I have a love hate relationship with first drafts. Starting out they always feel incredibly\u00a0exciting. I have all these new characters to play with and this great big world to discover. I burn through the first ten or so chapters without much trouble. I know where my story\u2019s going, all those twisty\u00a0little hints I want to drop, and how to get my characters into all kinds of trouble.<\/p>\n
The problem is getting them out of trouble.<\/p>\n
Because at some point in every draft my brain does this little flip. It says \u201cOkay, crap. We need to get from here to the ending. Here, this looks like a nice, straight, logical path.\u201d<\/p>\n
Never mind said path involves characters making illogical decisions so they can be properly positioned for the final showdown. Never mind that every one of them suddenly becomes a cardboard cutout in service of the plot. Never mind that my villains start making stupid mistakes for the sake of convenience.<\/p>\n
You can see the problem.<\/p>\n
In the past I’ve dealt with this by rewriting the entire second half two, three, twenty times until I find an ending that works.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m really not a fan of this process. So this year for NaNoWriMo I tried something new. When my draft sunk deep into the bogs of plot-panic, I didn’t trudge forward in search of the other side. I stopped. I went back to my outline. I thought about what my characters were trying to accomplish at each point. I wrote a new outline. I hammered out a few new scenes I knew I would want to include.<\/p>\n
And then I watched NaNo’s final day sail past while my word count languished well behind\u00a0the 50k finish line.<\/p>\n
Despite failing the word count challenge, I felt better about my draft. Instead of writing new words I went back and made the changes I knew my new outline would need. I reacquainted myself with all the reasons why I\u2019d fallen in love with my characters. And when I did get back to that dreaded second half I was able to give them more freedom to make their mistakes and find a way to the ending on their own terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a love hate relationship with first drafts. Starting out they always feel incredibly\u00a0exciting. I have all these new characters to play with and this great big world to discover. I burn through the first ten or so chapters without much trouble. I know where my story\u2019s going, all those twisty\u00a0little hints I want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,5,4],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo","tag-first-drafts","tag-nanowrimo","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caitlinseal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}