Tell the Truth Tuesday: What My First Draft Looks Like

Okay, so I'm in first-draft mode again. Writing, writing, writing, as per my "new year's resolutions" I posted a few weeks ago.

I saw this picture on Facebook, and it pretty much sums up what my first drafts look like in my head...

           ...aaaannndd in actuality:

So yeah.

What does your first draft look like?

Drafting, Drafting

Okay, so I recently started drafting another novel, and for me, it's equivalent to a race. A sprint. When I draft, I draft.

Usually I can fly through a novel in a matter of days, but the amount of work it takes to clean that up later is astronomical.

This has kept me from drafting anything of length in quite a while. See, recently I've wanted my writing to be perfect when I draft it. I don't want to have to go through the pain of revisions to fix it. (Which makes no sense, because I really like revising!)

Anyway, I'm trying something a little bit new for me during the drafting stage.

Balloons.

In the past, I've highlighted things in yellow that need more thought/attention. That's it. So I draft, writing writing writing, and anything that needs more thought than I can give it at the time gets highlighted.

Well, in addition to that, I'm ballooning myself too. So I have some highlighted things (like the name of a city that needs more thought) and this time I'm also writing notes to myself.

So on page 97, when I realize that I need to spend more time in the previous pages mentioning a character I've forgotten about, I balloon myself a note.

Or when I've written a previous scene completely wrong because I've forgotten about someone's ability, I balloon it so I can go back and fix it later.

See, I'm all about drafting a whole novel before fixing anything. In the past, I've merely noted it mentally and moved on. I'm sure you can imagine how that's ended.

So balloons. It's my new drafting technique. So far, so good.

What tips and tricks do you have for drafting?

Outlining My WiP - Does That Count As Writing?

My WiP is whipping me. Really hard. This idea is not totally fleshed out and it's killing me. And my characters are supposed to be the dead ones! Argh!

So instead of doing actual writing on the story, per say, I've been compiling information about my characters. And yes, even making a basic plot outline (*shudders*) of where I want things to go and all that. It's going to be a mystery, so I have to do some planning. I need motivation. I need things to line up. I need my alternate world to make sense. Maybe this whole I-don't-outline thing is what's killing me. So I gave it a try. Seriously, I don't know how anyone outlines. It was a complete and utter nightmare and I only felt more frustrated afterward. Like I didn't accomplish a friggin' thing except neglect my child and eat a lot of Swedish fish. I need someone to post on outlining. Anyone?

But the whole character profiling has been helpful. I've been really focusing on weaving in some small details about each person that will end up being important to the mystery. Of course, I don't know who the culprit will be (heck, I don't even know what the mystery is! Death? Maybe. Something stolen? Perhaps. I really don't know yet), but I do know I want this novel to have interesting and quirky characters, so I've been more focused on that. I feel like this is an element that is always missing in my first drafts, and I'm trying to get some things down FIRST this time.

It's been interesting. Different. A little exciting, but mostly frustrating. Like I said in a post last week, I don't really know the characters, so this whole writing-down-traits has been difficult and slow in coming. Which is probably a good thing with how busy I've been in my real life.

So anyway. I had about 4 K in my actual novel. It didn't work with my new "outline" (and trust me that has to be in quotes. Those of you who outline, I really don't know how you do it. It's become the dirty O-word at my house) and so all 4,000 words got the axe. Toldja I wasn't afraid of the delete key.

I have at least that much (4 K) in my character bible. Stuff you probably wouldn't need to know, but that *I* need to know. This helped me so much that I started writing again on Monday and wrote about 2000 words that day! At least I knew where to start and where I wanted to go. And those are two pretty important things in writing.

So how's your writing coming along? Post your own version of Work in Progress Wednesday. Feel free to steal the WiP graphic and be sure to wave from the bandwagon!