Hear me out on this one. There’s a lot of advice out there (I’ve given it myself) about being okay with writing a shitty first draft, and I basically agree with the premise. Too many new writers get paralyzed with the expectation that they should be able to sit down and barf out a flawless masterpiece, when in actuality good stuff usually requires a TON of editing in the post-first-draft stages.
However. As someone who has been writing and editing my shit for 20 years now, I must say that, more and more, when I get lost in the weeds in a writing project, when I get so far down a theoretical rabbit hole I can’t remember what the fuck my story is even supposed to be about, when I get to that point where I feel like the more I write the worse it gets… it’s the first draft I return to for clues about the real essence of what it is I’m trying to write. And it never, ever lets me down.
Your first draft has magic in it.
That initial spark, that thread of a story, that excitement you had that made you want to start this project… it’s living somewhere inside your first draft, and it’s precious as fuck. And it’s a sad truth that, sometimes, the more you edit, the more that spark gets lost. So you may need to return to your first draft to find it again.
I’m not saying don’t edit. I’m not saying that your first draft is a genius work of art that’s ready to publish. I’m saying there’s SOMETHING in there which is true and magical and important, and in the long run it may do you a disservice to think of it as “shitty,” crappy, useless, garbage, etc. You may miss out on what it has to offer you.
Things you might discover in your first draft that can get your project back on track (and/or get you excited again about a piece that’s started to make you cranky):
A particular character you love who you decided “wasn’t important” and cut from your story
An important emotion that’s being conveyed
A unique rhythm or style that got lost after too much editing
A fun story thread
An atmosphere, place, or description that excites you
A general feeling in the writing or the story
A sense of why you wanted to write this in the first place
What do you all think? Has this happened to you? Do you ever go back to your first draft and realize it’s NOT garbage? That it has something special you want to keep and develop throughout your editing process?
I haven't read any of them all the way through, but I have seen some of the art -- looks like Don Lawrence did the art for the first two and Vicente Segrelles did the third one. I should try reading through the first Storm book, it does sound fun.
Perhaps because my partner's into auto racing, when I saw these coin beads, I immediately thought of a checkered flag. I got these hematite flat rectangles and thought they looked like the asphalt of a race track. Added in the toggle which looked a bit like a lug nut.
He really liked it and wore it a few weeks ago for the Indy 500 weekend.
What do a ladder, a group of monks, and a host of angels and demons reveal about medieval spirituality? Alice Isabella Sullivan explains the icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, one of the most influential images of the Byzantine Middle Ages.
Fandoms: 9-1-1, Addicted, Bad Together, Baywatch, Boo Bitch, Bridgerton, Charmed, Cobra Kai, Derry Girls, DOC - Nelle Tue Mani, Dune: Prophecy, Free!, Legend of the Seeker, Neumatt, Once Upon a Time, One Piece, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, The Handmaid's Tale, Twinkling Watermelon, XO Kitty
Starting today: Summer of the 69 is an old-fashioned panfandom fest that runs from June 9th through September 6th, to hit 6/9 in both common date formats. It's dedicated to creations featuring the sexual position in question, though it doesn't have to be the first, last, or only sexual position featured in a given work.
Contributions are open to all sorts of non-gen-AI works and content, from recs to fics to art to crafts to podfic to vids to just about anything legal you can think of, and are open to all fandoms and original works. The fest features themes introduced weekly that themselves typically run for two weeks, to give participants some inspiration to work off of. There's also a comment meme in the style of old-fashioned kink memes, where you can prompt scenarios to your heart's content!
To learn more, go to summerofthe69; you can also check out this year's theme calendar right here, add prompts to the comment meme over here, and browse the AO3 collections for this and past years over here.
⟢ PICK THREE DETAILS MAXIMUM! your reader doesn’t need to know every piece of furniture. Give them the broken clock on the mantle, the smell of cigarettes embedded in the couch, the water stain on the ceiling shaped like Italy. Their brain will fill in the rest. You’re not writing an insurance inventory!!!
⟢ Use the senses people forget. Everyone does sight and sound, but what about: the metallic taste of fear, the way humidity makes your clothes stick, the phantom itch of being watched, that gross feeling when you touch something unexpectedly wet. GET WEIRD WITH IT
⟢ MOTION IN YOUR DESCRIPTIONS!! (Please?) don’t just tell me the curtains are blue, tell me they’re “shuddering in the AC blast” or “hanging limp like they’ve given up.” Static description is a sleep aid. Make things MOVE
⟢ Your narrator’s voice should COLOR everything! A depressed character won’t describe the sunset as “beautiful mauve and amber streaking across the sky,” they’ll think “the sun’s dying again, doing its whole performance art thing with the clouds”
⟢ Stop with the mirror descriptions! :( “She looked in the mirror and saw her auburn hair and green eyes” NO. Banned. Forbidden. Find literally any other way. Have another character notice. Show through action. Slip details in naturally. The mirror thing is lazy and we all know it
⟢ Similes and metaphors: COMMIT OR DON’T DO IT! “like” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. “Her anger was like a storm” is BORING. “Her anger rolled in with the methodical inevitability of a hurricane, and he was standing in a trailer park in Florida” now we’re TALKING
Call me Crows. Or Birdy. This journal is an attempt to collect all of my fanworks in one place. Old fanwork is backdated for archiving purposes. >> AO3 >> GoodReads >> GoodReads (Comics) >> Dragon Age World State
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