Writing: After The First Draft

I’m going to start this post off with an apology for not writing anything last week, since I usually write something every week.

I just finished writing a first draft of a new book that ran just over 120,000 words and I was totally exhausted.  Emotionally and physically.  I hate finishing writing stories.  Even though that’s the only way anyone else ever gets to read them.

So this post is going to be mercifully short, and it’s a little advice about what to do after you complete a first draft of something.

I’m going to just keep that to “What do I do after finishing the first draft of a book?”  Because, obviously, I’m not everyone else, so my advice doesn’t necessarily apply (and it’s certainly not law) and also because the amount of time I stay away from rewriting depends on the length of the piece.  For instance, I rewrite short stories the day after I finish them.  There’s no point in forgetting 10 to 40 pages of text, just so I have to reread it again to remember what I was thinking about that particular day.

But, here’s my process for that post first-draft period, and hopefully it helps you out, or gives you something to think about.

As you know, I strongly believe in creating character CV’s before writing anything, so that I know my characters before I begin writing, and that will, hopefully, keep me from writing them into situations that don’t make any sense to them.  Because those situations would also be unbelievable to the reader.

When I’m finished with the first draft of  a novel, I do the following things:

1. I decide how long I think it’s going to take me to become less emotionally invested in the novel. If I care about the story too much, I won’t be able to see any flaws that I wrote into it based on my emotional attachment.

2. I decide how long I think it’s going to take me to become objective about the piece itself, without forgetting about the gist of the story (even though I have outlines and reams of notes).  Again, when I come back to do rewrites, I want to be able to see errors that I might have missed before.  At this level, I’m thinking more of story flow problems (where does it flow well and where does it stagnate) and basic editing (how many words did I accidentally type twice, or leave out or just spell incorrectly)

3. THE GOOD PART (I believe):  Even though most people might think this isn’t a good idea, during the waiting period, I like to write short stories about all the things in the novel that were referred to, but never shown.

For instance, if the reason a character is conflicted about some girl is because she used to be dating some other guy that he’s now friends with, that’s probably back story that’s explained, but glossed over, in the actual book.  You see examples of this in almost all fiction.  But, most of the time, those characters, whose back stories are integral to the plot, are also characters that are important to some degree, and I feel it’s my duty as a writer to create them just as believably as any other character.

So, in the above instance, I might write a short story about the girl and the other guy and how they met and what their relationship was like.  It doesn’t have to be a great short story and it doesn’t have to even be something you think about ever publishing.  It could have a lousy beginning, middle and end.

The point of the exercise is that, when I write those little stories about the characters, and things that happened outside of the book, I tend to write much more about those little details that got glossed over and, in the writing of them, I get to know my characters even better, because now I’ve explored those little parts of them in greater depth.  Things that make them who they are.  Things that define them.  Details that aren’t included in the book itself, but may help better develop them as characters and help to better refine their descriptions.  Details that may bolster, or perhaps even change, their actions in the book when I get to rewriting it.

4. Then I rewrite the damn thing.

And, since I promised I’d keep this post short and I’m fairly sure I unwittingly lied again, I’ll sign off for now.

As always, best wishes and best of luck to you both in life and with your writing!

Peace,

Mike