That First and Terrible Draft

Everyone has their own way of describing the different stages of writing a manuscript. I really like Elizabeth May’s idea of a “trash draft,” and that phrase helped me get over my ridiculous belief that my very first draft had to be presentable.

Now that I’ve written more, I think I’ve found a better (for me, obviously) way to describe my different drafts.

First is the concept/outline. This is the document where I dump all my ideas about what the story could be. Characters, their traits, goals, flaws; a timeline; maybe a hint of an outline. It morphs as I go, things added, rearranged, but from the start, it’s always a separate document from the actual story.

Next is what I call the “base draft.” Once I have a concept, I start writing scenes in a new document. As I think of other scenes to write, I make some asterisks roughly where they should go in the manuscript, and add a little description of what should happen. If I have a really good piece of dialogue or a sentence, I’ll put it in the description. But I tend to write in order, unless a scene demands to be written immediately, in which case I’ll add it in its entirety.

Lots of asterisks in the base draft. If I can’t think of a specific word, or if I have to come up with something clever that the character does but my brain won’t cooperate: asterisks, write a note about it, and move on. Want to make sure all the “OK”s are changed to “okay”s? Jump to the final page, which is the notes page, make the asterisks, make the note for it.

Base draft is complete when I type the words THE END. It is messy and has lots of notes to myself and nobody is allowed to read it, but it’s done. Since I tend to edit a bit as I go, for the most part, it looks a lot like what the final draft will be. But we’re not there yet.

Once base draft is done, I go through the notes on the last page and incorporate them into the manuscript. Then I use the “Find” tool to look for the asterisks I left in the story, and fix all of those. When all the notes have been fixed, that’s the first draft.

First draft gets sent to beta readers and set aside for about a week while my mind does other things. When I return to it, I read it the whole way through and make notes. When the beta readers are done and send their notes, I incorporate all of our comments into a new draft.

This new draft has no name. I know there will be many between first and final, and using numbers will discourage me, so I name them by date until the final one.

On Saturday, I finished the base draft of my current manuscript. Over 103,000 words. Lots to work with. I’ll be working on the first draft for the next few days, then email it to my people and try to forget about it for a week while I catch up on things I haven’t had time to do, like painting the bedroom and making doctors appointments. Hopefully by this time next week, I’ll be working on the next draft.