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Why Is My First Draft Such a Mess?

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A first draft is generally where you are still finding your story, says the writer Dave Wolverton, so it has "a lot of little inconsistencies" and weaker stretches. Tracy Hickman adds the scenes you are sure you wrote, which "just played out" in your head.

Wolverton says that "even very fine writers do terrible first drafts in some cases", and Dan Wells says it of Brandon Sanderson's. Three of the writers below describe what comes next the same way: revision, largest problems first.

Why it comes out that way

You are still finding the story

On the writing podcast Writing Excuses, Wolverton, a guest on an episode about rewriting, starts his answer with the first draft. "When you write, your very first draft, generally, you're trying to find your story, very often."

"You're trying to discover your themes, you're trying to figure out who this character really is, and so you have a lot of little inconsistencies, you have places where the storyline may be weaker than you imagine".

He adds: "even very fine writers do terrible first drafts in some cases."

His example is a friend, "a multiple Hugo and nebula award winner", who sent him a first draft that was "about 40 different openings to a novel".

Wolverton told him which ones he liked: "I said I like this one over here, and I like that one and that one. He didn't write about any of them." The friend published the novel, and "It was up for Hugos and Nebulas once again." His point: "you need to learn how to rewrite to greatness."

Tracy Hickman, his fellow guest, describes the same stage as "hammering on stone, trying to find some form and some shape in there."

Dan Wells, a host, passes on a line he thinks came from Anita Stansfield: "your first draft is for what you want to say, but your final draft is for how you want to say it."

What played out in your head is not all on the page

Hickman again: "We all have a blindness for our own text, too. When we look at it, we think it's on the page. We're just sure we've written it. When it really just played out in our head."

His remedy is a reader who doesn't know the story as you do, someone who will point out, "No, you didn't put that scene in that you thought you had and that you loved so much."

The advice usually credited to Ernest Hemingway, as a young writer recorded it, points at a similar gap: "When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none".

Good writers' drafts look like this too

In 2011, Wells was in a writing group with Brandon Sanderson. "I get to read his first drafts and they are just as awful as everyone else's."

The novelist Elizabeth Sims, writing for Writer's Digest, looked at draft pages reproduced in The Paris Review's Writers at Work volumes. She lists three authors:

  • Cynthia Ozick: "Her handwritten draft page is a beautiful mess, containing almost more strike-outs than unscathed text."
  • Ralph Ellison: "He used a typewriter, then marked up his pages with a ruthless hand."
  • Hemingway: "His handwritten page from "The Battler" shows only one cross-out." Yet between that page and the published story, "the passage shows subtle but significant differences."

The line usually credited to Hemingway

Sims opens her article with it: "As Ernest Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit.""

Quote Investigator traced its origin. "Ernest Hemingway died in 1961, and the first published evidence of this remark known to QI appeared in the 1984 posthumous memoir "With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba" by Arnold Samuelson."

Samuelson was nineteen when he went to Key West in 1934 and worked for Hemingway "for 10 months". He died in 1981; his daughter edited his manuscript for publication in 1984.

The passage, as Quote Investigator gives it:

> "Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can't get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You've got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. > > When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it's your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."

Quote Investigator weighs it both ways. "It is plausible that Arnold Samuelson wrote down the words of instruction he heard from Ernest Hemingway with accuracy". But "the long delay from 1934 to 1984 does not inspire a high degree of confidence."

It adds a letter Hemingway wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934: "write and don't worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what." There he puts his own rate at one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages he tries to put in the wastebasket.

And Bernard Malamud, in a 1981 commencement address at Bennington College: "The first draft of anything is suspect unless one is a genius." Also: "Revision is the constant creation of afterthoughts."

Sims reads the line her own way. Hemingway did not mean that a rough start becomes something far better "without much effort", and he "didn't mean that it's OK to start with a weak premise." He "meant that the first execution of your ideas must be as unfettered as possible."

What that produces, in her list: "false starts, pretentiousness, clunky images and clichés." They "contaminate the good stuff only until you get around to your second draft."

Is something wrong with it?

Three answers:

  • Hickman: "there is no writer anywhere that does not need an edit."
  • Mary Robinette Kowal, on Writing Excuses: "there is going to be a point in any story when you feel like… When you don't like it."
  • Kowal also has a test, given when revision seems to be making things worse: "Can I articulate what is wrong with this sentence?" If she can, she can usually articulate how to fix it. "If I can't, then it's probably just self-doubt, or sometimes I just need to cut the whole sentence."

Two other cases come up in Kowal's episode, a 2015 question-and-answer session on revision.

  • Writing a new book instead. Sanderson kept starting new books rather than revising. "I didn't get published for many years because I was doing that instead of sitting down and revising". If you are done, "you really should revise it at least a few times".
  • A fix as big as the book. Howard Tayler's exception: a change that would make the book better but "is exactly like rewriting the whole thing". Then "It may very well be time to set the project aside and move on".

Tayler also gives the other way out: if you know what needs to be done, tackling it "is something that you can feel really good about."

Wells's answer to how you learn which case you are in: "practice it and you'll get good at it." That, he says, is how you learn "when do I need to just put this aside".

What to do with it

Keep the file

Kowal: "You shouldn't submit something that you don't like. Do not delete the file!" Put it "in a folder that's called trunk or scraps or whatever you want to call it."

Give it some time, if you can

The hosts don't wait the same length.

