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lunarspew · 23 days

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Hiii, I really admire your writing and I was wondering: What's your usual drafting process? I have my own, (which i will admit, is somewhat nightmarish) (Seen below (text color has no meaning)) Though I'm wondering how you usually draft your own writings?

How long do you usually spend on a "first draft" as well?

Oh my gosh first off - THANK U?! That’s so nice of you to say omg

Secondly: WOAH. I can’t say anything ‘cus my files are also a mess but that’s also a rly cool layout.

Thirdly: I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll do my best to explain

This got away from me. TLDR:

How I usually draft: Breaking down from big to small. Chapter outline to scene outlines to fleshing out scenes etc etc. Big to small.

How Long It takes: For my first draft, if I’m in a good mood/know where I’m going, I can get a chapter’s first draft (think rough ‘they did this and then they argued about this’ between actual writing) done in a couple of 20 minute writing sprints.

4 scenes would equal 80 minutes, done over a period of days. After that I usually spend like, a few weeks to a month editing over and over until I like it.

Now for the long shit. I ramble, I’m so sorry, I am not clear headed and that’s why It takes me so long to Edit/Publish lmao.

TA and BB are the first fics I’ve ever like. Decided that they were going to be Long and that I Really Want To Finish. I used to just write without knowing where I’m going, and that always ends with me abandoning things. So THIS TIME, I tried smth different.

The way I’ve done it so far (that has worked) has been:

Initial idea >

short desc. Of scenes that are driving me to write this in the first place / dialogue ideas i have >

rough bare bones outline start to finish >

Take a story beat template I like/fits and use that to flesh things out >

story beats >

draft scene by scene for chapters >

flesh out the rough scenes >

keep editing until i like it.

That. is the ideal way it would happen. It does not happen that way, lol.

This for an example is my first attempt at TA. Only a few lines of it made it to chapter one/i changed tenses and rewrite the whole thing. I haven't opened this file in a year or two and have moved everything to a new scrivener file since then.

For TA and BB I used Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker for my initial outline.

I had it as a library book at the time and transcribed the outline process for it so I could come back and refer to it later. I’ll link my google docs here for that, (sorry about the shitty mouse drawing), though I do recommend reading the book.

Sorry, Rambling.

For TA and BB, I outlined it using that. TA I left a lot more loose / there are parts I don’t know how it’s going to go chapter by chapter.

For BB, that’s completely outlined, every chapter.

The idea is to go Big > Medium > Small.

After the broad strokes outline, I go to chapter by chapter outline. Bare bones, just a few paragraphs.

Then I break that chapter into scenes.

For that, I’ve used a couple of different things. Usually I make sure to note character goals.

Most Recently I read 5,000 Words Per Hour and then Lifelong Writing Habit, both by Christ Fox. Those were more about habits, but I liked how he broke down the ‘scene summaries’.

For each scene I break down I usually fill this out:

Characters: (who will be here, even if only minor)

Location: (where this happens. I try to keep it to one location per scene)

Major Action: (what happens. This part gets long, it’s where I summarize what happens in the scene)

Goal: (what I want to happen. Either I want info to be given to readers, or I need to move someone from point A to point B)

End: (how the scene ends/where it breaks off for new scene. Where characters are by this point.)

Emotions: (Emotions I want to get across/focus on during writing.)

Then I do a 20 minute Writing Sprint where I just word vomit that scene. I don’t let myself edit or press backspace (HARD!!!) and that’s my Draft 1 for that scene.

Usually that’s about 1k words. I know I’m an overwriter so I can kinda guess how long the scene will be once it’s fleshed out.

It goes from This kinda stuff (spoilers for chapter 6 of TA)

This is my draft 1/first ‘serious’ write thru. I’m fine sharing screenshots cus most likely it will end up very different by the time I publish it.

TIME wise? Oh god it really depends. Sometimes I get it down right the first few times. Others…

Oogh.

I have a checklist I try to go through. Once I sort of get what I want down/solid/stop with my cuts, I go thru the list with each pass.

So like Draft 3 could be just fixing dialogue. Draft 4 would be adding ‘show don’t tell’ and reworking sentence structure.

……… i just went to take a screenshot of my ‘final edit’ list and it looks like i wrote. everything out that I do in a far more concise way at some other point. God dang.

Anyway

All that is to say, time wise, it depends!

My goal is to publish once a month. Around the middle of the month. If I’m actively working on something/make myself work on it i could get draft 2 banged out in a few days, and then I spend the next couple weeks picking at it/fixing it.

Other times, I avoid it until I get a sudden rush of inspo and write it out in one day. Again, spend a month editing it/hating it, then do one last rush job edit and post it (even if i think it’s not ‘perfect’ yet) and run away from my computer.

I don’t recommend doing it like this. I’m doing a mix of ‘serious’ writing habits (schedules, deadlines) and ‘i just write for fun’. And it’s. Not great.

I’m sure it’ll get streamlined eventually/the more I write since I’m new to like. Publishing long form stuff. But yeah. Sobs.

SORRY FOR RAMBLING AUGH. I hope this makes sense. As I said I'm not clearheaded/have a loto f brain fog so. yeagh.

I forget to write things down so most of my 'planning; is just floating around in my head until I remember it last second and have to scramble to put it back in/move it around my drafts lol.

#txt #TA #BB #this is really long and got out of hand #just a total ramble so sorry im super tired kaldfjhkasdjkl #i hope this makes sense #bleedingbonemarrow #writing #asks #TA spoilers #Reed #well #reed mention #I call pov chara Reed just cus i like writing that more than 'you' every time

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