Shitty First Drafts

[wolffyluna]

There's a common piece of writing advice that goes "Your first draft will be terrible. It will be the worst writing ever. It will be a steaming pile of bullcrap that even a dog wouldn't eat. But that's okay :D! Because your later drafts will be infinitely better :D!"

Okay, I'll admit to exageratting there. A little But I stil hate that writing advice. Deeply. I'm sure it's great advice for some people! I mean, I doubt it is, but that's probably me typical minding.

But that advice severely knocked about my writing confidence for several years, for no good reason.

You see, to my eye, my first drafts are fine. Sure, they've got rough edges, but they're basically okay. My second drafts and third etc drafts aren't necessarily that different? The prose might be a bit nicer, scenes flow together better, but there's no huge jumps in quality. They're pretty similar.

Which meant under the 'first drafts are shit' paradigm, one of two things was happening:

1. My first drafts were shit, my second drafts were not, I was just really bad at judging writing quality.
2. My first drafts were shit, my second drafts were also shit because they were not that different from the first drafts, and I should never try and judge the quality of literature ever again.

None of those were exactly comforting! And it really messed up my ability to be confident in my writing for some time.

I ended up getting myself unstuck by learning 3 things:

1. Any writing advice that makes it harder to write is bad advice.
2. Any writing advice or truism that cannot articulate why it is the case or why it is helpful advice should be treated as deeply suspect
3. I saw people actually articulate the use of the Shitty First Drafts Principle. It was about getting ideas down fast and freely without worrying about the quality of the prose, or whether the plot was consistent, or whatever.

I tend to write weirdly detailed outlines. Like, outlines that include individual lines of dialogue or rough sketches of dialogue, that level of detail. I find these useful because they let me get ideas down fast and freely, without worrying about making pretty prose, and let me fix any inconsistencies during the outlining phase before committing to a whole ass prose draft.

...So, basically what I was doing was making a shitty first draft, except I called it an outline.

But I still reject the framing of 'shitty first draft'.

1. Now that I'm more confident in my writing ability, I'm much more comfortable saying this: Do you want to call my work shitty to my face? Ooooh, you're just "generalising" and "including yourself as well" and "helping other artists". No. If you want to call my work shitty, say that in a review and provide citations. Do not say that kind of stuffy lightly, or without the understanding of the power behind it.
2. My outlines are not a first draft. They are outlines. They are not prose. And saying they're bad prose is like saying storyboards are bad animation. That's not how this works.

(...I didn't realise how strong my feelings were about this, or how swearing I would get. Sorry about that?)

(I think also the difference between the people this advice works for and me is that they find the idea that they can make writing that's "bad" or "shitty" to be freeing, while for I find that constricting.)

Comments

[yvannairie]

I also think that's another big advice that's been hit with people conflating "not perfect" with "bad" -- a thing the internet and people and society is known for doing. Like other people have told you, the point is to make yourself more open to no first draft being flawless so you're more tolerant of the jank that gets smoothed out by the process and don't get overwhelmed by the "wow this is nothing like how I imagined it would be" response -- a response that not even every creative has, mind, it depends a lot on what type of an imaginative someone is.

That being said, you aren't exaggerating at all, and I'm also kind of frustrated at how "first draft" has been reduced to a slur, and how much editing/editorialising your own stories is valorised. It does a disservice to the kind of writing that ages better the less it's edited, because with repeated reading you can trace out the bones of the feeling jutting out from under the prose. (Gone are the days when we'd put "unbetaed/written in a daze/this exploded out of my chest, behold the gory aftermath" as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on something that Wanted Out, I guess.)

I actually got into an argument about this with one of my betas after they started smoothing out every sentence of a draft that was Good To Publish after the worst grammatical fouls were cleaned up -- there's value in writing that isn't polished to a mirror sheen. What is a mistake elsewhere can be a part of the texture in some other place.

(I also feel you on the outlining. That's where the shitty, scrambly, messy part happens -- first draft is where we either see if the thing comes to life or if I've set the bones down wrong. If I hate the thing after the first draft, that's not a sign that the draft is shitty, that's a sign that the bones of it are.)

[chocochipbiscuit]

That being said, you aren't exaggerating at all, and I'm also kind of frustrated at how "first draft" has been reduced to a slur, and how much editing/editorialising your own stories is valorised. It does a disservice to the kind of writing that ages better the less it's edited, because with repeated reading you can trace out the bones of the feeling jutting out from under the prose. (Gone are the days when we'd put "unbetaed/written in a daze/this exploded out of my chest, behold the gory aftermath" as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on something that Wanted Out, I guess.)


