Draft, After Draft, After Draft

It’s April 4th, 2019, fingers crossed I actually get to post this the day of.

I’ve been working hard on my newest Work In Progress (WIP to save from mistyping progress every other line). Strange frontier, my 1867 historical science fiction/fantasy novel about settling more than the Wild West. It’s been an absolute blast working on this project but I think it’s also a great example for talking about my drafting process.

First, what’s a draft?

A preliminary version of a piece of writing. Yeah, I skimmed that from dictionary.com. The bones, the beginning structure of what you’re building if finally get some meat on it. After, hopefully, planning an outline of your novel, you get a  chance to draft your scenes into a cohesive(ish) monstrosity of creativity. Let’s be clear, it is a beast, a terrible frightening one, because it’s draft one. It can be terrible, it can have spelling errors, missing scenes, wrong character names, continuity issues, clarity problems, and if you’re bilingual probably some unintended language flips.

That’s okay. Breathe. It’s just draft one.

My favourite part of the drafting process is that you can make mistakes. It’s taken me a long time to be able to accept that, as I am a perfectionist. Well, in attempt at least. Execution, not so much. But Drafts are where you can try to get your story out and not worry so much about that character you introduced in chapter one having the same physical description when our hero meets up with them in chapter twenty-seven.

Each draft you tackle helps sculpt, mould, and distill your work into something digestible, palatable, and finally enjoyable.

I am happily approaching the palatable stage with my WIP. There was a tonne of research involved, a lot of outlining and moving things around. It’s still got some holes and some part where I’m fairly certain I’ve used the word fog over 200 times, but it’s getting there. With this next draft, on actual paper instead of a screen, I can take my time with word choice, consistency, and see what’s really missing in a read and where I’ve gone overboard.

Then, I let it go. Beta readers. But that’s for another day. For now, I get to drive over to staples, print out my 235-page manuscript, single sided, of course, bust out my red pen, and gather those sticky notes. Then, the editing begins.

Happy drafting everyone.