  • Wells, in 2011, before his read-through pass: "several weeks, if not a couple of months, while I'm working on some other project". Up close, "it's still too fresh in my head". Later, "I can see all of the glaring wounds".
  • Wells, in 2015: "often a month at the most before I have to get back into another revision. Sometimes I'll get two months."
  • Kowal: "I revise immediately because I usually know what is wrong." Then the draft goes to readers and she stays away from it, "usually about a month."
  • Sanderson: "one pass to fix all the big broken stuff that I know", then "one pass as my first polish", then "as much distance as I can".

Hickman and Wolverton's shorthand: "let the text cool."

Fix the big problems first

Wolverton calls the first pass "triage editing": "What's broken? What needs to be fixed?" Then: "What do I have to throw out? What do I have to add in? What do I have to change?"

"There's no sense going in worrying about your wording and punctuation and things like that when you have those major, major problems that you've got to deal with."

His own example: "after a couple of drafts I realized, "Wait a minute. This needs an all-new character."" Adding the character "made the book work."

Sanderson works from "this list of things I want to change": "I fix these problems. Then I move to easier problems." Kowal does "big structure issues first" and her "fine tune pass kind of last."

The guide to revision, line editing and proofreading on this site gives the reason for the order: "A proofread pass can't fix a scene that shouldn't exist, and a structural revision is wasted effort if it's done sentence by sentence instead of scene by scene."

Then the long list

Wolverton's second pass is a read-through that ends in a list: "Page 246, line 23, fix this. I might get 200 things in it." His third goes character by character.

Then other readers

"One of the steps of editing is to get it away from you and start getting fresh eyes on it," Wolverton says. Sanderson, once the draft is finished: "it's time to let people that you trust read it."

Keep each version as you go

Kowal keeps "drafts of my drafts of my drafts", so that "I can roll back or go grab something if I screwed it up."

In Scrin, you can freeze a scene before you rework it, and travel back through its history when the new version turns out worse.

How many passes

Asked how many rounds of revision a book goes through, the panel of the 2011 episode answered:

WhoPasses
Dave Wolverton"six", his "minimum, sometimes eight or nine"
Dan Wells"six or seven"
Tracy Hickman"Three. I get bored."

If you are still in the draft

The guide on drafts on this site puts it plainly: "a first draft can have thin dialogue, a missing subplot, and an ending the writer isn't sure of yet". And "a first draft only has to reach the end".

Sims pushes back on one piece of workshop wisdom. "The common wisdom in writing workshops is that you shouldn't stop to revise. But let's be honest: That's unrealistic". When two ways of saying something come at once, "just write both, one after the other. Later you'll be able to decide which is better."

Wells revises as he goes: "As I'm writing one chapter, I am revising the one immediately before it."

Who says what

WhoWhereWhat they sayIn their words
Dave WolvertonWriting Excuses 5.29 (2011)the first draft is where you find the story; fix the big problems first"you're trying to find your story"
Tracy HickmanWriting Excuses 5.29your own text hides its gaps from you"When it really just played out in our head."
Dan WellsWriting Excuses 5.29 and 10.47 (2015)Brandon Sanderson's first drafts are rough too; wait before revising"just as awful as everyone else's"
Mary Robinette KowalWriting Excuses 10.47keep the file; structure first; name the problem"Do not delete the file!"
Brandon SandersonWriting Excuses 10.47revise instead of starting a new book"revise it at least a few times"
Howard TaylerWriting Excuses 10.47a fix as big as the book may mean setting it aside"exactly like rewriting the whole thing"
Ernest Hemingway, as Arnold Samuelson recorded himQuote Investigatorthe famous line, first printed in 1984"You've got to work it over."
Bernard MalamudQuote Investigatorthe first draft is suspect"unless one is a genius"
Elizabeth SimsWriter's Digest (2009)let the first draft run loose; the mess clears in the second draft"as unfettered as possible"

Count: nine people, six of them on two Writing Excuses episodes. One line, Wells's, is passed on from Anita Stansfield, and Wells says only that he thinks it was hers.

Questions

Why is my first draft such a mess? Dave Wolverton says that in a first draft "you're trying to find your story", which leaves inconsistencies and weaker stretches. Tracy Hickman adds that what played out in your head is not all on the page, and you can't see it yourself.

Is it normal for a first draft to be bad? Dave Wolverton says "even very fine writers do terrible first drafts in some cases." Dan Wells, who reads Brandon Sanderson's first drafts, calls them "just as awful as everyone else's."

Did Hemingway really say "The first draft of anything is shit"? Quote Investigator traces it to a 1984 memoir by Arnold Samuelson, who worked for Hemingway in 1934. It finds the record plausible, but says the delay from 1934 to 1984 "does not inspire a high degree of confidence."

Should I throw my first draft away and start over? Mary Robinette Kowal says not to delete the file. Brandon Sanderson says to revise it at least a few times. Howard Tayler's exception is a fix "exactly like rewriting the whole thing": then setting it aside may be right, or tackling it.

What should I fix first? Dave Wolverton starts with "triage editing": what to throw out, add in or change, before wording and punctuation. Brandon Sanderson fixes the biggest problems on his list first, and Mary Robinette Kowal does structure first.

How long should I wait before revising? It varies. Dan Wells gave several weeks to a couple of months before his read-through pass in 2011, and a month or two in 2015. Mary Robinette Kowal revises at once, then leaves the draft with readers for about a month.

Sources