Do you draft before you draft?

[u/jemmly]

Hi all!!

I'm getting into writing a new novel idea and wanted to see where everyone stands with drafting. For my first book I wrote almost entirely by the seat of my pants but it took 4 years before I finishes that book and that doesn't even including the editing stages.

I'm thinking of trying trying draft a bit more this time around to save my brain from falling into circles trying to chase my plot. I feel like there's a line with having too much detail for your 1st draft and absolutely too little detail.

How much do you draft before your first draft, or do you skip it entirely? Just getting a feel for how others do their processes!

[u/Blacksheepatx]

Yes, I call it an outline. Just enough to get the storyline down.

[u/jemmly → u/Blacksheepatx]

Yeah! How much do you outline? Each chapter? A few sentences? I find as I get closer to the end of my novel, the easier it is to write when I have an end goal. When Yet, when I try to plan middle scenes it feels like I've written the story already and feels boring by then.

[u/RobertPlamondon → u/jemmly]

When I outline, which I generally don't do anymore, I envision each scene in order to the point where I could probably write it on the spot, but don't. I write about a paragraph of summary instead. This serves as enough of a reminder that I can pick it up later. Then it's on to the next scene.

The reason I don't outline much anymore is that when I went back to clean up my outlines, they didn't change much. For better or worse, I stuck with my initial decisions unless I discovered an outright blunder somewhere along the way. So there wasn't much of a difference between writing an outline and then the draft and writing the draft on the spot.

If I find a plot hole, I fix it with the minimum possible amount of rework: it's not an excuse to make changes elsewhere in the story, which has set like concrete.

As for boring scenes, I don't allow them in my stories. Any scene has to be worth reading on its own merits: no excuses. Sometimes this is hard and sometimes this is easy, but if a scene starts to drag I look around wildly for a way to jazz it up. I usually find something.

[u/jemmly → u/RobertPlamondon]

Thank you for the reply! I definitely understand your point and wish my drafts would stay consistent enough in the editing stage. With my first book, due to the length it took to write, so much changed because I changed over the years too. I wonder if outlining prior would have helped with that.