I want to offer a quick reminder as we’re moving forward:
This is the First Draft.
We are in a magical time when it comes to telling a story. This is a time that belongs to you. Before this, the story existed only in your imagination, but that's not something that can be shared with others.
This version of your story, the first draft, is something that nobody else is going to see, but it's finally all coming together in new and unique ways that might surprise you as you write.
Is your writing perfect on the first draft? No.
Do you need to keep going back and refining it and rephrasing and fixing things until you're happy? No. Not in the first draft.
And that should be freeing!
In the books that I've written, I've tried four different ways to write a first draft, and I'd like to share those with you.
Pen and Paper
For my first trilogy of books, The Wind Merchant trilogy, and The Goldfish, I took nice notebooks that I had been gifted and I got out my trusty fountain pen and put ink to page.
The beautiful thing about putting pen to paper is that you can't hit backspace on the keyboard and go back. And because I had an outline I was working from, only once ever in over 300,000 words did I ever cross out part of a page and rewrite something.
And that was because I had decided to deviate away from the outline and quickly realized the idea wasn't right to pursue.
There's something personal and special about sitting down with a pen and writing. There aren't any computer distractions that I have to worry about as long as I put my phone notifications on Do Not Disturb, and it was a great way to work on my handwriting and have a physical representation at the end of the story of the entire book...that nobody else would ever read but me.
One of the silly things about this process though was that because I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to fit the book into a single special notebook, I wound up writing so tiny that unless I typed up the words shortly afterward, sometimes I would struggle to read what I had written and if I did too many writing days in a row without adding it into the computer, it started to feel more and more daunting to type it all up.
One fun side effect that came from doing it this way and having anywhere from 800-1,000 words on each page was that I could glance at from a bird's eye view.
Usually there are about 250 words on a printed page, so I got to see what 3-4 printed pages would look like, and it helped me balance the page with dialogue, thought, and action like we talked about before.
Plus, on those books, I usually kept chapters to about 4,000-5,000 words so I could tell that I needed 4 or 5 pages in my notebook to finish a chapter, and it helped me pace myself when it came to what needed to happen in the outline and how that would fit inside of the chapter.
Typewriter
When my daughter and I wrote The Invisible House, we bought a 1951 Smith-Corona Sterling and typed up first the outline, then the first draft on it.
There is something special about the clacking of keys as you write. It's almost hypnotic as you create a typing rhythm and reach the little ding of the bell to let you know that you're nearing the end of the line.
It also forces you to think through the word choices as you get to the end of each line because sometimes words might be too long before you need to pull the lever and start a fresh line.
That has actually helped me think through ways I could be more compact and concise in how I explain something in stead of letting myself ramble on and on to pad my own word count.
When I finished a page, I would use something called an OCRM scanner on my phone and it would turn the words on the page into text on my phone, and that saved me so much more time over typing everything up that I had hand written in my prior books.
Plus I had photos of my manuscript on my phone as a backup too in case something happened to those pages.
It wasn't a perfect process, but it was about 95% accurate.
Plus, it's fun to say you used an old machine to tell your story. It does take a lot of work, and if little hands are typing, it might not be the easiest to hammer down on the keys.
And not every typewriter is equal when it comes to a typing experience. I have a 1929 Underwood Number 5 that I used to write my first picture book when my oldest daughter was born, and my fingers would hurt for hours after typing on it. The Smith-Corona was a much nicer experience as I would never write 25,000+ words on the Underwood.
Dictation
This was a unique method that I attempted for part of The Glass Unicorn. Carrying my phone and opening an app that could listen to what I said and then transcribe it into text felt a little bit like magic.
But there were definitely pros and cons to this. I loved being able to walk around and get some activity in while I was being creative instead of feeling stuck at a desk or in a chair.
But you also have to learn to think a little differently as you dictate the sentences and switch from dialogue to thought to action. And figuring out when to say things like "new line" or "question mark, end quote" can kind of take you out of the storytelling experience.
However, once I got the hang of it, I felt like I was back telling a bedtime story, and the back and forth dialogue scenes felt way more natural because what was being said matched up with how someone would actually speak.
Sometimes when we write we can word things on the page in a way that is actually difficult to say out loud, or it creates a tongue twister.
Later on during the editing phase, I actually will do a pass where I try and read as much as possible out loud to see how it sounds and if anything doesn't land right with my ear... or if I run out of breath before I finish a sentence and realize I need to break it up a little bit.
There were some other technical issues I had with recording and walking and then going for a while and not realizing that halfway through the recording had either hit a limit or turned off and there I was telling a story to the wind. It was frustrating to have to say all of it again, and sometimes I would forget how things went.
All that to say, if you're writing with a younger kiddo, it may even make sense to just record their voice when they tell the story and then take that and use tools that can transcribe the audio into text for you.
At the moment, Adobe has a tool called Adobe Podcast which can do that for you for free. It's not perfect in recognizing words, but that is something you can clean up for the next draft.
Freewrite
The device I use to draft the most now is called a Freewrite. Basically it's an e-ink screen attached to a mechanical keyboard that can connect to the cloud and email me what I've written or have it sync online to Dropbox or Google Drive. It's what I've written all of these lessons on and how I do a lot of drafting nowadays.
While I love it, I recognize it is a big investment and there are cheaper alternatives out there like an Alphasmart, and there are cheaper Freewrite models as well.
I like writing on it because I can step away from my phone and computer to save any strain on my eyes, and while you can do a little bit of editing, it's not designed to do that well so you'll keep moving forward.
Some argue that getting a cheap laptop and just turning off the internet can accomplish the same thing. And that's possible. I'm just not great at avoiding checking other things while I write.
Activity: Draw and Tell a Story
As far as activities go, this time I want you to do something kind of silly.
One of you draws a picture, it can be the worst picture ever, or you can put some effort into it.
Then the other person writes a sentence to describe what is happening in that picture.
Take turns doing that, then flip it around. One of you writes a sentence that the other person has to draw out, and then take turns.
It's okay if you're not an artist. It's just fun to be creative together and consider how one person's imagination may picture something differently than another.
Until next time!
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