Process Week Continues, + Birthday Greetings...

[j_cheney]

Happy belated birthday to dotar_sojat and more timely salutations to sarah_prineas and babarnett!

Ah now, on to the boring stuff.

Drafts.
ROUGH DRAFT
Some people produce a first draft. I produce a "rough" draft the first time out.

After I've got a basic idea of the outline of events in a story (and I do mean basic), the setting, and the characters, I do a rough draft. I start at the beginning and try to write straight to the end. Sometimes that doesn't happen. I'll get to a scene I'm sketchy on, and skip past it with just a few notes to hold it's place:

Imogen laid one hand to her breast, nerves suddenly making her stomach flutter. ANNOUNCER?
Mother Hawkes clutched her other hand. The trainers bolted away RACE RACE RACE

ANNOUNCER? RACE RACE RACE?

This is why I don't consider it a first draft. It's not really readable. Sometimes the ending is also sketchy, usually because I know I'll change things later.


FIRST DRAFT
After completing the RD, I usually let it percolate for at least a week. Then I go back and start inserting the things I need to clear up. I will probably have done some research between RD and FD, and usually end up slipping in a couple of extra scenes.

One of the things that's true about my FDs is that the setting and descriptions will still be lightly drawn. I don't worry about those so much here. They'll be fleshed out in the later drafts.

This is where I'll try to get the first readings done, though. To check out the story arcs, and make certain action and dialog make sense.


SECOND THROUGH TENTH DRAFTS
All right, a bit of exaggeration there, but I do like to keep tweaking. The bulk of description gets inserted here, what little description I do use. I'd say that most things go through at least four drafts before I consider them ready to go out.


So, how many drafts do you do? How many before you let anyone see it?

Comments

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Thanks for friending me. :)

Since I've only written the one novel, I can't say that I have a "process" yet. In my case, I made a very loose plot outline, some character outlines, and a pile of worldbuilding notes. I then just wrote the novel from start to finish. Very little of my outline made it into the finished first draft.

I decided not to revise it until it was complete since revising as I went killed the momentum of my earlier writing projects.

Once I had a completed rough draft, I went back and revised the novel. It was mostly just cleaning things up.

Now that I have had my first workshop, I'm about to start the second revision. This one will probably lead to some major structural changes.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Sometimes when I see people posting, I'll go and look at their page and see if they're interesting (and not bizarre)...and if they are I'll friend them. It's always nice to know more writers.

I've noticed that my original sketchy outline holds up for about 2/3 of the draft....and then I have to trash it and do a new one for the remaining part of the book. As I go along, I'm sometimes pulled off the track by something within the story. That even seems to happen in short stories, from which one can either determine that I'm flexible....or wishy-washy. ;o)

Good luck with the major structural changes. That's the part that's hard. That level of revision means that every last scene has to be reconsidered. ::sighs::