How I Write: The First Draft

This is the fifth installment in the “HOW I WRITE” series I’m participating in every Wednesday with several writers, where we all discuss how we approach writing a book. Every writer has a different process and this project gives us a chance to share and compare ours. Click on the “How I Write” image to find a list of the participating writers and links to their blogs.

This week’s topic is The First Draft.

Once I’ve completed the 8 preparation steps I discussed during last week’s topic on Starting a New Book, writing the first draft is a rather simple process. I take the outline I created in my spreadsheet and transfer it into a Word document in the format of a book. Sometimes my outlines contain actual snippets of dialog or narrative from scenes, other times there’s only the summary of the events. Either way – I paste it into in my Word document as if they were actual scenes / chapters. By the time I’m actually ready to start drafting, I already have a few thousand words of story with designated scenes and chapters!

So at this point, finishing the first draft is moreso about “filling in the blanks” than anything else. I visit each summary or incomplete scene I already wrote and flesh it out. I do a couple of scenes a day, with each day visiting the last scene I wrote before to make sure it flows smoothly. For instance, on Monday I may flesh out the first chapter. On Tueday, I’ll go over chapter 1 again and then dive into chapter 2. On Wednesday, I’ll revisit chapter 2 before fleshing out chapter 3, and so on. But because I already generally have the entire story laid out, every once in a while I sometimes flesh out scenes out of order. I use Word’s Document Map feature to help me jump from scene to scene and chapter to chapter easily.

That’s it. Actually writing the first draft sounds simple when I write it out. If only it were simple to get my butt in the chair and write every time I’m supposed to … *sighs*

Don’t forget to visit other participating blogs to see how other writers develop characters, plots and imaginary worlds. Come back for next week’s topic: Motivation / Getting Through the Middle.