompt
Try some of the different writing techniques mentioned in this lecture with one of your own scenes or chapters. For those who are more accustomed to using a computer, try drafting a scene in longhand to make yourself slow down and think as you write. You might also think about how you usually compose a scene or chapter, then try the opposite technique. In other words, if you're the sort of writer who dashes through a scene without looking back, try slowing down and revising as you go, writing your first paragraph multiple times until you think it's perfect before proceeding to the next one. If you're already the sort of writer who revises as you go, try typing out a scene as fast and furiously as possible, without stopping and looking back. With either approach, you may hate the result—in which case, you can go back to your old way of doing things-or you might find that sometimes, for certain purposes, changing your process can lead to interesting results.