The first draft is driving me crazy!

[stormiel]

I'm getting closer to the halfway mark of the first draft and its about to drive me insane. There are slow points, dialogue blunders, lack of description and characters that don't want to do what I want them to do. In the past I would go back and try to fix all of it before moving ahead and each time I did that I changed the plot. So this time I'm not going back to fix it until I get to the second draft because I'm bound to scrap it again. In the past I've scrapped somewhere around 40k words, so I'm desperately trying to avoid that. Do any of you have these problems with first drafts? How do you usually handle it?

[Christian Soldier]

I'll be honest, one of the reasons why I write, edit, and publish short stories is that I get stuck at the 40k mark myself. Best advice is not to stop. Keep going, and be absolutely true to the characters. It's their story, let them tell it

[lexkx]

Yes, I'm familiar with that problem. VERY familiar. Some quick tips:

1. If your characters aren't doing what you want them to do, let them try it their way. In a first draft, this is about where your characters should be trying to take over from you. You're still in charge (loosely, in some cases), but your characters will become plastic and cardboard if you don't give them room to breathe here. Again, it's normal for characters to do this.

2. Write scene by scene. If you're trying to get through a first draft, skipping ahead to parts you like or to what you think is the next plot point will NOT help. Write the scene you are in. Let the characters do what they will. At the end of the scene, check to see what must happen next to get to where your next plot point should be. If you're not looking at the end and you're not trying to reroute the geography of your story, it won't feel as much like the whole thing is getting away from you.

3. Let your characters develop on the page. You may suddenly find out one woman has a constant craving for peppers, or that a man habitually bites his nails when he's preoccupied. Don't go back and change that now. Incorporate that into earlier parts of the story later. But let the new aspects of your characters unfurl on the page, and they will carry the story for you.

4. You shouldn't have to force your characters into your plot, or provide characters because your plot demands them. The plot needs characters to happen, and the characters need to act towards the plot's climax to resolve their unique situations. The characters will pick up the plot and run with it, but this isn't a bad thing. Direct them a little here and a little there, and they will bring the plot to a conclusion.

5. Once you cut loose, it can feel more like herding toddlers than conducting a well-timed orchestra. Let the story happen. If it's taking unexpected turns, see where they go. If, after about 10 pages, the scenes are not moving towards the plot points you have in mind for your story, drop the 10 pages and write from there.

6. Borrow from Ernest Hemingway, and always stop in the middle of a sentence or when you know exactly what is going to happen next. Save and exit the program. Even if you come back 5 minutes later, this gives you a tremendous boost of creativity and encouragement to see how the story surprises you.

Best of luck!!

[rjj7]

I'm actually in a similar situation. I'm going to offer some contrary advice that I have yet to test, so take it with a grain of sodium chloride.

If you want to start over because of lack of description or dialogue flunks, don't. Those are local to the scene they are in, and shouldn't have any far-reaching consequences.

If you want to start over because you feel that the plot needs serious modification, do. But when you modify the plot, look through the plot to try and head off similar issues from occurring. I have been working on this one story for 7 weeks, and I have scrapped it twice (both times with 30-40k words). Each time I did it for very specific reasons, and in each case, the reasons required a rather heavy overhaul of the work, and I felt that to soldier through it would be a waste of effort.

However, if you do start over, make sure that you make it worth it. Don't start over to fix one thing, or even three. Fix all the things!

Using all the knowledge I've gained from two attempts, I've mapped out each character's inner journey, cataloging their state of mind with reference to the quest and the other characters. Doing so, I discovered I needed an extra scene or two to adequately portray their relationships; not wanting filler scenes, I had to tweak the plot to introduce a sub-adventure of sorts (that has been carefully integrated into the main story; small changes make for a lot of work sometimes ). I've also carefully analyzed who is doing what--which led to the discovery that one of my dominant characters was too dominant; so I rewrote the plot to get him out of the story for a bit, giving others a chance to lead and interact without his presence dominating everything (hugely positive effect on the story). I noticed that I had large sections without any physical peril, so I had to replot those sections to amp up the danger settings.

None of these were trivial changes, and I feel that if I'd finished the draft and then tried to make them, I would have been tied to a foundationally flawed structure (plus, this is only a small sample of the modifications)


Personally, I think that the advice to keep writing only applies if you're a decent to excellent plotter. For my part, I'm not. I am horrible at plotting. But through careful observation of my own blunders, I'm improving.

