Why You Need That Bad First Draft
A loving look at that thing most writers hate: the first draft
For most writers, getting started on writing that project (fiction or non) is the most difficult part. You start, delete, restart, delete and many times, walk away from the idea because you feel like you don’t know how to start the thing “right”. Maybe a few months go by and when you think about picking it up again, you’re filled with a sense of dread because you know that it’s a long way from being Shirley-Jackson-First-Paragraph level good.
I want to tell you a secret that I just discovered by riding it out and sticking with it and spending two years procrastinating because I thought I was “wasting time” on a shitty first draft. Want to know what it is? Lean in close, now….
Even Shirley Jackson wrote a crap first draft. So did Stephen King. So did Elizabeth Gilbert and Ken Follett and George R-Fucking-R Martin! And Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hammett…EVERYONE WHO IS AMAZING WRITES A SHITTY FIRST DRAFT. And here’s the thing: you know how they got better? Go ahead — guess. Okay, don’t. I’ll just tell you: They kept. Fucking. Going.
They wrote that opening paragraph that has way too much exposition! They wrote dialogue laden with cliches and exposition. In fact, they probably info-dumped the entire novel in the first chapter. But they kept on going. They got to understand their setting and their characters by writing it wrong, realizing it was wrong, and what specifically about it was wrong…so they could figure out how to do it RIGHT.
No, really! There is no such thing as wasted time if you are writing, because even if it is UTTER CRAP and you delete it the next day, you are still one step closer to unlocking the mystery of what it is you’re trying to say in the best possible way. I think we, as humans, are enormously impatient with ourselves. We want the words that flow to all be sublime bits of wisdom that fall from our fingertips like magnificently tasty cookie crumbs.
To be clear, I’m not saying you should stand by your shitty first draft. No! Tear that fucker down when it needs to come down! Believe me, you’ll know when it’s time. With me, it’s often ten minutes after I’ve written it. As long as you understand why it’s not working, and what you need to do to make it better, it was all worth it.
Remember that the first rule of writing — and life, really — is KEEP GOING. For me it’s actually KEEP FUCKING GOING because I talk like a stevedore. But that’s just me. Don’t be afraid that it’s going to suck, because it’s totally going to suck…at first. Work it over and over and over and it will get better. That info dump in Chapter 1? Eventually, you will find places where it can come up more naturally in dialogue or a random remark that shows us all we need to know about the character. Or maybe it won’t and that part of the backstory that you thought was so important at the beginning is really more just something that you, the writer, needs to know. Maybe it’s not important to the story you’re telling and it turns out the reader doesn’t need to know it at all. Or maybe they do, but it’s way more powerful if it’s revealed much later, say at the end of Act 2.
Whatever the case may be, know this: it’s all useful stuff for YOU, even if it’s horrible. It takes you to where you need to go, and that’s important. So get out there and write it! Then, edit the crap out of it a bunch of times. But whatever you do, keep going.
