(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Write On: Zero Drafts [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-23 I won’t belabor with an example, and, frankly, I’m bad at anecdotes. My father was good at them, though, and when I was a kid, he was a polished storyteller. It wasn’t until I was a teen and heard him building his anecdotes of stuff I had witnessed that I realized it was iterative. The first time he told a story, it was rough. Each time he told it again, it was tighter, more pointed. He’d drop a sentence here, add a quip there, tighten it up, focus on the point, find the timing and wording for maximum humor. Sometimes, he’d try it completely differently. I’ve seen writers discuss their process, and they do this in synopsis or outline. Good for them! That’s a great use of planning. And when it works, a serviceable first draft is achieved. Unfortunately, I usually can’t work it out in a shorter form. (The two NaNoWriMos where it worked out were exceptions.) It’s fast, for me, to draft, and it’s easier to work out a scene by writing the scene — or the chapter — or the book. So I often end up with disconnected chunks of the work, sometimes in the wrong order, definitely with the emphasis in the wrong place. That is my zero draft. The draft that takes a little bit (or maybe a lot!) of work before it’s what I’d consider a “draft” of the novel. I’ve also heard it called a “junk” draft. By promising myself it’s a zero draft, I know I will never share it with anyone else in that state. That frees me, it gives me permission for it to suck because no one else’s eyes will be on it. It lets me tell myself the story, once, fumblingly, to feel my way through it. No pressure to even be readable, much less presentable. By the end, I’ll know if I have a story worth the effort of making it readable. If not, into the trunk it goes (to join half a dozen (and counting) other efforts). But if it’s worth more effort, now I have the raw material to work from. I can either tackle the first draft as a revision, where I patch it up, plug the holes, do a little rewriting to make it into a full story. Or, if it’s a complete mess with a nice kernel, I can take the useful bits, re-outline, and write it all from scratch. That is what I mean by a zero draft. The craptastic version I have to get out of my system on the way to a polished story worth sharing. Happy writing! Exercise: The main character (or a Stock Character) is struggling to draft something (a letter, a treaty, a poem, a novel). What does their process look like? Does it bear any resemblance to yours? Are they stuck at the very beginning, or is it a breeze? READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2154599/-Write-On-Zero-Drafts Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/