If your plot only has minor issues, then I'd echo everyone above. Keep at it. But if you feel that it is flawed on a very deep, very basic, very core issue, then I would say: Fix the issue, check for others, and reboot.



DISCLAIMER: To date, none of my projects have seen a complete first draft. So as I said, make sure to take it with some salt.




A few other minor suggestions:

1. Get a couple of buddies to talk your plot over with. I've got a couple of people to meet and talk things over with once a week, and they've been invaluable in tightening up the plot and characters.

2. If something sounds a little bit contrived or difficult to manage in the outline, don't try and write it. I've been told a couple of times that something could be made to work, if I handled it properly. The problem is, I know from experience that I won't. My goal isn't to have a plot that will work "if handled correctly", my goal is to have a plot that's so foolproof that it would look good after having been typed by a blind donkey.

3. If you're not sure why something isn't working, get sure before you scrap it. And when you're replotting something, refer to a list of all the problems previous plots have suffered from so you can avoid them.

[Christian Soldier]

Best advice ever: NEVER FOLLOW ADVICE OFF A CLIFF
And the second: Do what works for you

[lexkx]

I really like CS's advice, to do what works for you.

If a story isn't strong, or is making more plot holes the longer you try to write it, then there is certainly a valid question of "Should I continue?" Getting that first draft done is, I think, very hard for people who want to write well and their studies of the craft show them areas of improvement. TELL THE STORY. Will you have "talking heads" scenes, where only dialogue happens? Probably. Will you skip over necessary descriptors? Very likely. Will your plot have big, loose loopholes? Tough not to.

But it's a first draft.

It's as much an exercise in perseverence as it is a study of how to tell a worthy tale. In my experience (which is limited), writers who keep trying to make that first section of the novel "good enough" make it much harder for themselves to actually finish. Get the story on paper. THEN, look at where it fits your idea of the plot and where it needs "resurfacing."

It is so much more productive to take apart a story you've finished, because you learn more about the craft and yourself as a writer than if you stop when you see more problems than solutions. Just tackle one scene at a time. (Think of it like mapping a new wilderness. You know your goal is to make camp by the lake on the map, but you can't see the lake from here. Make for the nearest visible landmark, and then the next, until the lake is in sight.)

PS The previous reply is the method I employed in getting past the 40K mark and finishing a first draft. And then a second. And then rewrote entirely. I'm more of a pantser than a plotter, and character-driven instead of plot-driven, so my drafts tend to gallop off at about where you are.

[Bethany J.]

I second the Ernest Hemingway advice! That has helped *tremendously* for me! I used to always stop when I wasn't sure what was going to happen next, and that killed all writing incentive when I came back the next day. I think I expected to come back the next day and magically know what was going to happen with a night's rest behind me - nope! Now I deliberately stop in the middle of a sentence (usually dialogue), even if I know how it's going to end. That half a sentence will bug me constantly until the next writing session, when I am fairly itching to finish it!

[stormiel]

Glad I'm not alone here. Thanks everyone

[newburydave]

To date what has worked best for me is to

1). Do a minimalist two page high level outline of the key turning points in the story that I want in the story arc (I try to use the classic three act structure).

then

2).Write straight through (a.la. NanoWriMo) without stopping to edit in place or try to rework things until the first draft is done. (those projects where I get stuck editing in place never seem to get finished).

3). Then and only then review, adjust and rewrite as needed to make the story "work" and "stylistically acceptable".

This is the way I've written all of the novelization projects for which I have completed a first draft and several revisions. None are published yet so it remains to be seen how effective my methods are; but they seem to work for me (assuming I can keep motivated and focused long enough to finish the projects).

Just remember the rules of thumb R.U.E. (Resist the Urge to Explain) within the text and D.O.A. (Don't Over Analyze) your stylistic edits.

The reader is only going to care how engaging your story is, most of them don't even notice style (unless it's really horrible) so don't agonize over it. Just make sure you say what you mean and all the dialog can be tagged back to the character who said/thought it.

Write on my sister

SGD
dave

[stormiel]

I think you said something like that before, and its been more successful than anything else I've tried . I've still resisted the urge to go back and edit or re-route the story. I think I've figured out where the trouble lies. I need to do a little more plotting on one of my side characters because he has ended up having a much larger part in the story than I had originally thought.