All I have to do is write it, starting with chapter one and ending with the ending. I know where my story begins, where it ends and the journey it takes to get there. After I’ve completed my chapter outline, story beats, character profiles and all that boring stuff, I should have a pretty clear idea in my mind as to what events should happen and in what order. This is where I make my first serious attempt at writing my novel/novella/short story/etc in all its fullness. Then I use the plan to help me write my first draft.įirst Draft (or the ‘Tell Yourself the Story Draft’)
Thus I write a zero draft to help me plan. They work well for me because, as a half-planner/half-pantser, I need a chapter outline to help me write a draft… but I can’t easily imagine what my characters might do and think unless I’ve already written them into existence. This kind of writing is not structured enough to be considered a true first draft but it is more focused than free-writing, which simply involves typing whatever comes into your head even if it’s nothing to do with anything ( click here for an example of what free-writing looks like). I’ll write maybe half a dozen (often more) of these individual, disjointed portions of narrative, without worrying too much about whether it’s any good or not, to help me invent settings, audition characters and generally breathe a bit of life into my ideas and research without worrying about if they will fit into my final project. Well a lot of writers of both fiction and non-fiction use zero drafts and I don’t know whether or not they use the term in exactly the same way I do, but for me a zero draft sits somewhere between free-writing and drafting. ‘Well, that just sounds like a load of pretentious nonsense to me!’ I hear you cry. Zero Draft (or the ‘Not Technically a Draft, Draft’)īefore I even attempt to write a first draft, I write a zero draft. Feel free to try it out and if it doesn’t work for you, well… don’t shout at me. I can only give you the benefit of my limited experience. In my experience, three would be the bare minimum but no two writers work in quite the same way so if you’re looking for a hard and fast rule, look elsewhere because I ain’t got one to give you. The short and somewhat glib answer is, ‘as many as it takes’. ‘But how many drafts should I write?’Īh, well, now you’re asking. ‘Okay, okay, I know that already!’ I hear you cry. Now if Ernest Hemingway couldn’t knock out a high quality novel on the first go, what chance have the rest of us got? Why don’t I just write it properly the first time?īecause, as Ernest Hemingway (one of the greatest writers of the modern age) pointed out, ‘the first draft of anything is s***’. Well that’s just silly, I thought (I couldn’t have been more than seven years old). I was in primary school doing some piece of written work (I forget what about) when my teacher told us all to write a rough draft first, then to write a second draft. I remember when I first came across the concept of writing in drafts.