First drafts can be like mazes. The way through is never a straight line.
by Ruth Harris
A first draft is a maze you create that you have to find your way out of. Like a maze, the first draft doesn’t proceed in a straight line from start to finish, from beginning to end.
In the process of drafting, you will get lost at times, find yourself in dead ends at others. You will have to go back and retrace your steps, find another route, and keep trying until you solve the puzzle and get through to the end.
First Drafts are Written by Both the Conscious and Subconscious Mind
Your conscious mind does part of the work for you. Whether you start with a detailed outline or an idea of the genre, the setting, a notion of the MC or a scene you can’t wait to write, you make deliberate, conscious choices about what kind of book you want to write. You choose the setting, time period, and the characters.
Sometimes accidentally overheard dialogue can lead to gold. Matt Weiner, creator of TV’s “Mad Men” and author of the forthcoming novel, Heather, the Totality, remembers where the initial idea for the book came from. He was carrying the notebook he always keeps with him to record snippets of overheard dialogue or a fleeting idea for a scene when he saw a teenage girl having a tense conversation with a companion.
“You don’t know if an idea is going to be a TV show or a movie or a play or prose or a poem or a stupid note you write in your notebook and forget about,” he says, recalling the unsettling sense he had that she was in some kind of “animal danger.”
The subconscious asserts itself via the fleeting thought that seems crazy or impossible until you mull it over. It can also be the time your character that does something completely out of character that brings the book alive. Your subconscious is also at work when it creates the plot twist even you didn’t see coming, the scene seems to write itself, or the intuitive leap that takes you from Point A to Point B in a way you never imagined.
Plotters and Pantsers
You can think of the two approaches as deliberate or spontaneous. They are often referred to as plotter or pantser, gardener or architect, muse or editor, unruly child or sensible adult.
Writers from Virginia Woolf to Joseph Heller, from Stephen King to Katherine Ann Porter, James Joyce to J.K. Rowling have detailed their specific approaches to writing. They are quoted in an excellent article by Akilesh Ayyar, who is interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion. He is currently a fellow at The Writers’ Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Ayyar addresses the merging of the lines between plotter and pantser as follows: “These divisions are not to deny the facts that writing itself constitutes a kind of planning, if only in retrospect, and that the lines between glimmering visions, developed thoughts, preparatory notes, preliminary sketches, and first drafts blur. Planners certainly do not and cannot plan everything, and even the incorrigibly spontaneous no doubt fall into certain involuntary spasms of planning.”
Writing a book is a juggling act/a balancing act, a process of going forward and going back in order to go forward again. Like a film or stage director, a corporate executive or Mom or Dad, your job is to keep all the various elements of a book, a show, a company, a family, working together toward the same goal: compelling the reader to turn pages.
The subconscious is messy, passionate, energetic, unruly. The conscious is rational, orderly, deliberate.
Your job, if you want to write a novel, is to learn to mediate between the two and use them both to their best advantage.
Many approaches toward the same goal.
- Joanna Penn describes outlining as the process of setting out the main events of your book and working out the plot from beginning to end. She adds that “the point of outlining is to help you with the actual writing of the book.”
- WikiHow offers an easy-to-follow 9 step method—with pictures!—for outlining your novel.
- NY Book Editors take the opposite approach and warn that planning your novel ahead of time increases its likelihood of being dead on arrival.
- For yet another approach, there’s the well-known snowflake method of organizing your book.
- In Take Off Your Pants, author Libbie Hawker explains the benefits and technique of planning a story before you begin to write.
- Author of over a hundred published novels, Dean Wesley Smith has written a guide to writing without an outline: Writing Into The Dark. He takes you step-by-step through the process and explains why not having an outline boosts your creative voice and keeps you more interested in the book you are writing.
To begin at the beginning: how (and where) to start your book.
Whether you outline or snowflake, whether your pants are on or off, whether you write into the dark or with the lights on, you have to start somewhere.
- David Hewson, author of the Nic Costa series and Pieter Vos novels, shares some thoughts about how he starts a book. He does not use an outline and explains “I want to be surprised and enlightened along the way because if I’m not the reader won’t be either.”
- Michael Martinez, who writes science fiction, fantasy, thrillers and historical mashups – often in the very same book, analyzes the first pages of a book from the big bang cold open to the dreamweaver and talks about tropes that work—and don’t work.
