The Rambly First Draft
Normally, my first drafts are glorified outlines. They're somewhere around twenty thousand words of fun scenes strung together with plot points in ALL CAPS BECAUSE I DONT HAVE TIME TO FIGURE THIS OUT NOW, normally with the end JUST BUNCH OF ALL CAPS THINGS ENDING WITH THE END.
This time around, with my current first draft, though, it's different. Granted, I'm only at about 22k right now. But I've still got like, two murders (okay, one attempted) thought up, and I have no real intention of skipping over the in-betweens. I know how it's going to end, but I don't know how it's going to get there. I don't know why it's happening yet. I know what's happening, but I went from my original idea of why to, as I put it in a tweet, 'slow-burn reverse children of the corn?' Is it religious? Is it cult-y? Oh shit, it might be cult-y.
Just fixed it, it's a cult.
Either way, though, this first draft is giving me ideas back to how I used to write first drafts. They didn't used to be quite so short, when I was first starting out, but now they are, because that's how my writing processes has evolved. It's like I'm a seriously involved plotter, when I've always really identified as more of a pantser--but does that really mean anything when you do write your first outline like you're racing through gravel roads and taking shortcuts through the corn, but then it turns out that's a severely in-depth outline and then you end up writing your second draft by outline?
I don't know. I just write the damn things.
It is worth mentioning that the project I'm currently querying, which I do think is the best thing I've written to date, was written partially by outline on the first draft. The second half of the book I did outline, because I was getting excited and had thought out how the rest of the book went and wanted to write it down. That first draft, if I'm remembering correctly, came out at about 40k (the project is now around 80k in its proto-final state). So it still grows, even if the first draft is longer than my usual weird outline-style of thing.
But this one, my current one which is just titled TCYA (the letters don't even make a title, it's literally just 'true crime young adult), the first draft is extremely rambly. I'm figuring out the characters, figuring out intricacies of the plot, not just pushing them off onto future Aurora, and I'm interested to see how rewrites on this one goes. I'm also interested in seeing how long a final product of this one will end up being, because, um. There's a lot going on here.
This time around, with my current first draft, though, it's different. Granted, I'm only at about 22k right now. But I've still got like, two murders (okay, one attempted) thought up, and I have no real intention of skipping over the in-betweens. I know how it's going to end, but I don't know how it's going to get there. I don't know why it's happening yet. I know what's happening, but I went from my original idea of why to, as I put it in a tweet, 'slow-burn reverse children of the corn?' Is it religious? Is it cult-y? Oh shit, it might be cult-y.
Just fixed it, it's a cult.
Either way, though, this first draft is giving me ideas back to how I used to write first drafts. They didn't used to be quite so short, when I was first starting out, but now they are, because that's how my writing processes has evolved. It's like I'm a seriously involved plotter, when I've always really identified as more of a pantser--but does that really mean anything when you do write your first outline like you're racing through gravel roads and taking shortcuts through the corn, but then it turns out that's a severely in-depth outline and then you end up writing your second draft by outline?
I don't know. I just write the damn things.
It is worth mentioning that the project I'm currently querying, which I do think is the best thing I've written to date, was written partially by outline on the first draft. The second half of the book I did outline, because I was getting excited and had thought out how the rest of the book went and wanted to write it down. That first draft, if I'm remembering correctly, came out at about 40k (the project is now around 80k in its proto-final state). So it still grows, even if the first draft is longer than my usual weird outline-style of thing.
But this one, my current one which is just titled TCYA (the letters don't even make a title, it's literally just 'true crime young adult), the first draft is extremely rambly. I'm figuring out the characters, figuring out intricacies of the plot, not just pushing them off onto future Aurora, and I'm interested to see how rewrites on this one goes. I'm also interested in seeing how long a final product of this one will end up being, because, um. There's a lot going on here.
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