How To Write: Tackling the First Draft Part One—It’s Not the Sculpture, It’s the Clay

Since this is How To Write. Like I do. Sometimes. I’m going to tell you what I do when I’m ready to tackle the first draft. 

I have the premise, the main characters and situation. And though I’m not a big outliner, I usually do have a couple plot points and sometimes the midpoint reversal. A subplot idea or two. Possibly the ending.  I sketch out a rough structure outline and pin these ideas onto it, see how it fits.  With the main character I try to determine her propelling need/want, though this might present itself as I write and a few characteristics she needs to make the story work.

 I’ll use CLOCKWISE as an example. The premise is a teen girl who  is also a time traveler, a condition she can’t control and she simply has to learn how to manage it.  Her deep need/want is to be normal, something she’ll never be. In order to cope with this affliction she stays under the radar. Doesn’t hang with popular people or purposely excel in any area, though she could. This doesn’t bother her because I gave her these characteristics: a twiggy, tall body and unruly hair, so she has self-image issues. Being invisible suits her just fine. The situation: she has a crush on a hot football player, and without thinking jumps to catch his football while watching a scrimmage. Now she’s not invisible. Now she’s the star of the moment. It’s a bad time to time-travel.

So, take that kind of information and just start writing, Nano-esque style (good timing for this post!:). Vomit words onto the page. Ideas come as you go.  Some of them will be great and some with hit the cutting room floor, but it doesn’t matter.  Don’t worry if it’s good, because it’s probably not. Being good is not the point of the first draft. The point is making clay. You need raw material to work with, something you can later poke and prod and massage into a masterpiece.

But that’s not what you’re doing now. With the first draft, you’re making clay.

See that big white blank screen? Type something on it. Even if it’s these words: I don’t know what I’m going to write now, and this is crap, but I will write something, the first words that come to my mind….

Maybe it’s just finger exercise, but it’s something and eventually you’ll write something useful. I promise.

When writing your first draft, try thinking in scenes rather than chapters. I usually ask myself the question: What happens next? Then I go do the dishes or vacuum or drive my kids around and I imagine the whole next scene in my head—the setting, the people, the situation, and what my characters are saying. When I see it in my head, I go to the computer and write it down.

And repeat.

What I don’t do at this point is worry too much about character development or minor details (more on the why’s and how’s of that in Part 2). I just think, What happens next?  I’m making clay.

This process takes several weeks. Even months. (And months)

When I’m done my first draft, when I have a big pile of molding material, I let it sit for a while. Put it in a big plastic bag so it doesn’t dry out (figuratively speaking), have a glass of wine and something with chocolate in it.  Give my brain a break; because soon, I turn from the clay maker to the sculptor, and for that, I need a whole new tool-box of tools.

What happens if you don’t make clay? Or enough clay? You get hung up re-writing the first half (quarter?) of your book over and over again. You hit the wall because the beginning is never good enough and you can’t press through to the end—or you’ve painted yourself into a corner plot wise, because the beginning is nailed down and it forces your book to stay on a certain track when it would be better for the story to take an unplanned turn.

See what I’m saying?

This is really basic and of course there’s more to writing a first draft than this and I’ll get into it more next week. But for now the point is just to write. Go write something!

How about you? How do you go about writing your first draft?

Any questions for me?