Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Write-ish, the one-stop shop on your writer journey where we discuss everything writing related from shiny new ideas through publication and marketing.
Speaker: Whether it's on the indie or traditional path and the ish of life that feels and sometimes gets in the way of our creative pursuits.
Speaker: I'm Zara, a self-published author of Young Adult and New Adult Fiction, an alumni of the NYU Masters in Publishing Program, and the founder of Inimitable Books, LLC, a new book publisher dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices without forcing authors to spotlight their trauma.
Speaker: And I'm Kelly, a genre-hopping writer, trier of hobbies, and debuting author this year.
Speaker: My book, Down the Well, comes out in September 2023.
Speaker: Be sure to add it on Goodreads or Zara's favorite alternative, Book Hype.
Speaker: Links will be in the show notes.
Speaker: So we've talked about finishing the first draft and why you need to do it a lot over our episode catalog.
Speaker: And normally Kelly is the one who's saying, just do the damn thing.
Speaker: You need to finish it.
Speaker: And I let her say it because I absolutely agree.
Speaker: But this time I'm going to say it first in this episode because, you know, variety is the spice of life.
Speaker: The most important reason to finish the first draft is psychological when it comes down to it.
Speaker: And also this just is logical because the reason you need to finish a first draft.
Speaker: Any first draft, doesn't matter if it's the book that's gonna get you published.
Speaker: Most likely, it won't be if this is your first book that has ever reached a finished first draft, but you need to do it so that you can prove to yourself that you can.
Speaker: And that proof will encourage you to do it again.
Speaker: But until you've done it, you might be someone who starts a lot and never finishes, and that's fine.
Speaker: Most people start that way.
Speaker: But if you ever wanna get past that,
Speaker: You got to finish a first draft.
Speaker: The first time I finished a draft, I felt like, oh, I can actually do this.
Speaker: And that was empowering.
Speaker: Completely agree.
Speaker: And you'll feel better writing the end than chasing another story that could have been the one.
Speaker: Only not to finish it later or finish it either.
Speaker: So you level up by being a writer who has finished a first draft compared to others who never finish anything.
Speaker: Personally, I remember...
Speaker: I would juggle between three story ideas.
Speaker: This is whenever I was working at the bakery.
Speaker: I was working full time, going to college full time, and then trying to organize a wedding.
Speaker: But I was jumping between three story ideas.
Speaker: Project Curse Breaker, maybe you've heard of her.
Speaker: She's a lovely novel.
Speaker: Well, now three books.
Speaker: Adventures in Thimbleton, which is my debut, and Project Scarlet Death, a story that I was so traumatized when writing that I had to step away from it because I completely fucked that whole story up to a point where I no longer recognize the story because I was so focused on how perfect it needed to be instead of just finishing the novel.
Speaker: So by giving you that anecdote, I just want you to know if you're in like a boat similar to that.
Speaker: Sorry, this isn't as rambly as what it's feeling like now.
Speaker: Don't worry about making it perfect the first way through.
Speaker: That's not what a first draft is supposed to be.
Speaker: Just focus on getting it done.
Speaker: Don't worry about how perfect it is, whether it's the pacing, whether it's the character arcs.
Speaker: You're going to get feedback on that from critique partners and alpha readers.
Speaker: That's what they're for.
Speaker: They're there for you to take feedback.
Speaker: So a good way to know that you have leveled up in your writing game is that you're going to be open for feedback on your first draft.
Speaker: But with that being said, why don't we talk about what a first draft should be like before we kind of go in talking about, you know, what critique partners or alpha readers are going to be telling you.
Speaker: There are so many published authors who have quotes about what a first draft is.
Speaker: And if you Google that, you'll get lists after lists that have them.
Speaker: A lot of them kind of boil down to it's telling yourself the story.
Speaker: You need to know what's happening and you need to get it down so that you can work on it from there.
Speaker: It is not necessarily for anyone else's eyes, but your own.
Speaker: I happen to use alpha readers.
