Writing terrible first drafts: Why a bad first draft is fine

‘My writing sucks. I’ll never be published.’ It’s easy to be hard on yourself when writing a book, but writing terrible first drafts is more than inevitable: It’s necessary. The different stages of the novel-writing process serve individual purposes. You wouldn’t expect a brainstorming session for finding story ideas to yield a complete, polished novel. Yet many writers make the mistake of expecting their first draft to be publishable. Here are several reasons why you should not attempt to write a perfect first draft:

Successful writers create three or more drafts

Some respected authors’ books seem so flawless that it’s hard to imagine them toiling through multiple drafts and revisions. Even when they speak in interviews, they might seem to always have the best-formed phrase ready. In reality, most successful writers create more than one draft – many don’t stop at the first or second draft of their novel.

Write each draft with a different aim in mind, focusing in on different elements of your novel:

• The first draft of a book is where you create the skeleton for your final novel and get to know your characters. The result is seldom a publishable work, even for experienced writers.
• The second draft lets you focus at a more microscopic level, tweaking characters’ personalities, plot events, aspects such as pacing, scene order and more.
• From the third draft onwards you can focus more on polishing the text, revising and cutting scenes where necessary while also paying greater attention to details of language use such as grammar and punctuation.

Writing terrible first drafts eases crippling perfectionism

It is a common trait for writers to be perfectionists about their work. But if you try write the perfect sentence, the perfect metaphor or the perfect fictional dialogue every time you will set yourself up for writer’s block. Procrastination often goes hand in hand with perfectionism: fear of missteps could leave you finding ways to avoid taking any steps at all. It is wise to always remember the writing advice of the prolific writer Jodi Picoult: You can always edit a bad page; you can’t edit a blank one.

Focusing on small-scale elements can result in a weak larger structure

If you write a first draft by focusing on the smallest details of description and scene-setting, you might find that this microscopic focus leaves a clumsy larger shape for your novel. One of the advantages of intentionally writing a loose, less controlled first draft is that you can put in place basic scaffolding that makes later improvements easier. To use a metaphor: It’s harder to paint and decorate a wall if a wobbly foundation causes it to crack repeatedly.

Here are several small-scale elements you should reserve for later drafts:

• Details of language use: Unsure whether this compound noun should be hyphenated? Uncertain whether your use of ‘that’ and ‘which’ is correct? Make a small note or place a comment in ‘review’ mode in your word processor and come back to it later.
• Dialogue refining: Does a conversation feel stilted? Could a heated debate or argument be turned up hotter? Reading dialogue out loud will help you hear better whether your use of it is natural or not, but you can leave this for later drafts.
• First and last sentences: Don’t worry too much for the time being whether each chapter begins in a gripping way or whether or not each section’s ending will make readers keep reading. If you think of a headline in a newspaper, these are written after the stories they accompany are complete. Having the scope of your first draft in mind will help you craft these key elements in such a way that they either set up the action to come brilliantly or create smooth segues to subsequent scenes.

Why writing terrible first drafts is wise: the ‘closed door’ draft

Acclaimed, bestselling horror, mystery and suspense writer Stephen King calls the first draft the ‘closed door’ draft. ‘Closed door’ meaning that the first draft of a book is for the writer’s eyes only. Of course, sharing parts of your novel in progress with other writers or trusted readers is helpful as it will motivate you and provide valuable feedback. But writing terrible first drafts is normal and early critique providers should keep this in mind.

Even though you might be sharing small sections of your work as you go for support and guidance, resist the temptation to shop your first draft around to literary agencies or publishers. Finishing the first draft of a book is worth celebrating. Nevertheless it is important to wait and revise and polish what you’ve written so that decision-makers such as agents or publishers can see your work in the best possible light.

Giving yourself license to write a bad first draft avoids unproductive comparisons

We look at examples of published fiction by our favourite writers and our own efforts seem paltry in comparison. Even when we understand that this is a writer’s final draft, worked over multiple times, we compare our own work to these polished end results. However, very few writers actually produce strong first drafts. Hemingway rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms 37 times. Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, famously wrote about the necessity of producing “shitty first drafts.”

Even knowing these facts often doesn’t help writers struggling to finish a first draft. In those cases, it’s necessary to come up with strategies to break through this block and push forward.

Writing terrible first drafts provides necessary freedom

Some people call the first version of a novel a ‘discovery draft’. Sometimes it can help to think of the first pass as a pre-first draft. As best-selling author Neil Gaiman recommends, tell yourself that the first draft doesn’t matter. If you aren’t really writing the book, then it’s okay for large parts of it to be terrible. Thinking of the first pass in this way can free you up to move on from a passage with a note to yourself like ‘Gilbert discovers his true parentage here’ or simply ‘fight scene.’ Don’t get too bogged down on scenes that are giving you trouble; try to write them, and if they aren’t working, move on and revisit them later.

A free approach to first drafts avoids anxious looking back

As you continue writing, you will probably find elements of the story (such as plot, characterisation, setting or dialogue) changing. It’s likely that these will change in ways that make some of what you’ve written earlier irrelevant or contradictory. At this point, the temptation will be strong to back up and fix those parts of the novel before you can go forward. It will begin to seem almost like a necessity. How can you carry on when you know those pages need to be rewritten?

At this stage, you simply need to focus on moving forward rather than looking back. The problem with going back is that it is all too easy to find yourself doing so in an endless, obsessive loop, forever fixing problems and never really moving ahead with the story. Furthermore, no matter how much tinkering you do on your first draft, there’s a good chance you will make substantial changes in subsequent revisions anyway. In that case, all that work and rewriting will be wasted.

Giving yourself greater license prevents the ‘saggy middle’

The middle of the book is a danger zone for writers at every stage of their careers. The initial excitement of the idea for the novel may have departed by this point. You might feel that the end is nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, no matter what the book is about, it suddenly begins to seem like the dullest and most derivative novel anyone has ever written. Here again, the temptation will be to go back and rewrite from the beginning in an attempt to ‘save’ the book. Again, it’s important to push forward with the terrible first draft and remember that any single element you don’t completely love now can be refined when your start revising.

The important thing to remember about writing a first draft is that without one, terrible or not, you have nothing to work with. Once you have the story down on paper, you can change it to your heart’s content. No one need ever see that terrible first draft. However terrible it is, it is the scaffolding on which you will build your novel, a novel which will improve and become more and more publishable with subsequent drafts.

Do you write terrible first drafts? Or is there another method for writing first drafts that works for you?