- Chuck Wendig lists 25 things to know about writing the first chapter of your novel including bait, gateway drugs, dialogue, conflict, and mood lighting.
- For some writers, including Anne and me, writing the first chapter is the last thing we do. Or, to be more accurate, rewriting the first chapter for the umpteenth time is the last thing we do. Because, by then, we actually have an idea of what the d*mn book is about. 😉
- Here are Anne’s thoughts about 10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do.
- I chime in with tips and fixes for the First Chapter Blues.
Signs that your subconscious is at work.
- The scene that writes itself and makes you ask, where did that come from? It’s the terrific scene that you can barely remember writing but that gives your book new energy and deep, convincing emotion.
- The plot twist even you didn’t see coming.
- A character does something completely out of character that turns your plot in an entirely new (and better) direction.
- You wake up in the morning with the answer—often shockingly obvious—to the question you couldn’t solve the day before.
- When the real beginning strikes you after you’ve written 3/4 of the book.
- Like Matt Weiner, be sure to keep a notebook and pen with you at all times. A phone that allows dictation can serve the same purpose. When the fleeting idea or insight or overheard bit of dialogue strikes, make a note or a voice memo. You might never use it. It might be future gold, but if you don’t write it down, you will forget it.
How to organize the mess.
Terry Pratchett reminds us that “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
Anne Lamott calls it the “shitty first draft.”
Every writer has been there, done that. Question is, how do we rescue ourselves from our own first draft? The answer comes in editing, rewriting and revising.
- Author of Speculative Fiction, Cas Blomberg, explains how she uses scene cards during the drafting stage and again later during the editing and revision stage.
- Dictate or write by hand. Slowing down (writing by hand) or speeding up (dictating) can often help untangle the knots.
- Janice Hardy walks you through the process of creating an editorial map to help organize and clarify the draft.
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab explains the simple process of reverse outlining, a helpful method that comes in handy after you written your draft.
- David Hewson writes in Ulysses and keeps a book diary “whenever I’m working on a project. Into it go thoughts, weekly word counts, ideas, worries about what might be going wrong.”
- I use Scrivener (now available in iOS) and use the Project and Document Notes feature to make notes and reminders to myself as I go along. I make a style sheet at the same time to help keep myself on track.
- Feel free to skip around. The reader reads forward, but that doesn’t mean you have to write from beginning to end. You will most likely need go back to insert the needed clue or foreshadowing. Or rewrite the chapter that went off track by a little or a lot. And you may want to add (or subtract) details that make the character real, relatable, frightening, welcoming.
The bottom line.
Outline. Or not.
Pants. Or plot.
Type. Or dictate.
Just get something—anything—down.
You get as many re-do’s and do-overs as you want or need.
In the immortal words of Nora Roberts: “You can’t edit a blank page.”
by Ruth Harris @RuthHarrisBooks September 25, 2016
***
What about you, scriveners? How do you get that first draft on the page? Are you primarily a plotter or a pantser? Or do you have one leg on and one leg off (I tried to find a picture of a person with one pant leg on, but couldn’t find anything out of copyright. Sigh.) How do you get yourself through the maze? Any tips to add?
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After recently listening to my third book on audio, I had to wonder where the whole thing came from, because I can’t believe I wrote it.
Avid plotter. First in my mind, then on paper. Usually takes months. First draft then takes six to eight weeks. (Or as fast as I can plow through it since it’s my least favorite part.)
Alex—Almost total pantser here but have had the same experience. Sometimes I reread my books and wonder, “Did I *really* write that? Where on earth did *that* idea come from?”
For me the writing has to come first — rarely, if ever the first chapter. I have to see what is out there. Does it excite me enough to keep going or is it merely food for my muse? Or maybe it simply needs more time to develop.
Frankly, I can’t think of anything more boring than to plan the novel before I start writing.
I love stories. I write because I want to be taken on a trip to story.
Leanne—I’m with you. Planning a novel ahead of time means losing interest. DOA.
I’m a pantser. There’s no maze for me. I write the first draft, I move around in it and make changes as the story develops (and clean up typos), and it’s a solid story when I type the final word. But I also don’t write sloppy, and I never say the magic words, “I’ll leave that for the revision.” Bad, bad, bad words, because that decision will affect everything after that point. Everything gets taken care of in the first draft.
