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

[kelly-swails.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm pretty organic in my process. Uusally I start with a rough outline, and by rough I mean I have scribbles on a few sheets of notebook paper that has a beginning and an end and a few characters and that's it. I'll write about a third of it before I discover my "outline" is horribly wrong, so I rewrite the outline and edit what I have. I'll get about 2/3 of the way done when I figure out the real ending is not at all how I envisioned it, so I rewrite the outline, edit what I have, then finish the book. At this point I send it to beta readers who tell me I have the wrong ending (or the wrong motivations or terrible characters or whatever) and so I edit and rewrite the whole thing. Once more to the readers and then it's done. So ... five drafts, but the first three could almost be counted as one.

I think "process" posts are so fascinating. So many ways, all of them right.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

But oddly, the majority of us seem pretty similar.

--sketchy outlines
--which we abandon part-way through the RD
--write a new outline
--finish RD
--re-write RD
--send it out to readers.

You have an added reader step, but the vast majority of people I've seen today hit most of these.

I was heartened to learn that I'm not the only one who ends up off on an unknown road that my outline never sent me to....

recalculating...