There are certain things that are a given:
1) Day turns into night.
2) I like chocolate. And cookies. And cake.
3) First drafts can suck!
I know suck may be a harsh word, but they call them first drafts for a reason. They have a certain amount of suckage built into them.
Why?
The pacing may be off. You might introduce a secondary character only to forget about them halfway through. Oops. Hasty addition time! Been calling your love interest Jensen for 20k, but then discover your MC making out with some dude called Jake? Hmmm. Adverbs bleed from the page. Purple prose That brilliant plot twist doesn't quite fit. Darn it. Who says it needs to be logical? *giggles*
What to do?
Write on! Embrace that suck. Get the words out.
There's a reason books get polished in revision. You can't revise an empty page, but you can revise through the roadblocks and errors to uncover the shiny prose beneath.
Happy writing!
6 comments:
When I'm working on a new manuscript, my muse turns off our internal editor so I already know much of what I write sucks. Then comes the editing.
I always find a lot of amazing coincidences in my first drafts. Convoluted messes.
I love the line about not being able to edit a blank page. Once you get all the basic facts and storyline out on paper, you can see the problems. You can't edit a novel in your head and spit it out whole and perfect in one try! Hooray, editing!
True, but if they suck so bad even you can't remember which character is which, not to mention the point of the whole thing, it just might be time to start over. (yep, been there, unfortunately!)
erica
Great advice! And perfect timing! ;)
Indeed they do suck. Fantastically so. I also like to remember this when I add a scene in revision and have to write it for the first time. :) It's just not going to be pretty and shiny like a scene I've been over four times.
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