If I may ask, what sort of writing do you think is better with less editing? I'm asking because I don't often edit/revise for very short flash pieces, but I'm also at a point in my writing (whether because of my personal preferences shifting, or just because I've moved away from writing very short prompt fics or PWP smut and more towards longer stories or ones with more specific thematic elements in mind) where I genuinely don't enjoy my first drafts. I can enjoy elements of the first drafts—the ones that capture the feeling or joy or whatever I initially had in mind—and don't necessarily think it's all bad, but I rarely consider them worth posting.

And 'worth posting' is more about my own feelings to the work rather than whether or not I think someone else would enjoy it. I only post if I think I will still enjoy the work, seeing it later on AO3, rather than trying to play mental games on how many kudos or comments it might receive. But I fully admit that I'm also someone who has somewhat dodgy relationship with checking stats on AO3, so I disable kudos notifications as an effort to nip that in the bud.

(I also feel you on the outlining. That's where the shitty, scrambly, messy part happens -- first draft is where we either see if the thing comes to life or if I've set the bones down wrong. If I hate the thing after the first draft, that's not a sign that the draft is shitty, that's a sign that the bones of it are.)

BUT ALSO THIS THIS THIS. I try to extensively outline so I can at least get a functional first draft, but!!! The first draft is, by its nature, the first 'complete' (finished) version of the fic and going to be the weakest! That's where the flaws are the most staggering, and even if it's not a 'shitty fic' per se, it's still going to lack the improvements, edits, and revisions that go into the second draft! And if the bones are wrong then by golly I need to re-outline the whole thing, but that doesn't mean that my first draft wasn't, in fact, a first draft.

[yvannairie]

Honestly, as a person who primarily writes for myself (not even fic, most of the time -- half of my drafts are just "let's explore this one worldbuilding detail at excruciating length" like I'm trying to bullshit a literature essay except I Do This For Fun) I don't know how to approach the question of what is "worth posting". I write a lot more than I post, and while I haven't turned off notifications b/c it's fun seeing who likes my work, I also don't pay a lot of attention to it unless I'm trying to start a conversation or elicit a specific response. As soon as I have that, I forget about it, unless I get the urge to be my own fandom and go reread my own writing, which I love, a lot, because if I didn't I wouldn't have posted it. As it is, editing is more of a question of "when will I get sick of writing this thing", because frankly you can edit anything until literally the end of days, always finding something to change and tweak, but at that point you've probably been at it for so long that your text has gone through a whole evolutionary process to fit its ecological niche.

(Ha! I managed to make that bone metaphor connect :D)

I honestly don't know how others approach it, but... for me it's a texture thing. I have All Of It -- my thoughts and feelings, and biases, and connections I've made to other things -- in my head all the time, and when I blurt something out it's like making a random pouring of molten glass and then letting it sit there until I can start turning it around and examining to figure out What It Is. The editing process is like taking tools to that thing -- taking parts off, adding parts on -- to make it more of A Particular Thing, not just a heap of sensation and memory, but sometimes that's not what you want. Sometimes the thing is messy and has weird angles and is maybe even kind of unpleasant. I tend to not edit those, that are like that, because hell, if that's what the All Of It wanted to be then who am I to stop it?

I relate a lot to that Tumblr post that says writing is like being possessed by an idea and spending the entire time arguing with it, and I've also described my own brain as "constantly spinning, looking for angles through which I can see New Things in the mess of it" and sometimes my writing reflects that. Writing can be just as much an abstract excercise as any other thing.

(Admittedly, this is also just kind of where I'm at after spending like eight or nine years Telling Very Long Stories and writing Very Long Analyses and feeling unsatisfied with both my own response and the response at large to them. I guess I'll be better able to answer your question once I start feeling more like writing long, detailed and researched things :'D)

[chocochipbiscuit]

BONE METAPHOR BEST METAPHOR!!!!

As it is, editing is more of a question of "when will I get sick of writing this thing", because frankly you can edit anything until literally the end of days, always finding something to change and tweak, but at that point you've probably been at it for so long that your text has gone through a whole evolutionary process to fit its ecological niche.

Yeah, agreed. It's possible to just over-polish and keep thinking about minute edits I wish I could make—even for fics that I posted years ago and know I should just let them BE, other than glaring typos—but it's one of the reasons I tend to work better with self-imposed deadlines. I try to give myself "oh yeah, first draft should be done by the end of the month" or "finish this pass of revisions by next week" and meet those goals, which a) keeps me to a schedule, but also b) takes away some of that over-polishing because sometimes...a fic just needs to go out so I can focus on the next thing I want to write. There's a point of diminishing returns from working on the same thing over and over.

[chocochipbiscuit]

I think also the difference between the people this advice works for and me is that they find the idea that they can make writing that's "bad" or "shitty" to be freeing, while for I find that constricting.

