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

[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.