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drivingsideways · 3 years

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In your experience, how much can a fic really improve after a shitty first draft? I can never just make myself keep writing without editing because I always think: the better the first draft, the better the final product :(

Hi!

First a disclaimer: I am not the best editor! I hate it! When the first draft is done, my impulse is to get “rid” of the story as fast as I can; I often feel emotionally done with the fic before I’m actually done with fixing it, even at like, basic proof- reading level. And that’s something I’m trying to fix as a writing process, but I don’t always succeed. The luxury of fanfic writing is that it’s so low stakes that you can do this, and feel only a mild pinch of conscience.

Anyway, trufax: I don’t have the kind of patience that @rain-hat has for revisions. And I can see the difference in the quality of the fic! So this is why I’m trying to internalize and nurture within myself some discipline and patience.

So this “first draft only has to exist” rule is really something I currently use when I’m feeling particularly stuck. Which happens a lot, especially when writing long fics, or feeling that my fic is getting out of hand. (As I write this, I’m side-eyeing my current WIP where I really want to write just That One Scene, but I’m finding myself writing 5k words of back story to get there.)

Anyways! I think the point of first drafts- they are allowed to be shitty. Second, I don’t think first drafts are actually first drafts in the sense that they’re not just top of the head, no filter brain to paper/ word doc writing! It’s just the first version of the story where it’s completed in the most basic sense, but within it lies many “drafts” that you’ve discarded along the way.

Ok, so first, the different ways in which first drafts are shitty. There are so many.

There’s the kind where at some point you realize that ohhh, a key plot point is resting on something totally unworkable/ untenable even within the universe of your fic, forget “real life.” This is probably something you should fix straight up, as you write, because otherwise you end up with a lot of rewriting and midnight cursing.

Then there’s the kind where you’ve got midway or even three-fourths through your initial plan, and it feels patchy and incoherent- maybe you aren’t hitting the right emotional notes in sections or you’ve bogged yourself down in subplots that felt necessary when you started, but now JUST WON’T WRAP UP. This is the kind of thing where I think it’s super useful to remember that you can fix it later. Give the story some time to rest with you, and sometimes, writing ahead actually clarifies what it was that wasn’t working before. Enjoy going down the rabbit hole with whatever silly subplot or character is demanding your attention. Once it’s done, literally cut that section out into another document or something and let it sit there! Then come back. You’re a fic writer! There’s no deadline! Nobody outside of you ever even needs to read these parts where you reveal your obsession with idk, wine prices in 18th century NY, or whatever. It can be fixed!

There’s the kind of shitty where the sentences just sit there like ungainly rocks on a hill and you’re frantically looking up synonyms for “said”. Adjacent is the kind of shitty where you’ve been swinging between tenses like a trapeze artist within the same sentence. This is the kind of thing I’d say you can fix relatively stress free- even if you cringe a lot as you go through the edit. Thank god your English teacher won’t ever see this kind of thing. I’m REALLY bad at this kind of fixing though, so if I can bamboozle kind souls into beta reading for me, then I do so pretty shamelessly. But wow, it’s amazing just how much, idk, just neat punctuation and fewer adverbs will improve the readability of the fic dramatically. If you don’t have a beta reader- I think it’s great to take a few days off entirely from the fic, until you’ve more or less forgotten what you wrote. Fresh set of eyes- even your own- can help this part a LOT!

So the other thing I mentioned- the first draft isn’t actually “first”.

I’m also a fan of editing as I go along, or going back to a previous section to tweak things. Sometimes I write a chapter, and then wake up the next morning and think, well, that wasn’t great, and I’m not able to move on until I fix it. So then I do that, and the "first draft” version may more or less be this “second” version. And y’know, I know some fic writers who will draft and redraft each paragraph as they go along because they can’t get to the next section in their heads until they do that. And that’s fine, if that’s working for you! But for me, what happens is that I run out of patience, and then stress myself out, which makes the “imperfect” section have even less of a chance of being fixed.

So this is where non linear writing helps me, as a trick, to move the story along while also keeping me mentally in a good place re: the story. In my most recent fic, I actually wrote the end and then went back to the beginning. Which was a very, very weird thing to do, even for me--but after the prologue, that I’d written first, I just wasn’t able to make the introductory chapter work. Just staring at blank pages and feeling a rising panic. Because I was in that obsessive stage with the fic, y’know, when you’re thinking about it constantly , but the problem was I wasn’t thinking about the chapter I was supposed to write, it was the chapter I wanted to write. So that’s what I did!

And I think this trick works if your story isn’t very plot heavy; or it is, but you do have a good and detailed plot outline done. That way, you don’t mess up too much in terms of continuity and so on. Sometimes I find that just making chapter headings clear my head out A LOT. Also then I can do the - ok, you have 3 chapters to go ONLY. (Lies, this will become 5, but still.) Anyway, having some kind of progress bar does help a lot!

Ok, this is extremely long and somewhat rambly. I hope it’s encouraging!

Last thing: it’s fine if you trash the first draft and start all over. (Ok, don’t REALLY trash it, keep it there. You’ll find some of it would be useful!) Anyways, lots of pro authors say that their first draft and the final version are completely different- so you know, sometimes that does happen. Maybe the right thing to do IS trash it, and approach the story or the characters from a different perspective. It’ll be hard to do, and you need to allow yourself space and time to mourn the bits you’re trashing (the grief is REAL!) but at the end of the day, you’ll free yourself to write the better version of the story!

Ok, really shutting up now. :D

Take care and best of luck with your writing projects!

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