But there was a time when my process was so messy and chaotic that it wrecked books. Guess why? Because if you go out in the writing world looking for craft help on your process, you get outlining advice–three act structure, structure, plot plots, know your ending. I didn’t realize how much of that got into my writing as a layer of structure over what was naturally coming into the story and was distorting it into a mess. If you’re a pantser and the story is a total mess, it might not be the pantsing; it might be all those things like plot points and structure getting in the way. In fact, I was so frustrated with the lack of really anything for pantsers that I published a book called Pantser’s Guide to Writing. It’s very telling that it is only the third book focused entirely on pantsing that I have ever seen. The other two of DWS’ mentioned above and Story Trumps Structure.
Hi Anne & Ruth – I’m a pantser. For me, discovering the story is the joy of the whole endeavor. If I were to write a pilot first, I’d be done & would no longer be interested in the story. Typically, about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through the adventure, I have to stop & engage my left brain. This usually means a bulleted list of the various loose ends that need addressing, then the ordering of those events, then ignoring the list as I finish the project. For my present WIP, though, it also involved the realization that the event I thought was my inciting incident was no such thing. I had to scrap that incident entirely, create a new one, & re-tailor the story before moving on. Still, it’s the discovered adventure that keeps me in this crazy writing world.
CS—Interesting but not entirely surprising that you started with the “wrong” inciting incident and had to create a new one. Isn’t that why we write our books? To find out what we’re writing about?
Linda—I use maze in the sense that I don’t know where the ending is when I begin. I write to see where the story and characters take me and, like you, move around in the draft making changes/revisions/additions as the story dictates. Your book sounds useful! Thanks for mentioning it.
Hi, Ruth and Anne, I do a pre-writing strategy based on Syd Field’s three act paradigm to get started. Try to map out the three acts, as many plot points as I can. Mostly know my characters as I’ve either done trait sheets or are recurring ones in a series. I also try to have a logline and theme so I can layer it in or use as a way to keep on track with events that speak to both. Then I let the characters go. If they want to move away from one of the events I thought they’d like, well, works for me. But I reign them in when I have to. So a little of both I guess. BTW I highly rec. Decades, Ruth. What a great read. Loved it. Paul
Paul—Thanks for the very kind words about Decades! And for the very helpful details about your pre-writing strategy. When I grow up, I want to be like you. 😉
I’m basically a pantser. I usually know the beginning and end. What happens in between depends on where the characters take me and sometimes they demand a different ending than the one first envisioned.
J.R.—Yes! Those characters do have minds of their own, don’t they? 😉
I’m not a Plotter (allergic to outlines from a very young age), but I’ve always been uncomfortable with “Pantser,” because that doesn’t seem to fit either. When someone mentioned “Plotser,” I thought, “That’s me!” A Yiddish word, “plotz,” translates roughly as “to be beside oneself with frustration.” So now, when asked that writer’s question, I answer: “Plotzer!”
Gay—LOL!
Great post, Ruth. I am a “pantser” and have been struggling with my WIP because of it. But, I can’t imagine writing any other way. It wouldn’t be fun. I love discovering who my characters are as they develop themselves. My problem with this book has been defining the motive of my bad guy since I’ve never written a really “bad” guy before. But…I think I’ve got it!
Christine—Thanks! Maybe don’t think of him as a “bad” guy? Just as a guy? Would that help?
I’m a pantser who occasionally plots, but never outlines. Outlines are the best way to get me to want to bang my head on a blank page. Great post here, I love reading about other writer’s processes. It never fails to fascinate me how differently we all arrive at a finished product when we start so differently.
Rebecca—Me, too! Isn’t it fascinating how we all get there but each of us does it differently?
Absolutely. Even stranger, how different books come together differently than others. The more I write, the more fascinated I am by the process each of us follow. I love it!
Originally started as a 100% pantser, with only the occasional outline written whenever I got too sidetracked to keep everything in line. Started moving towards being a semi-pantser with my first novel and became a complete semi-pantser with my current re-write.
What I mean by semi-pantser is that with my re-write, I’m doing it chapter by chapter. I read the original chapter, determine what the overall plot is for the chapter, figure out the key points and go from there. So long as i know what the basic beginning is and what the basic ending is, the rest of the chapter is to write as I see fit. I do this for each chapter, making sure above all that when I begin the new chapter it picks up where the previous ended.