I'm reading this with a lot of interest because I am someone who genuinely falls into the 'freeing' side of this.

Like, I've been fortunate enough to have had moments where the prose just flows. I need minimal editing, most of it comes out lovely, and I can bang out most of a fic in one sitting. Those moments are wonderful and feel incredibly relaxing when I'm in that flow state.

But most of the time, it's...not. It's work. It's enjoyable work, but it's still work.

Allowing myself to fail means that I can just focus on the work of it, the sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude that 'yeah, it's gonna be shitty, but that's okay, I can pick it over later' instead of holding out for those golden moments where it feels stunningly easy.

Anyways. I do the same thing with outlines (I love bullet points! And organized scenes! And little notes about key bits of dialogue and specific images or metaphors I want to use in the prose!) and having a good outline definitely helps lead towards a better first draft, but a first draft is, by its very nature, the 'first' and therefore weakest version of whatever you want the final project to look like. I don't consider my outlines to be first drafts, no matter how detailed, because I think I hold a mental block on calling anything with bullet points a 'first draft.'

Obviously, YMMV with all kinds of things in life. Writing advice isn't any different. Just use what works for you and kick aside what doesn't.

Thank you for the post, it made me think!

[wolffyluna]

Thank you, I'm glad it was interesting.

Yeah, I think I'm in general a bit sensitive to being told my work is 'bad,' especially when it's as a surprise or without reason, which may be playing into this a bit. But for "this is bad, and that's okay" isn't freeing, while "this isn't done yet, and that's okay" and "this is rough, and that's okay" is freeing.

I also feel like, on some level, that judging a first draft by the standards of a final draft is a bit wrongheaded? Like, a first draft is a bad final draft-- but it isn't final draft? And most of my first drafts (to my eye, at least) are... perfectly fine as first drafts? I wouldn't post them, but it's not because they're bad, because they haven't been refined and finished yet.

[chocochipbiscuit]

Speaking from my own experience, it...took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that my first drafts weren't supposed to be final drafts. Like I nodded and read the advice, but I mostly functioned thinking that my first drafts were (basically) final drafts that just needed spellchecking and typos to be caught. I was so excited to be writing and creating that I often posted stuff the same day I finished it, just because I was so excited.

I'm still excited with a lot of my stuff (and frankly! if it doesn't excite me, I don't know why I'm writing it!) but I've become more relaxed about waiting to post, and looking for the structural or thematic revisions that need to be made rather than just going "welp, close enough!"

[wolffyluna]

Yeah, same here.

[lb_lee]

Man, I LOATHE outlining. I only started doing it with the really big long things where I realized that after fifty short stories written out of order, I needed to be sure of what happened when so I didn't have basic continuity errors like, say, two stories taking place right next to each other but in different seasons.

But I can't go in-depth or I just stiffen up.

In my case, writing shitty is honestly liberating because I wanted to learn to suck exuberantly and break my own perfectionism. But I don't go around telling other people their work sucks, that's a jerk move.

I do think that over-editing is a problem. I look through some of my old-ass work, and I see the parts I just edited over and over, never getting anywhere, reaching the writing equivalent of that poor schmuck who draws all their art at 200% print size and fixates on making every line perfectly smooth even though nobody will even notice when it's printed. (I have known people like this. I am shocked they manage to FINISH anything, it sounds awful.)

Sometimes, a writer just has to let it go and accept when it's done. But I think there's a lot of anxiety and insecurity about it, so folks cut themselves down and say how shitty their work is so they can beat everyone to the punch.

--Rogan

[wolffyluna]

I'm kinda that opposite, re: outlining. It was a full on 'choir of angels descending through the clouds' moment when I learned how to outline, and saw how useful it was to me. I found that by not having to make things be prose straight away, I could make things quicker and more freer because I wasn't having to juggle 'what happens next?' and 'how do I write what happens in a way that sounds good' at the same time. But yeah, I do get how for some people, outlining would just make things a bit stiffer.

I think for me, it's kind of a framing thing? For a lot of people the frame of 'this first draft is bad' is helpful, while for me the frame of 'this first draft is not done yet' is more helpful. And I think most of the people going around shouting "Your first draft is going to inevitably be terrible!" are trying to spread the good word of writing freely and not worrying too much in early stages-- but it doesn't land that way to me.

And it is possible to smooth/edit stuff out way to much, to the point where one is either going in circles, or accidentally smoothing the voice out of it.

I also get the idea of being self deprecating before anyone can be other-deprecating, but I find it still rankles. Especially because I had it drilled into me early on (in a performance context, but I do think this applies to other types of art): The audience often doesn't know what was meant to happen. You can get away with theatrical-murder if you don't let the audience know a mistake happened, or something stuffed up. So you never tell the audience that a mistake happened or that something is bad.