The trash draft

How to write like no one's reading

In On Writing, Stephen King uses a metaphor I find useful. He says you write the first draft with the door closed. It’s just you and the book, working through things in private, with the outside world shut out. The second draft you write with the door open. In other words, you let the world in. The world is readers, friends whose opinion you might seek on the first draft, perhaps an agent or editor.

The “trash draft” is an overused term meaning simply first draft, but one that you apply yourself to without self-consciousness or concern what anybody will think, working things out as you go, writing with a sense of freedom. This is also just…exactly what a first draft should be. The suffix of “trash” implies it’s to be thrown away, but this is rarely necessary.

The trick is, again, not to expect perfection. It’s far better to set a goal of just finishing a manuscript, rather than judging that manuscript, or thinking it ought to be “good”, or publishable, or that the process of writing it – how difficult you found it, how long it took you – means anything about you as a writer. Literally just finishing it is all that can and should be expected of a first draft, whether you have plotted it meticulously or let it pour out of you as it comes.

If you are a first timer (or perhaps even not), I think setting a daily word count is a good idea, because for the first draft, the wordcount is more important than the words themselves. You may write 90,000 words of rubbish, but…you’ve written 90,000 words! And therefore have a solid, real, living thing to dissect and rework. The better story, the next version of the story, lies within it, and like one of those magic eye patterns from the 90s, within this mass reveals itself.

The alternative is painstakingly writing a full-length manuscript aiming for its true and final version in your first attempt. Some people can do this. I don’t know any.

Three methods I swear by

Each time I write a novel, I write a first draft without reading any of it back, not even a paragraph. That way, for me, madness lies. I plough on through the document, watching the word count rack up, doing Ctrl+F every now and again to find a detail I’ve misplaced. I use Scrivener (I’ll write about this in another post), and write in scenes, not chapters. The name of the scene is simply what happens in it. I make notes at the side of threads to take hold of later on in the story. Some are phrased as questions because I don’t have the answers yet.

When the first draft is complete – I always type The End because it is such a monumental achievement – I wait a few weeks, sometimes a couple of months, before reading it back. Of course I want to, but I resist the temptation, because the story is still fresh and all those little threads are like a messy multicoloured ball of yarn I’m dying to unpick and wind up again. If something comes to me in that time – an idea for how to tie something up better, or an additional scene that enhances or adds conflict to a storyline – I’ll jot it down, but I’m not allowed to work on it.

Time ticks on, and this is usually the time I am most excited about my novel. It exists as a deeply flawed creation, but a creation nonetheless, and there is a lot of work to be done. I’m eager, often impatient, to roll my sleeves up and get started, because for me the work truly begins in the second draft. Soon it will be time to read, and the very idea of doing so brings that excited, nervous buzz of anticipation, like falling in love. That feeling, to me, is creativity: not the act itself but the feeling around it. The fizz of it is addictive, joyous. It feels like when I’m striding across a moor listening to music, or reaching the last roundabout before my parents’ road after a long drive.

It is in the time between the first and second drafts that the story really begins to emerge. The dawning of it – ugh! I’m excited just thinking about it. It really is the best time, that fallow period, a Twixtmas, if you will, where your fingers are itching and your brain is firing and your creativity is buzzed and primed and in recovery all at once.

The third method is this: once I’ve read it, I start again from scratch, from chapter one. I don’t work on the manuscript itself, adding or deleting or rewriting bits; instead I write a whole new novel. A better one, using the first draft as a guide but not a textbook. It would feel too weird to rewrite over the top of it, too square peg round hole. The second draft deserves its own blank page, not tracing paper.

Starting again fresh with characters I know by now feels like writing, not trying to write. Of course all writing is writing, but the second draft isn’t your first day at the job. You’re more comfortable; you’re still new but you have your favourite mug and know your way around the building. It’s a good place to be. And no matter how difficult draft one is, knowing that draft two is on the horizon makes writing it more bearable.

Next week: how to read your first draft without hating your book.