I was so proud. I had finished my first NaNoWriMo, shoved a new novel into the “Done book” file, and it was a masterpiece. I had all the things Dwight Swain said I should have, all the ends had been neatly tied off. Yes, it was a bit shorter than earlier ones in the series, but so what? It wasn’t as bad as my first real novel.
Or so I thought.
Thanks be, a really great Alpha Reader got to it before I hit “publish.” He very politely shredded it, pulling apart the enormous plot holes, noting the failed ending, and generally pointing out that it was a draft so rough it needed ten grit sandpaper as a starting point. It was…a very bad first draft.
But it still didn’t have the two massive flaws of my first novel, so there’s that.
No one is alone in the “bad first draft” category, as this article points out. Don’t fear the bad rough draft (or the reaper. [AHEM! – Blog Boss]). Just write. Even published authors have bad rough drafts. Some will be worse than others. I’ve written books I swore up and down were terrible, rough, lousy, not what they should have been… And both the beta readers and other people loved them, or at least enjoyed them enough to keep reading and to tell friends.
- None of us wrote the perfect first draft. Ever. I wrote the draft of my first novel and cringed after it had sat for a while and I’d worked on other things. It had the wrong protagonist and villain. I’d shoe-horned characters into roles that didn’t fit at all, because I was determined to have a family associated with the good guys in a later story be the bad guys. It thudded. No. So I had to rewrite a chunk of the book, especially the first five or so chapters. I am SO glad I didn’t try to publish it as it initially was. Even the books that don’t have huge structural problems need work to bring the rough draft up to releasability.
- Don’t sweat the small things. Don’t worry about editing as you go. I write a chunk, then let my hindbrain deal with things. The next writing day, I go back and read-over what I’ve done the day before. Some things get tidied (horrible typos that confuse even the author), bad word choices are repaired, but that’s it. Forward it is. Everything’s small at this point in the game.
- Some ideas won’t pan out. You might not be ready for the story. It might be a bad fit for your personality or beliefs. The Plot Fairy left it at the wrong house. You still got practice in and learned.
- If you write, you are a writer.
- Relax and write. Even a rough first draft that turns out to be unfixable might have chunks, characters, ideas that can be turned into other projects. And you learned.
Don’t worry about perfection, or getting everything right, or checking the boxes. Just write.
Image source: Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “Bad Draft, Bad Bad!”
There’s always the backburner. Besides cooling off time helping with the first revision pass, there’s always the Bright Idea that may come along. The Other Princess was saved by one, years after I had thought it was done and unsaleable.
I also do the review-yesterday’s-work for edit to start my writing days. There’s almost always a better word choice, if nothing else, that presents itself that way (my sleeping brain is very hard-working).
My bug-a-boo is something I call the Tepid Swamp of Niceness, all the more perilous because I mostly have Good Guys ™ as protags. I’ve learned to keep the tension up through various means, but the first time it took me a while to realize I was in the wrong place and sinking slowly and oh so comfortably.
Sometimes I have to review the previous day’s (or days’) work just to remember where I left off.
The first protagonist in my first fantasy novel was a rather bland cadet. He didn’t start to show promise until the third or fourth draft. I think he shines as a secondary character in my second protagonist’s story in my second fantasy novel. But when I started writing her I swung too far the other way and made her too bratty. She’s been toned down a lot and she’s a lot more likeable now.
Of course, even a final draft is not perfect. The attempt to make it so leads to its death with the writer. “Good enough” is so very subjective, though – and, as noted at the start of the post, “da rulz” aren’t a great deal of help.
Alpha Reader here. I might be the reader TxRed writes about above. If so, there’s another side to the story. After examining my reactions to the read–my very first Beta for any author–I felt I owed the author my reactions, and some analysis. With a growing lump in my stomach, I composed the letter, revised it, hesitated, and sent it. It was as gentle and dispassionate as I knew how to make it, but when I imagined receiving it it still read like an acid-drenched rusty knife to the gut.
I sent it … and waited. Just twenty minutes later TxRed’s reply came. I had to read it three times to be sure of what I was reading.
Thank you for you honest and detailed analysis … Don’t apologize for a useful, serious critique … please continue if you want … this has been very helpful.
I was gobsmacked. I still am gobsmacked. Maybe I could have written something like that. Maybe, somehow, I could have meant it. But not in twenty minutes. Not without a lot of soul-searching and care.
My point is not that TxRed is a class act of very high order. She is. It’s that this is the way to earn and keep a loyal, appreciative Reader Team Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
TxRed, Thank you!
Editing is hard for me. I’ve written, but only done a complete read/edit on two projects. (koff, koff Sarah) 🙂 Sort of dread one of the other two because it’s over 80k words.
I deleted a short story once because they ending was too contrived. I wish I hadn’t, as there were a couple of scenes I liked.
“If you write, you are a writer.”
But you’re not an author until you sell something.
Not necessarily. I published before I sold. A story I wrote and showed to fellow group members was picked up by the national organization and used in their magazine. Likewise a poem.
Selling isn’t what makes you a writer or author. Writing does. Most people never get that far.