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Craft Chat: Finishing Your First Draft
276 Plays3 years ago
Kelli and Zara discuss the importance of finishing your first draft as a novelist. But we…maybe forgot to talk about HOW to do this. But that’s what the rest of our episodes are for!
Add Kelli's debut DOWN THE WELL to your TBR: Bookhype - https://bookhype.com/book/show/9824bda1-0dc8-4934-a8ba-cd6a8733f3b0/down-the-well Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/87798019-down-the-well
Preorder Samantha’s debut THE LEGIONNAIRE: https://inimitablebooksllc.com/the-legionnaire & don’t forget to register your preorder at https://inimitablebooksllc.typeform.com/LegionnairePre to receive some exclusive character artwork! Or, get an EXTRA piece of art & skip registration by ordering from https://www.riverbendbookshop.com/legionnaire
Mentioned in the episode:
Critique Partners, Alpha and Beta Readers: https://thewriteishpodcast.podbean.com/e/critique-partners-alpha-beta-readers/
Under vs Over-Writers: https://thewriteishpodcast.wixsite.com/listen/listen/episode/e679005f/craft-chat-under-vs-over-writers
All About Revision: https://thewriteishpodcast.wixsite.com/listen/listen/episode/e8ef9ecc/after-nanowrimo-all-about-revision
On Revision: https://thewriteishpodcast.wixsite.com/listen/listen/episode/dc630ae2/on-revision
All About Outlining: https://thewriteishpodcast.wixsite.com/listen/listen/episode/d9041fec/craft-chat-all-about-outlining
episode about imposter syndrome: https://thewriteishpodcast.wixsite.com/listen/listen/episode/eec11693/welcome-to-write-ish
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Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
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.
00:00:07
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.
Meet the Hosts: Zara and Kelly
00:00:15
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.
00:00:30
Speaker
And I'm Kelly, a genre-hopping writer, trier of hobbies, and debuting author this year.
00:00:35
Speaker
My book, Down the Well, comes out in September 2023.
00:00:38
Speaker
Be sure to add it on Goodreads or Zara's favorite alternative, Book Hype.
00:00:43
Speaker
Links will be in the show notes.
Why Finishing the First Draft Matters
00:00:46
Speaker
So we've talked about finishing the first draft and why you need to do it a lot over our episode catalog.
00:00:54
Speaker
And normally Kelly is the one who's saying, just do the damn thing.
00:00:58
Speaker
You need to finish it.
00:00:59
Speaker
And I let her say it because I absolutely agree.
00:01:02
Speaker
But this time I'm going to say it first in this episode because, you know, variety is the spice of life.
00:01:07
Speaker
The most important reason to finish the first draft is psychological when it comes down to it.
00:01:13
Speaker
And also this just is logical because the reason you need to finish a first draft.
00:01:20
Speaker
Any first draft, doesn't matter if it's the book that's gonna get you published.
00:01:23
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.
00:01:33
Speaker
And that proof will encourage you to do it again.
00:01:37
Speaker
But until you've done it, you might be someone who starts a lot and never finishes, and that's fine.
00:01:42
Speaker
Most people start that way.
00:01:44
Speaker
But if you ever wanna get past that,
00:01:46
Speaker
You got to finish a first draft.
00:01:48
Speaker
The first time I finished a draft, I felt like, oh, I can actually do this.
00:01:53
Speaker
And that was empowering.
00:01:55
Speaker
Completely agree.
00:01:55
Speaker
And you'll feel better writing the end than chasing another story that could have been the one.
00:02:02
Speaker
Only not to finish it later or finish it either.
00:02:05
Speaker
So you level up by being a writer who has finished a first draft compared to others who never finish anything.
00:02:12
Speaker
Personally, I remember...
Balancing Writing with Life
00:02:15
Speaker
I would juggle between three story ideas.
00:02:18
Speaker
This is whenever I was working at the bakery.
00:02:21
Speaker
I was working full time, going to college full time, and then trying to organize a wedding.
00:02:26
Speaker
But I was jumping between three story ideas.
00:02:30
Speaker
Project Curse Breaker, maybe you've heard of her.
00:02:32
Speaker
She's a lovely novel.
00:02:34
Speaker
Well, now three books.
00:02:36
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.
00:02:55
Speaker
So by giving you that anecdote, I just want you to know if you're in like a boat similar to that.