Speaker: And at this point, they're so comfortable with me and my writing.
Speaker: And I'm so trusting of them that I will throw a first draft at them.
Speaker: But in general, people don't do that.
Speaker: And so it is telling yourself the story.
Speaker: and nothing more.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be anything more.
Speaker: So you shouldn't put yourself under the pressure to perform as if it's going out to readers.
Speaker: With that said, as any good story, it should have a start, a middle, and an end.
Speaker: They don't have to be perfect, but they need to be there.
Speaker: They need to be identifiable.
Speaker: Yeah, they need to be identifiable.
Speaker: you don't want to have something that ends and you're like, in hindsight, if you're really honest with yourself, is this just the start to a story?
Speaker: Did I ever get anywhere?
Speaker: Did I maybe start too early and just spent this whole time building up a world?
Speaker: Another thing I would like to throw in is the first draft should have an obvious main character.
Speaker: Now, the whole thing with Lord Matilda that I constantly joke about is who's really the main character?
Speaker: Because you come across...
Speaker: you know, Laura the human and Laura's world.
Speaker: And she's dealing with so much shit.
Speaker: And it's like, wow, our main character's life really fucking sucks.
Speaker: And then you go into a simpleton and Matota's life really fucking sucks.
Speaker: So it's like, who's the main character?
Speaker: We don't know.
Speaker: But in the story, Matota makes a fourth wall break and is like,
Speaker: It's like I'm the main character or something.
Speaker: Yeah, she has a little Deadpool meta moment.
Speaker: But The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Speaker: When you're younger, the main character is always the narrator.
Speaker: Almost.
Speaker: We mentioned this in last episode about finding your voice and whether or not that's the same as the author voice, which we said back then, it's not necessarily, and that's fine.
Speaker: But if you haven't read The Great Gatsby, you have the narrator, point of view character, whatever you want to call it, as Nick.
Speaker: And he is not Gatsby.
Speaker: He is a friend, acquaintance, outside viewer who is in contact with Gatsby.
Speaker: And he is telling the story of Gatsby or his experience with Gatsby.
Speaker: So you could have the debate of who is the main character.
Speaker: Is it him or Gatsby?
Speaker: And I don't think you need an answer to that.
Speaker: The same way that I don't think you need an answer to whether Laura Matilda is the true main character, because they're both pretty intertwined, at least in the structure of the book.
Speaker: And we'll say for the argument of things that Laura is the main character, because we start with her and
Speaker: we get her feelings more than Matilda.
Speaker: But even then, like it's, you want an identifiable main character so that you're not getting lost in the weeds of every character potentially pushing the story in a direction that favors them.
Speaker: I was going to say like, as much as I watch Game of Thrones,
Speaker: In the first season when they killed Ned Stark, because of how we're conditioned to look at stories and storytelling, we all thought, why would they kill off the main character?
Speaker: But here, there is no set main character.
Speaker: There's a cast.
Speaker: But I feel like for a first draft, writing a cast of characters is a little bit more ambitious and you need to be leveled up a good bit.
Speaker: before writing it like you know in Pokemon you need so many badges before you can have like a level 50 Charizard so you need a little bit more badges before I in my opinion before writing a big cast of characters an obvious main character is always nice to have
Speaker: You also shouldn't be worried about word count.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Reference our underwriter versus overwriter episode, which is back in season two.
Speaker: And I mentioned it earlier.
Speaker: This is the starting point to build future drafts on.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we have two episodes on revision that you can listen to in our back catalog.
Speaker: And those will be linked.
Speaker: This is just the episode where we just link you to all of our past episodes to go listen to.
Speaker: So you can figure out how to do your first draft.
Speaker: But another thing to keep in mind is that we have repeated over and over again in many other episodes on our tangents is it doesn't need to be perfect.
Speaker: Don't worry about themes being on point.
Speaker: Hell, most writers, when they're setting out to write a story, I don't even think are aware of what themes they want to be in their story.
Speaker: And that's okay.
