First Drafts: When to Forge on and When to Stop and Think

Or, the Necessity of Breaking Your Own Rules

I have certain rules that I abide by when writing, and one of them has to do with first drafts. It’s simple: when writing a first draft, don’t stop and think. Keep looking forward and let the momentum of the story carry you through to the end. Don’t second-guess what you’ve written until you reach the end.

I have this rule because I’ll sometimes notice issues while I’m writing a first draft, and I’m often tempted to stop and fix them before continuing with the story. But in practice, I have found that following this temptation is a really good way to kill stories. The first draft is about following my inspiration and getting my ideas out of my head and onto the paper. These ideas almost always come out of my head imperfectly, and there’s always work to be done to refine it, but that’s fine. If I try to chase the problems before I’ve even got everything down on paper, I interrupt that process of generating ideas and kill my momentum. It is possible to get the momentum back, but at that point, my attempts to edit the story prematurely often sow doubt about the project that can prove poisonous. If I want to overcome this doubt and actually finish projects, I have to allow myself the space to write badly. Yes, I am a firm believer in Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” idea. You can’t make a masterpiece in just one draft, so the important thing is to let the words flow, then come back and refine the story later when you have something to work with.

That is my standard process, and in nearly every case, it has worked wonders for me. My ability to finish projects has greatly improved once I formalized this as a rule for myself. But there’s this funny thing about writing rules: at some point, they all need to be broken. And a recent experience with a problematic first draft taught me how and when to break this one.

The story in question features an amnesiac main character with a troubled past that we find in a chaotic state of mind at the start. I was incredibly interested in this main character, and this excitement carried me through the first 4,500 words or so. But then the story began to fizzle out. All of a sudden, I couldn’t find the forward momentum anymore. I realized that, while I had established a strong character and setting, the plot became weak in the latter half of what I had up to that point. It was constructed without care, and now it had crashed to the ground, unable to support my story any further.

I was devastated because I was still in love with my main character. But I had no choice. I had to do the unthinkable: step back and look at what I had written so far. Most of the issues that come up in my first drafts are pretty fixable, and are not usually so serious that they would compromise my ability to move forward. That’s why I move past them. At worst, I might have to come back and rearrange a few scenes. But it wasn’t the case with this story. These problems had killed the momentum entirely. Even if I tried to forge on, the existing issues would infect the story so thoroughly that it would be incredibly difficult to root them out if I left them for a second draft.

After giving the story some thought, I realized that I needed a second pair of eyes. I contacted a good friend (the one that reviews lion statues here - yes, really) and he set me straight. He pointed out that most of my problem has to do with how the main character’s amnesia is handled. Amnesia is a plot device that I had never used before, and I completely underestimated the issues with using it effectively. Using his feedback, I created a plan to fix the story and get it back on track.

I’m happy that the story didn’t die, and that my favorite psychological disaster of a main character gets to live on. But this experience made me partially rethink my approach to first drafts. To be clear, I am not getting rid of my rule about keeping the momentum in the first draft. I still maintain that this is important. I’m not about to start halting all of my stories at the very first sign of trouble. But I realize now that there are exceptions to my rule, times when you can’t postpone the problems for later.

So, when writing first drafts, when do you forge on, and when do you stop and think? If you ever run into this scenario, I think there are two main questions to ask yourself:

1. How difficult would the problem be to fix if I came back to it later?

2. How likely is the problem to kill my momentum if I ignore it?

Again, first drafts are not meant to be perfect, so this isn’t a question of making a flawless story the first time around. This is about doing what you need to do to keep moving forward. So if it’s not a core problem, it’s not interfering with your process in the present, and ignoring it isn’t going to derail your story, make a note to come back to it later and then keep writing. But if it’s a more serious problem, and if ignoring it might create new issues in your story that compound the longer you ignore it, then I would consider stopping and rethinking what you have.

Onwards, writing friends!