Approach to First Drafts
00:03:01
Speaker
Sorry, this isn't as rambly as what it's feeling like now.
00:03:04
Speaker
Don't worry about making it perfect the first way through.
00:03:07
Speaker
That's not what a first draft is supposed to be.
00:03:09
Speaker
Just focus on getting it done.
00:03:10
Speaker
Don't worry about how perfect it is, whether it's the pacing, whether it's the character arcs.
00:03:15
Speaker
You're going to get feedback on that from critique partners and alpha readers.
00:03:19
Speaker
That's what they're for.
00:03:20
Speaker
They're there for you to take feedback.
00:03:22
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.
00:03:34
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.
00:03:43
Speaker
There are so many published authors who have quotes about what a first draft is.
00:03:49
Speaker
And if you Google that, you'll get lists after lists that have them.
00:03:53
Speaker
A lot of them kind of boil down to it's telling yourself the story.
00:03:57
Speaker
You need to know what's happening and you need to get it down so that you can work on it from there.
00:04:05
Speaker
It is not necessarily for anyone else's eyes, but your own.
00:04:09
Speaker
I happen to use alpha readers.
00:04:11
Speaker
And at this point, they're so comfortable with me and my writing.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I'm so trusting of them that I will throw a first draft at them.
00:04:20
Speaker
But in general, people don't do that.
00:04:22
Speaker
And so it is telling yourself the story.
00:04:26
Speaker
and nothing more.
00:04:27
Speaker
It doesn't have to be anything more.
00:04:28
Speaker
So you shouldn't put yourself under the pressure to perform as if it's going out to readers.
00:04:34
Speaker
With that said, as any good story, it should have a start, a middle, and an end.
00:04:40
Speaker
They don't have to be perfect, but they need to be there.
00:04:43
Speaker
They need to be identifiable.
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, they need to be identifiable.
00:04:46
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?
00:04:56
Speaker
Did I ever get anywhere?
00:04:57
Speaker
Did I maybe start too early and just spent this whole time building up a world?
00:05:07
Speaker
Another thing I would like to throw in is the first draft should have an obvious main character.
00:05:15
Speaker
Now, the whole thing with Lord Matilda that I constantly joke about is who's really the main character?
00:05:22
Speaker
Because you come across...
00:05:24
Speaker
you know, Laura the human and Laura's world.
00:05:27
Speaker
And she's dealing with so much shit.
00:05:30
Speaker
And it's like, wow, our main character's life really fucking sucks.
00:05:34
Speaker
And then you go into a simpleton and Matota's life really fucking sucks.
00:05:41
Speaker
So it's like, who's the main character?
00:05:43
Speaker
We don't know.
00:05:44
Speaker
But in the story, Matota makes a fourth wall break and is like,
00:05:48
Speaker
It's like I'm the main character or something.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, she has a little Deadpool meta moment.
00:05:54
Speaker
But The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
00:05:58
Speaker
When you're younger, the main character is always the narrator.
00:06:02
Speaker
Almost.
00:06:02
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.
00:06:12
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.
00:06:24
Speaker
And he is not Gatsby.
00:06:26
Speaker
He is a friend, acquaintance, outside viewer who is in contact with Gatsby.
00:06:35
Speaker
And he is telling the story of Gatsby or his experience with Gatsby.
00:06:39
Speaker
So you could have the debate of who is the main character.
00:06:44
Speaker
Is it him or Gatsby?
00:06:46
Speaker
And I don't think you need an answer to that.
00:06:48
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.
00:07:01
Speaker
And we'll say for the argument of things that Laura is the main character, because we start with her and
00:07:08
Speaker
we get her feelings more than Matilda.
00:07:10
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.
Character Development in Drafts
00:07:25
Speaker
I was going to say like, as much as I watch Game of Thrones,
00:07:29
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?
00:07:38
Speaker
But here, there is no set main character.
00:07:41
Speaker
There's a cast.
00:07:43
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.
00:07:50
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
00:08:14
Speaker
You also shouldn't be worried about word count.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:17
Speaker
Reference our underwriter versus overwriter episode, which is back in season two.
00:08:22
Speaker
And I mentioned it earlier.
00:08:24
Speaker
This is the starting point to build future drafts on.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:30
Speaker
And we have two episodes on revision that you can listen to in our back catalog.
