Expectations vs. Reality

Writing books has been constantly trial and error for me. But that’s totally okay. I’ve learned to recognize that it’s better to be the person who’s tried and failed than to be the person who’s never tried at all.

With that though, I’ve learned a few things through my failures, particularly that one of my biggest mishaps is my expectation of what a first draft should be like. Now, I’m not saying you expect a perfect first draft. I, too, thought I wasn’t in denial. I was like: “Yeah, a messy first draft is fine!”

The Inner Critic

But subconsciously… I constantly criticized my work, questioning my words, pointing out that I didn’t know enough about a character to write this or that. Because I didn’t know my world, I couldn’t explore it. That my plot had too many holes in it to put down on the page. And while these are all valuable insights, I think it kept me from writing at all. I was so bogged down by my expectations of what a ‘messy first draft’ must be like that I couldn’t even accept it as ‘messy’.

The Big Question: One Perfect Chapter or a Sentence Per Scene?

Let’s look at it from this perspective. What do you think would be more beneficial? To have a perfectly written first chapter. Like stunning prose, clear plot direction, incredible world building. But you’d have only a single chapter written. Or would it be better to have a single sentence for every scene in your novel?

Sometimes I find this question hard to answer too, because the first option gives us the quick validation we want. We get to say: “Hey! Look! I have a great first chapter!” But then what? We still have an entire book to complete. And we become so attached to that first chapter that’s so well written, we want to adjust the entire story around it so it fits into place, when in reality, we don’t know if it will ever fit at all by the end of the process.

But that’s what you have to come to accept about the first draft. It isn’t complete; it’s simply a building block.

Sketching With Sentences

But let’s say you write a single sentence for every scene. What you’re doing is saying, “Hey, this was the idea I had for this section; it might stay, it might go.” Like sketching with a pencil. You’re not committing to the line, but you’re giving it a solid chance. And when you do that for every scene in your book, you get the compromise of both getting validation with having written actual prose, while still giving it a chance to be molded and changed. You get a big-picture view of the complete book without getting lost in the details.

Because, believe it or not, now isn’t the time to get lost in the details.

First Draft as Planning

We think that when we finish plotting, character creation, and world building, we are at the end of the planning stage of our novel. But I’m going to give you a big tip here that you should carry with you for the rest of your novel-writing life. The first draft is part of the planning process too.

Please don’t take it the wrong way. I’m not saying that you should now fixate on planning to the point you never write. No, no, no. You still need to write during your first draft. But what I’m getting at here is that you should see drafting as also sort of planning. During the first draft, you are sketching out the outline of your novel. Preparing it for drafts two and three for when you flesh out the sketch with pretty shades or deeper lines.

Nurturing Your Baby Novel

Stop expecting so much out of your first draft as I used to. Your novel is in its infancy, and you don’t expect a baby to walk and run when it’s just out of the womb, do you? Feed it, nurture it, care for it. Sure, it’s not the most exciting thing right now, but neither you nor I would call a baby exciting at that age. We’d call them cute, beautiful, adorable. Precious.

Your baby novel is precious. Not something to be criticized just yet. You can edit and mold them when they get to the teenage stage, don’t worry. But for now. Give your novel all the loving it needs.

Your Challenge This Week

So, I challenge you this week to do that. Spend at least twenty minutes each day writing a single sentence for each scene of your novel, choosing to do a couple for the start, middle and end of your story. A sentence of prose. You can totally add brief notes underneath to indicate where you plan for the scene to go. But the idea is to spend only twenty minutes on each scene, writing something concrete.

Happy Writing!