The First Draft

The first draft is where the adventure officially begins. You've thought of a plot, created a cast of characters, and you're ready to begin! Perhaps you don't have every little detail figured out, but that's perfectly okay. That's a big part of what the first draft is for: finding out what works, what doesn't, and just seeing what happens along the way.

The differences between your first and second drafts will probably be pretty major, and the differences between the first draft and final draft absolutely will be. When writing the first draft (also known as the "rough draft"), I like to write out my story almost as if it were a screenplay - describing scenes the way I imagine them, but shortening things like adjectives for dialogue. It gets the main ideas on the page without having to go back and change things to fit the format of a novel. I often just call this the "planning draft".

I've recently discovered that writing scenes IN ORDER is very helpful. I used to write whichever scene I developed in my mind, regardless of it's chronological placement. This ended up being rather confusing, but it works for some people. Remember, your first draft WILL be rough - play around with different styles to find what you prefer, and go write that novel!

These are my notebooks from over the past few years. All of them are nearly full (if not entirely full) of draft after draft after draft! Sometimes you change your mind about a plot point, or want to start over to smooth things out a little more - which is exactly why your story will more than likely have multiple different versions before you reach the finished product.