MS Blood Pact: First Drafts

[Phil the Drill]

Ok, here's one more thread. This one is dedicated to those of us working on first drafts. Pushing through to the end, finishing so we can move to the next stage!

I'm currently working on a first draft I'm mostly happy with, and I'm going to beef it up this month. I'm hoping by the time I'm finished, it will somewhat resemble a novel...

Share your ideas, thoughts, difficulties, etc. here.

[Elder the Dwarf]

I'll jump in. I would say that I actually belong to two of these threads. I kinda jumped the gun and started writing before I had a fully planned out novel. It hasn't been a problem so far, but that means that I'm planning a bit while I'm writing. It also means I'm writing a little slower than I should. That being said, I've written close to ten chapters so far, but they aren't neccessarily in order. I have the first six chapters written, and the rest are scenes that I had ideas for (well, ideas I really liked) and felt I needed to get out of my head before I lost them. I have a rather busy month, but the goal is to get 3 or 4 chapters out of the way during June.

[ArielFingolfin]

I tend to plan and write at the same time as well in the first draft because it's through writing that I get to know my characters, and my characters are what drives the plot. Right now I'm just plowing through trying to get a rough draft done because I have such difficulties finishing stuff. I have about 4 chapters right now, or the bones of four chapters I should say.

[Phil the Drill]

I began writing my first draft for NaNo back in November. I edited it some and now I'm trying to make it longer this June for Camp NaNo. So far I'm pretty happy with my outline, but some things can always change. I want to try to write an action packed book for the most part and I think I have plenty of stuff going on. I worry a tad that maybe too much is going on, but I think as long as certain problems are taken care of one at a time, maybe it won't be too bad.

[Hypervorean]

This looks like the place where I fit in.

I normally plan my things out completely before I start writing them, but this time I have done it differently; I have only decided on the theme, where the story should go and which characters I wanted in it before I started the writing process. I am really coming to like this way of doing it. It doesn't get boring along the way because you already know everything that is going to happen, which is a problem I have had previously. That said, I still haven't come very long in the writing process yet.

[Caged Maiden]

Whatever you do, don't use my methods. In fact any advise I give ought to dismissed out of hand HAHAHA!

No seriously, I haven't figured out a great strategy yet, but I'll just do what I always do, muddle through and beat my head against a wall when i come to it.

[ArielFingolfin]

I gotta say, as daunting as writing a first draft can be, it's nice that I can just write and not have any pressure that what I write is good or even passable. It doesn't even have to make sense. When I think about it that way, it makes it a lot easier for me to buckle down and spin out those pages.

[Mythos]

I've been writing the first draft of my novel since the beginning of the summer, and I'm about 30,000 words in. I wish I was farther, but I keep on getting distracted, and writing in the summer months is difficult for me. I can't stand the heat. Plus it's been uncommonly warm here.

[Chilari]

I started the first draft of a story which is different from the one I spent all June planning. I rather lost track of that one. The new one came from a dream and I deliberately did very little prep work - a rough outline a page long, a few character descriptions, a little about the society, money and justice system, and that's it. I've been writing every day for almost a week now and I'm happy with how it's going. With the other one, the one I planned in great detail, I struggled with the opening scene and wrote three versions before getting stuck on how to handle the next bit and gave up; I wrote probably less than 2000 words on it in total, whereas I've passed 3000 on the new one today. With a more relaxed attitude, and a philosophy of keeping records as I go along rather the determining things beforehand (like character names) I think I've found my method - at long last. So we'll see how things go.

Mythos - congrats on reaching 30k words, that's a milestone that seems always to defeat me (except on the one thing I actually finished a first draft of). Will see how it goes for me this time.

[Mythos]

Good luck with your current first draft, Chilari! What's it about?

Thanks, I just need to get passed it. I'm a little stuck. THe current scene I'm working on is starting to look too much like an earlier scene. I tried fixing it but got frustrated and gave up. I probably need to do a little brainstorming or post something here on the forums.