Finishing Off That First Draft

Teagan Berry shares some thoughts for writers struggling to finish a draft. While I would never recommend taking a break, shifting direction with new scenes, and talking problems out with other writers never fails.,

You don’t just have to write a new scene to get the thoughts flowing. You might outline new scenes, or simply jot notes for what you can’t get into paper. The important thing is to keep writing, no matter how bad it seems. That’s what editing is for. I can’t tell you the number of scenes I’ve written to keep a story going that I cut from the final draft. Some, however, opened new channels of thinking that made the story work and even improved it (although they still needed editing).

There may, however, come a point when you realize the novel is dead in the water, for whatever reason. I have several manuscripts of 80 or 90 pages that I realized would never float. In that case, Teagan still offers great advice for taking that final break.

A Writer's Path

by Teagan Berry

Like many writers before me, and sure to be many writers after, I find the final push towards that completed first draft is extremely difficult. For some reason, the brain decides to press hard on the brakes while simultaneously throwing up a wall, breaking all real flow of writing and making it very hard to finish anything, let alone the climactic portion of your novel.

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