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

[ken-schneyer.livejournal.com]

My first draft isn't assembled in linear fashion, usually. The first things I write are the scenes (or even the individual lines) that come through most vividly, often including the last few paragraphs of the story. Then I take a crack at the beginning. I keep writing in this haphazard fashion until I've already written everything fun, then I slog through the transitions (which I hate) and the "from point A to point B" bits.

What I have at the end of this is a first draft, but a wildly uneven one in terms of tone and attack. So I do a smooth-through, trying to even it out and make it uniform. That's the official "first draft."

Then I put it in a drawer for six weeks. (Yes, I'm taking Stephen King's advice. Why not?)

Then I go through it again, looking for glaring errors and trying to find the unifying themes or metaphors, and I add, subtract or revise to satisfy those themes or metaphors.

This is the draft I show to people. It's always officially "version 2.0".

I'll show 2.0 to 4-8 readers, asking them to tell me "This part works, that part doesn't, here's why." I look for common threads across different readers, especially of the "That part doesn't work" variety. I also look for comments that strike the "Dang, I knew that was going to happen" chord.

Version 3.0 is based on those comments. This is either the most fun part or the scariest part of the writing, depending on my mood.

Version 4.0 is a smoothing out of 3.0. I might show it to a few more people, or I might just send it out.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

You've got it worked out well ;o)