G.B.—Thanks for the sharing the details of semi-pantsing! Sounds like you’ve developed an excellent method that can also help others. Much appreciated! 🙂
Panster here. If I know how the story is going to turn out, I can’t get up much enthusiasm for writing it. Why bother? I’m not surprised that Alex said that finally writing the story is his least favorite part. It is always my most favorite part.
After writing a couple of novels (and many, many short stories), I rarely had to go back and fix much in my later novels. I might add a scene or two in a novel. I don’t ever remember adding one in a short story.
Around the 25,000-word mark, I often get stuck. Then I write down as many ideas as I can come up with to keep going—one line for each idea. After that, I pick and choose from the list and finish.
Thanks for pointing us to Dean Wesley Smith’s book. I just grabbed a copy. Great post, as always, Ruth.
Jan—I’m with you! Who wants to write a book if you know what’s going to happen? Still, I know excellent writers who *must* know in advance or they can’t write. Never the same for any two people but we can all learn from each other!
I’m a complete “pantser” though I hate that term. I don’t think it’s necessary to label how we write. It’s important that we write at all if we want to create books. I can relate to David Hewson especially – because for the first time I started the book I’m currently writing with sort-of an idea, which turned out to be nothing I ended up writing about. I literally wrote the book wherever it went, surprising myself as the reader of what I was writing. When he said, ““I want to be surprised and enlightened along the way because if I’m not the reader won’t be either,” is the way I did it this time. Now that I started editing, it’s like reading it for the first time, as a reader.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who does it this way.
Thanks, Anne.
Patricia—Many of use relate to David Hewson. Isn’t it exciting to be surprised even as we’re the ones doing the writing/creating? Good luck with your editing—to me, the best part of the entire process.
I hate the term, too. It sounds like something that outliners came up with to put down people who didn’t outline. But some of the other ones that people have come up with are downright silly–gardeners, no outline people (NOP), organic (does that mean outliners are in-organic?).
I used to be more of a pantser but having gone back to revise something I wrote a few years back (which starts off really fun and then devolves into a mess of mess of useless conversations and oh so pretty descriptions before arriving at the proper ending too many pages later) I’ve decided I need to be a little more of a plotter. Assuming I actually want to see more of my books in print.
mshatch—Revising takes a different skill set and can be super creative in a different way. Enjoy the process!
Definitely a pantser.
Yvonne—Welcome to the dark side? 😉
I plotted my first book on a time-line on a big piece of paper. I basically slotted in things that I thought should or would happen. These days, I just start writing and at some point I’m in that world and following the characters around, trying to figure out what logically should happen next. When I can jot down what happens in the next three scenes, then it makes the next day’s writing a lot easier.
Louis—IME seeing ahead three scenes is a lot more do-able than outlining a whole book in advance when you don’t even know the characters yet. Sounds like you’re on a very good track!
Great post!
I still can’t decide whether I’m total pantser or if my first draft is actually an enormous 120k outline.
Vexing!
🙂
N.J.—Been there, done that! lol Thanks for the kind words. 🙂
I’m a plotter, but it didn’t used to be that way. For years I pantsed. Those novels are now trunked. I’ve found by having a solid framework of where my story is going I can bang out the first draft in no time, but I do leave comments to myself like “research this” or “find a desolate swamp, then change this.” I also review the previous day’s work before moving forward, so by the time I finish my first draft it only needs one (or two) more read-through before it goes to my editor. I also use an Excel spreadsheet, index cards, and scribbles in my notebook. It’s not pretty, but it works for me. 🙂
Sue—Thanks for the details about your process. Always fascinating to learn about how other writers get the job done. Of course, it’s not pretty. Writing a book is no beauty contest! 😉
I used to have guilt because I didn’t outline. I used to feel like I wasn’t a real writer. Thankfully I grew beyond those feelings. I realized that for me, outlining is ‘daydreaming’ the story. Letting the subconscious carry me away. Usually while walking in the woods. I wish you’d written this blog post years ago! I hope it reaches all those writers who struggle under the umbrella of ‘if you don’t do it this way, it’s not right’.
Lisa—Thank you for your thoughtful comment! There is no “right” way to write a book. Simple to say but not so easy to learn and truly accept. As you say, letting the subconscious lead the way is the path to exciting, original work.