First Draft 1.3 — Pre-Purchase Ownership, Cooling Off, Sharing Rough Drafts, & More!
(1.18.16 First Draft was the “rough draft” of Rough Draft’s name • update)
This is a big update that we’re very excited to announce. Along with new features, we offer some hints of the direction that First Draft will be going in the months to come. So without further ado…
Own your writing, even before unlocking
Now you can copy the rough draft of your text without even purchasing. This can be helpful when you want to share First Draft with a friend that wants to try writing in it, but is worried about not being able to export what they write.
Also, now first time First Draft-ers can feel comfortable letting go and writing comfortably before making the decision whether or not to unlock First Draft with a purchase. We want to give our thanks to Christian for being straight with his feelings and helping us realize the need for this feature.
Thanks Christian!🙏
Now you can “copy out the text” of the rough version of your first draft. Take note, you’ll still have to strip out the struckthrough words. (speaking of notes… stay tuned for future updates!)
A little more leeway on fixing typos…
How often do you notice a typo milliseconds after your brain forced your thumb to slam down on that space bar? If you’re like Jessie (and us!), this probably happened pretty often…
We didn’t want to assume and autocorrect “typos” for you, so we came up with a different solution: a one second window between hitting the space bar and starting your next word, where you can correct typos.
We’re still trying to find the right balance between helping writers (and us!) resist premature edits, while allowing fixing typos. We think we’re heading in the right direction with this cool(ing) feature. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Spanish ISO keyboard support & more
After a false start on implementing Spanish accented character support, thanks to a few writers’ patient feedback we’ve now added support for what seems to be the most popular Spanish keyboard (ISO).
We’re also happy to have added in 🇧🇷Brazilian Portuguese layouts and 🇮🇹Italian accented character support.
Stay focused on the word you’re writing
A few writers emailed us asking for a feature to hide words they’d already written. We thought this was a great idea to help keep focus where it should be for first drafts — on moving forward. So we’ve added a slider in the settings to adjust the opacity of your text.
Experiment with it yourself and find the perfect balance of opacity that fits your flow!
Share your rough first drafts
Have you ever shared a first draft of your writing, only to get back a bunch of feedback on the commas, misspellings, and other grammatical issues?
Handwritten first drafts are great — their rough nature and strikeouts add context for the reader about where a draft is in the writing process. Kind of like this first draft of Frankenstein.
With the context that a handwritten first draft adds, there’s less risk of getting feedback on commas when it looks like that. The reader focuses on what was written, more than how it was written.
That’s why with First Draft we’ve now added the ability to export your draft rough. Just take a peek in the “More export options” menu. (And keep your eye on this spot in the future!)
This is what you get after exporting your rough draft to email:
Just like it’s important for you to remember that it’s just a first draft when writing, it’s important for your first reader to remember the same. Sending your first reader your rough strikethrough filled first draft helps them remember the context of what they’re reading.
Getting a copy of your first draft to a friend as fast as possible is also important to get you the feedback needed to move forward towards publishing. But it’s also scary and intimidating to share with others (at least for the writers on our team it is!).
Sharing a rough draft — in all its strikethrough-ed glory — helps us get over the fear of having to share something perfect. It helps us test our ideas early, before spending the hours, days, and weeks painstakingly revising and perfecting them. Yes it’s rough, but it’s clear that’s just how it’s supposed to be at the moment!
There’s more to come!
We’re really excited about what’s coming next for First Draft, and chances are if you’re reading this on this medium you will be too! Stay tuned over the next few weeks — follow us here on Medium or on Twitter to be the first to know!
If you haven’t updated yet, or haven’t tried First Draft:
