Wednesday, September 10, 2014

On Shitty First Drafts

Last night I shared the beginning of my current (and longest) piece at the university's writing club. The response was overwhelmingly positive and it was great ego boost. But in a way, it the experience highlighted my issue with the piece.

The first passage of the story flows very well and has imagery strong enough that people commented that they felt like they were really there, looking just over my protagonist's shoulder at the scene. I think it's one of the best things I have written. But there is a sharp decline in quality immediately following it.

Why? Because the first part has been meticulously edited and rewritten multiple times. Most of the remaining story has only had the initial pass of writing it, and as a result lacks any sort of rich details or particularities that establish a sense of the place and action.

It gets worse, though. The story suddenly hinges on a series of coincidences and characters become pawns for the plot rather than entities with the illusion of agency. It has become especially hard to continue to slog through writing it, knowing that not only does it suffer from the roughness of a typical first draft, but the story itself is rapidly unraveling as I reach parts I have planned out less.

One tactic that may help is to try detailed outlining. As it stands, my outline is vague, with events separated by undefined distances—I discovery write between the points. I think that if I treat the outline as discovery writing, with a beat-by-beat breakdown of the action, I might find more success.

So, that's the plan, I guess?

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