Speaker: You don't have to emerge from your writing space like you found the Holy Grail and it's perfect and nothing needs fixed.
Speaker: So just keep in mind that all it needs to do is be there.
Speaker: There just needs to be a story on the page.
Speaker: I will add on to that, that personally, that people who write a story with the theme in mind first, it normally comes off preachy.
Speaker: Ooh, is this our hot take episode?
Speaker: I mean, it's not, but I guess that could be a hot take.
Speaker: If you don't have one going in, I actually think that's better.
Speaker: Let the story reveal its themes to you and then you can polish them in revision as Kelly was saying.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And also don't worry about how catchy the dialogue is.
Speaker: Not every conversation in the book needs to be like a standout.
Speaker: You also don't need to perfectly follow any outline or beat sheet method that you might have made.
Speaker: We go over different methods in all about outlining our episode from way back when, which will be linked in the show notes.
Speaker: Kelly was right.
Speaker: We are just linking a lot of episodes, but that's fine because we're proud of every episode we've made.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you have to remember that the outline should be a living and breathing document that
Speaker: My last thing to like not worry about is do not if this is your first draft and you're trying to get through your first draft, do not sit there and daydream about covers or other final publication details.
Speaker: This is something I was guilty of a lot.
Speaker: is I would sit there and daydream about, oh, what would the cover look like?
Speaker: Oh, what would marketing be like?
Speaker: Oh, what do I want to do to market?
Speaker: Would I have any say in that?
Speaker: Oh, what about edits?
Speaker: Like all these things like arcs and who would be getting them, like all the publication details that I had no business even thinking about at the time of not even finishing my first draft, I was, you know, obsessing over because...
Speaker: Daydreaming about the fun stuff like that is easier than doing the work and finishing the draft.
Speaker: So I'm here to tell you as someone who was in that boat, go do the work because you're not going to get anywhere if you don't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: You might be thinking, oh, well, what about the people who write to market?
Speaker: You can have certain things in mind.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: But that should not be the emphasis.
Speaker: You should not be focusing on everything that comes after, not only after a first draft, but after revision and editing to the point that the steps that are required to be finished before you actually get to the other steps get forgotten.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You got to walk before you can run.
Speaker: You can dream about running once you like once your child brain can understand the concept that, oh, running is a thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Except for some YouTube videos or TikTok videos where a kid seems to run before they walk.
Speaker: In general.
Speaker: developmentally and you can correct me if I'm wrong Kelly because you actually got a degree in this running comes after walking normally normally it's crawling and then they figure out how to stand and then they can walk and then the running and falling starts because because children even just as a parent watching my children figure out what gravity is it's it can be very funny to
Speaker: I feel like maybe everyone had a different thing in mind whenever they were going to listen to finishing a first draft episode because, you know, we talk about it so much.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm just going to jump into my final thoughts and maybe we'll revisit this in the future.
Speaker: You know, we'll come back and revise how we did the episode because this is the first draft of this episode.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: I'm getting too fucking too stretchy with this.
Speaker: Final thoughts.
Speaker: Do you have any?
Speaker: I mean, I feel really good about what we said.
Speaker: It's you need to do it and it's not perfect.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: And appreciate the fact that you did the damn thing once you get there and ride that high for a little bit.
Speaker: Because once you go back and edit, it's a whole completely different monster.
Speaker: Kelly would know.
Speaker: She's currently like in the thick of it or like just finished it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I also know, but I've had a few months since my last round of edits.
Speaker: Yeah, I just got out of the woods and I'm like looking back over my shoulder like, I think I need to go back in before I turn this in.
Speaker: I need to go back into the woods because I don't think this was done right.
Speaker: But you know, imposter syndrome, we have an episode on that too.
Speaker: That was our first episode.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: We've talked about it in many episodes since then, but that was an episode dedicated to it.
Speaker: This is the Writers Podcast, and we'll be back with another episode next week.
Speaker: And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at the Writers Podcast and on Hive Social and Ko-fi at Writers.
Speaker: Bye.
