Do you Love or Hate your First Draft?

To be honest, this question confuses me. Do you love or hate writing the first draft? But my perspective is simple. Why write if you don’t like writing?

Digging deeper into this has the potential to become an anti gen-AI rant. People who use gen-AI to pretend to write books are the people who want to ‘have written’ but don’t want ‘to write’. They are using a technology that has stolen from actual authors to generate a mediocre piece of slop based on an idea.

The ideas are the easy part of writing. Every writer I know has more ideas than they’ll ever have time to write – the key is knowing which idea is worth exploring, how to expand that idea around a character to make a whole story, and the execution of creating the story.

The first draft is about the joy of writing. It doesn’t matter if you are a discovery writer, a panster, or a plotter or something in the middle. This is the phase of the whole publication journey when you write the story.

It’s the meat of it, the important part.

Without a first draft, the story doesn’t exist. Even if you are a detailed plotter, the first draft is where the plot becomes a story. It’s where you learn about your characters and deepen your understanding of their motivations. It’s where the characters chart their own course and tell you, the writer, what they actually want. It’s where red herrings and easter eggs and foreshadowing come to life. Sometimes it’s when your subconscious knows more than your conscious and that brilliant spark turns into a burning flame that consumes you.

Second drafts (and so on) are about finessing the story and making it make sense, making it readable, dealing with dead ends and plot holes and deepening motivations.

But the first draft, it’s all about the story. It’s the best part. It’s why I write.

Basically I love it. And I can’t understand a point of view where someone might hate it. Why hate the biggest part of the task? Why do this crazy thing we call writing fiction at all if you don’t love the first draft?

That’s not to say it’s not sometimes frustrating.

First drafts are like hiking a rocky mountain path. Sometimes it’s a hard slog uphill with obstacles in the way and no view of where you are going. Sometimes it’s like running down hill, almost out of control as the story can’t come out through your fingers (or voice if you dictate) fast enough.

But each part brings the joy of creativity. Of knowing that this story only existed as a vague outline or moment in your brain until you write it. The first draft is where the story begins to exist.

Everyone has their own process for a first draft and there’s no wrong way to do it.

My own process is one that I call writing in layers.

I’m a character driven dialogue first writer. Many of my books open with dialogue in at least the first three sentences. I tend to write mostly dialogue in the first run, then come back and fill in some of the emotions, adding the description and setting later. I’ll write the first chapter, then read it again and add a layer, then write the second chapter, then come back and add layers to the first chapter, to the second chapter and then begin the third chapter. The loop continues this way, obviously not reading the whole book every time, usually only working with the three latest chapters at a time.

At around the 75% mark, I get a big dose of imposter syndrome and no matter how many bloody books I write and how much I remind myself that this always happens … it always happens. The story is rubbish, I don’t know if it’s interesting or if it’s going anywhere or if I’ve remembered all the all the things I intended to include. It’s annoying as hell but it always happens.

I usually fix this by having a rant to a writer friend, and then re-reading the whole story so far. And then basically making myself keep going. Once I get over that hurdle, then it’s a speed run to the end because I’ve reminded myself why I love these characters and why I love the story.

And ultimately that’s why I’m here. Because I love the story.

Find that love and you’ll love the first draft too.

Renee Dahlia
Author of Sassy Daring Romance