My 5 Most-Common 1st Draft Mistakes

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

First drafts are meant to be messy. It's the time when we hammer out our story, taking it from a concept to something that, at least vaguely, resembles a book.

The nice thing about first drafts is that they can be fixed.  That's why I don't worry over my drafts as I'm writing them; my goal is just to get from the beginning to the end. At this point, I've written around 50 first drafts.  There's definitely a recurrence of some issues over others. Once you know what your most common issues are, you can start looking out for them.

Crutch words: Everyone has them (at least, I hope they do). I  track down “justs,” “thats,” and “reallys” and decide how many are necessary in my document.

Echoes: An echo is a repeating word close enough in a manuscript for a reader to notice it. Some repeating words fly more under the radar than others. Reading a passage out loud is one great way of finding repetition.

Continuity errors: I try to read as much of my first draft as possible in one sitting because it makes continuity errors so much easier to catch.  Sometimes my characters will inexplicably be wearing different outfits at the end of a scene than at the beginning of it. Or someone will be driving their car back from the store when their friend had given them a ride there.

Lack of description: This is usually on-purpose because I skip character or setting description in the first draft since I don't enjoy reading or writing it. The important thing is that I put it in the second draft…sometimes it's easy to forget.

Rushing through relationship building of any kind:  This might be specific to just me. I always tend to focus primarily on the mystery itself: the clues, red herrings, suspects, interviews, etc. But, as my Penguin editor used to tell me, readers care about the characters in their daily lives and interactions. I needed to show more of what their lives were like outside of the context of the mystery. That's something I often address in the second draft.

These are my usual problem areas in a first draft, but what are yours? Do you have repeat offenders or are your issues different in different drafts?

5 Common 1st Draft Mistakes:
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