00:08:36
Speaker
And those will be linked.
00:08:37
Speaker
This is just the episode where we just link you to all of our past episodes to go listen to.
00:08:41
Speaker
So you can figure out how to do your first draft.
00:08:48
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.
00:08:57
Speaker
Don't worry about themes being on point.
00:09:00
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.
00:09:07
Speaker
And that's okay.
00:09:08
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.
00:09:14
Speaker
So just keep in mind that all it needs to do is be there.
00:09:18
Speaker
There just needs to be a story on the page.
00:09:21
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.
00:09:33
Speaker
Ooh, is this our hot take episode?
00:09:36
Speaker
I mean, it's not, but I guess that could be a hot take.
00:09:40
Speaker
If you don't have one going in, I actually think that's better.
00:09:44
Speaker
Let the story reveal its themes to you and then you can polish them in revision as Kelly was saying.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:56
Speaker
And also don't worry about how catchy the dialogue is.
00:09:58
Speaker
Not every conversation in the book needs to be like a standout.
00:10:07
Speaker
You also don't need to perfectly follow any outline or beat sheet method that you might have made.
00:10:13
Speaker
We go over different methods in all about outlining our episode from way back when, which will be linked in the show notes.
00:10:20
Speaker
Kelly was right.
00:10:21
Speaker
We are just linking a lot of episodes, but that's fine because we're proud of every episode we've made.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
But you have to
From Draft to Publication
00:10:28
Speaker
remember that the outline should be a living and breathing document that
00:10:38
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.
00:10:52
Speaker
This is something I was guilty of a lot.
00:10:55
Speaker
is I would sit there and daydream about, oh, what would the cover look like?
00:10:59
Speaker
Oh, what would marketing be like?
00:11:01
Speaker
Oh, what do I want to do to market?
00:11:03
Speaker
Would I have any say in that?
00:11:04
Speaker
Oh, what about edits?
00:11:05
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...
00:11:20
Speaker
Daydreaming about the fun stuff like that is easier than doing the work and finishing the draft.
00:11:26
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.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:34
Speaker
And.
00:11:35
Speaker
You might be thinking, oh, well, what about the people who write to market?
00:11:39
Speaker
You can have certain things in mind.
00:11:42
Speaker
That's fine.
00:11:43
Speaker
But that should not be the emphasis.
00:11:44
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.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:01
Speaker
You got to walk before you can run.
00:12:02
Speaker
You can dream about running once you like once your child brain can understand the concept that, oh, running is a thing.
Final Encouragements and Closing
00:12:10
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:11
Speaker
Except for some YouTube videos or TikTok videos where a kid seems to run before they walk.
00:12:17
Speaker
In general.
00:12:19
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
00:12:49
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.
00:12:59
Speaker
But, you know, I'm just going to jump into my final thoughts and maybe we'll revisit this in the future.
00:13:04
Speaker
You know, we'll come back and revise how we did the episode because this is the first draft of this episode.
00:13:12
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:13:12
Speaker
I'm getting too fucking too stretchy with this.
00:13:15
Speaker
Final thoughts.
00:13:17
Speaker
Do you have any?
00:13:18
Speaker
I mean, I feel really good about what we said.
00:13:20
Speaker
It's you need to do it and it's not perfect.
00:13:23
Speaker
All right.
00:13:24
Speaker
And appreciate the fact that you did the damn thing once you get there and ride that high for a little bit.
00:13:30
Speaker
Because once you go back and edit, it's a whole completely different monster.
00:13:34
Speaker
Kelly would know.
00:13:35
Speaker
She's currently like in the thick of it or like just finished it.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker
I also know, but I've had a few months since my last round of edits.
00:13:43
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.
00:13:51
Speaker
I need to go back into the woods because I don't think this was done right.
00:13:55
Speaker
But you know, imposter syndrome, we have an episode on that too.
00:13:58
Speaker
That was our first episode.
00:14:00
Speaker
It was.
00:14:01
Speaker
We've talked about it in many episodes since then, but that was an episode dedicated to it.
00:14:11
Speaker
This is the Writers Podcast, and we'll be back with another episode next week.
00:14:15
Speaker
And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at the Writers Podcast and on Hive Social and Ko-fi at Writers.
00:14:20
Speaker
Bye.