Wondering how to write a better, faster first draft? Are you looking at some of the bad habits and mistakes writers make in their process? Then here's a quick video on how to mitigate some of these issues.
First thing’s first: Comparing your first draft to published works
I want to be clear: I’m not saying to stop reading.
It’s essential to read within your genre to learn conventions, cliches, and common pitfalls. If you’re not currently reading in your genre because you’re worried about accidentally drawing themes or finding a story similar to your own then you’re doing yourself a disservice. You can learn more from reading than you will from hiding and it’s easy to let these little ‘reading hiatuses’ grow and grow in length until you find that you’ve not read anything in your genre for 6 months, a year, three years etc.
BUT, that aside, you need to stop comparing your first draft work to that of published authors so early on in the process! By the time a book has been traditionally published, it’s been checked over by so so many people before it hits shelves. Your first draft is not supposed to be this polished.
It’s going to have poor dialogue and questionable dialect choices. Your characters will have unseen flaws and your narrative might have plot holes - it’s okay! The first draft is solely for building that initial structure for your story so don’t stress about having it perfect.
So stop comparing yourself to published work when you’re just at step 1 of the journey.
Second mistake - Editing as you write
I love to be able to go back and tweak things, but this again slows progress and it feeds into my other point of trying to perfect before the foundations have been laid. We all know what this looks like in practice so I’m not going to yap on about it.
You could buy a device designed to stop you editing. There’s a few out there, and this is an unpaid unsponsored video so i’m not going to be listing them by name but you can certainly find them if you Google, ‘Distraction free writing device.’
Alternatively, you can create a limited or no view version of your document. I explain how to do this in the video.
3rd bad writing habit is not sharing your work - especially with the right people.
Don’t keep the story to yourself. You’ve been looking at it for too long and you know it too well, which means you can mentally fill in the blanks. Give it to a friend or family member and ask for some constructive feedback. They don’t have to comb through it line for line or seek out spelling mistakes unless you want them too. But just start with the basic questions:
Did you notice any plot holes?
Which characters were you most interested or disinterested in?
Or, my favourite, put a post it note on the pages you felt bored on.
By asking these, you’ll get external indicators of what’s working and what’s not. They’re going to be a representative sample of your future readership.
Again, don’t ask for editing notes until you’re at that stage. I mention this because you’ll be surprised at how many writers create and just curate their own work. It never leaves their laptop or notebook for fear of judgement or failure or it not being perfect.
We’re supposed to fail, that’s how we grow.
Just like our characters, we’re supposed to have flaws and shortcomings. That’s how we build on ourselves.
My one caveat with this is to set a deadline. Either a soft one or a specific date because you want to be implementing this feedback as soon as it’s viable to.
So, hopefully you’ve picked up something you can implement and practice from this video. Hopefully you can mitigate some of these bad writing habits. Don't forget to share, like, drop a comment and subscribe!
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Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:34 - Tip 1: Comparison
2:42 - Tip 2: Progress Disruptions
3:07 - Solutions & Workarounds
4:50 - Tip 3: Curating
5:54 - Getting The Most from Feedback
7:16 - A Caveat
7:40 - Bonus Tip
8:20 - Conclusion