First Draft Shmirst Draft
With my standalone novels, I don't know that the term 'first draft' means anything anymore. 'Rough 'draft' I guess, but that makes me feel like I'm in college again, and no thank you.
What I have on my computer right now is more like... an extremely ambitious outline. It's novel-length, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but all the details are hand-waved and punted off for future me to figure out. On purpose!
Increasingly, I am finding the story of my books as I write them (not the Ashes books, those are entirely different). In the spectrum of pantsing vs. plotting, I lean towards, uh... plotsing? Both. My stories are character driven, and in my standalones, I don't always know who my characters are until I spend time with them. Sometimes the story I have outlined isn't the story I'm actually telling, because the characters don't fit. They wouldn't do a thing the outline says they should, for example, and I would rather bend events around them than vice-versa.
Especially in a romance. The characters are absolutely paramount, and their emotional journey must take precedence over whatever else is happening. Remember, plot=what happens, story=what it's about. Romances are about falling in love and love conquering all, so that becomes my #1 priority.
Now, I write fantasy romance, and fantasy tends to be very plot-driven, so balancing the two things can be tricky.
So how do I do that? By remembering what I'm writing about. The spine of the story is two people falling in love, and everything else must service that first. Also tone. I want these standalone fantasy romances to be fun and escapist, so sometimes that means I have to dial back the drama or plot intricacy. I also want them to be relatively short, readable in an afternoon, which means cutting a subplot or two.
I find all of that in the process of writing it. I think I've mentioned this here before, my my 'first drafts' are always the shortest version of the eventual story. There's a lot of placeholders and missing stage direction, and often, missing emotions. It's hard to get the emotions right without context, since it's very easy to write a single scene with intensely strong feelings, but if they all end up like that, or even two back-to-back, it becomes a bit much, or even *shudder* melodramatic.
But all the beats are there. It's a story, just not a book. Not yet.
What I have is a solid block of stone that's the right height and length. The next step is to reveal the sculpture lurking within.
What I have on my computer right now is more like... an extremely ambitious outline. It's novel-length, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but all the details are hand-waved and punted off for future me to figure out. On purpose!
Increasingly, I am finding the story of my books as I write them (not the Ashes books, those are entirely different). In the spectrum of pantsing vs. plotting, I lean towards, uh... plotsing? Both. My stories are character driven, and in my standalones, I don't always know who my characters are until I spend time with them. Sometimes the story I have outlined isn't the story I'm actually telling, because the characters don't fit. They wouldn't do a thing the outline says they should, for example, and I would rather bend events around them than vice-versa.
Especially in a romance. The characters are absolutely paramount, and their emotional journey must take precedence over whatever else is happening. Remember, plot=what happens, story=what it's about. Romances are about falling in love and love conquering all, so that becomes my #1 priority.
Now, I write fantasy romance, and fantasy tends to be very plot-driven, so balancing the two things can be tricky.
So how do I do that? By remembering what I'm writing about. The spine of the story is two people falling in love, and everything else must service that first. Also tone. I want these standalone fantasy romances to be fun and escapist, so sometimes that means I have to dial back the drama or plot intricacy. I also want them to be relatively short, readable in an afternoon, which means cutting a subplot or two.
I find all of that in the process of writing it. I think I've mentioned this here before, my my 'first drafts' are always the shortest version of the eventual story. There's a lot of placeholders and missing stage direction, and often, missing emotions. It's hard to get the emotions right without context, since it's very easy to write a single scene with intensely strong feelings, but if they all end up like that, or even two back-to-back, it becomes a bit much, or even *shudder* melodramatic.
But all the beats are there. It's a story, just not a book. Not yet.
What I have is a solid block of stone that's the right height and length. The next step is to reveal the sculpture lurking within.
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