Writing Messy First Drafts

I’m nearly halfway through my second first draft of Divided (I’ll explain why it’s the second one in a minute) and I’ve come to an important conclusion. First drafts, for me, need to be messy.

So, Divided is book three in my Untamed Series, and I think we’re looking at an Autumn 2017 release for this one (or there about). I began working on the first draft of Divided about nine or ten months ago, when I wrote the first 40,000 words and planned out the whole book in a lot of detail–as well as the structure of book four (the final book on the Untamed Series). Once I was 40k into it though (around January 2016), I had to stop as the deadline for my University dissertation was looming and so I switched focuses and worked on nothing but University work for four months. At the end, I felt like I’d gone mad–writing, after all, keeps me sane.

After finishing my dissertation–where I wrote upon the relationship between madness and death in Louisa May Alcott’s thrillers–I then had a little bit of time before I needed to work on in-house edits for Fragmented (book two in the Untamed Series), which released from Prizm Books in September 2016. I didn’t want to go straight back to Divided during that little bit of time as I didn’t know how long I’d have and I wanted a good stretch of time to work on book three… So, I started a new manuscript during that little bit of time, something I could have fun with. It started off as dystopian, but quickly became a YA fantasy.

And I finished the first draft–it came in at 60k, written in about three or four weeks. At that point, I was still waiting for in-house edits to begin on Fragmented, (writing and publishing is after all a waiting game), and I was desperate to work on something. After all, I’d had four months where I hadn’t done any writing. So I started another new manuscript, with the understanding that I’d drop it as soon as edits for Fragmented arrived in my inbox. Perfect. This was a standalone dystopian (and I can’t really say a lot about that, as it’s super secret).

But I finished that one too–90k in a month (a month of uninterrupted writing as edits for Fragmented had got delayed).

And then edits for Fragmented arrived–yay! I worked on those, and between rounds when I was waiting on my editor’s new instructions–and to give me a break–I began free-writing a new YA thriller (yeah, I just couldn’t stop writing). For this one, I used the ‘pantsing’ method to write it (i.e., I had no idea what was happening/who was hiding the secrets/who the villain really was), and it was so much fun. I got about 40k done for that in between the rounds of edits for Fragmented, as a lot of it was waiting for the next edit letter. And, as you know, I don’t like not to be writing.

Anyway, fast forward to now and Fragmented‘s finished and has been released–and I’ve got plenty of time to dedicate to getting Divided finished, (as well as my YA thriller). Yay!

I had estimated that I could get the first draft of Divided done by mid-October, if I started working on it as soon as Fragmented was out… but about a week ago when I read everything I’d already written for Untamed #3, I realised there was a problem.

The book just wasn’t working.

There was something missing, and the dynamics between the characters just weren’t there. It just seemed different to Untamed and Fragmented.

So, I looked at the way I’d been drafting the first part of the manuscript, in December 2015 and January 2016. Usually, I follow a brief plan, but I free-write a lot of each book too. Yet, I wrote these 40,000 words of Divided from a highly detailed plan I’d written and thus, I realised, it had become formulaic in my mind–and that had transferred to the page. And, because I’d already planned out–in excruciating detail–everything that was going to happen in the parts of book that I hadn’t yet written, it kind of felt like I had in fact already written the book. I mean, I knew it back-to-front. And therefore, my motivation to continue writing it was low, as there were no surprises.

And surprises are so important. In books one and two of my Untamed Series, the characters were constantly surprising me, doing different things, and causing trouble. Lots of unexpected scenarios occurred and they were fun to write, especially as I was learning about them at the same time as my main character. But with Divided, there was none of that. I was so much in control that my characters were doing exactly what I wanted and weren’t really engaging with me.

And I knew that needed to change. I needed to get the energy back into my writing.

But there was something else wrong with this first draft of Divided too. I didn’t like the corners I’d written my main characters into in this early draft of Divided. Sure, it was exciting. But it just didn’t feel right, not in the balance of the whole series.

So, I got my notebooks out and began mapping out the existing tension levels in what I’d written, the character progressions, the interactions, and which characters appeared more and and off page. Then I concentrated on the actual actions that happen in the book, before writing a list of everything I didn’t like or anything that didn’t feel true to the book.

And I found that all the things on this list stemmed from something that happened in Chapter One.

I then decided to start again.

Yes, I completely scrapped just under 40,000 words, keeping only the first half to the opening chapter roughly the same. When it got to the point where that thing happened at the end of Chapter One, I changed it so the opposite thing happened. And, after that, everything flowed much better–although the manuscript now goes in a pretty different direction. Yet, it does still follow the overall arc (it just takes a different pathway), and the back cover copy for book three, which has already been released, still works perfectly. Result! (Oh, and a warning; don’t read the BCC for book three unless you’ve read all of Fragmented, as it contains spoilers for book two’s ending).

So, now that I’m free-writing again and having fun with the characters–and they’re talking to me again, and surprising me–I’ve got tonnes of ideas about what could happen next and how the plot might all come together.

But, crucially, I’m not writing a detailed plan. I’m just making a few notes in the manuscript as I write, if there are any important parts I need to look at when editing, and I’m letting myself free-write most of it (that was, after all, how I wrote Untamed, and a good part of Fragmented, and it’s my preferred method).

Now, this draft of Divided is very messy.

But it feels more creative, more imaginative, and more exciting. And, I think because of this, my main character Seven is also taking on a more active role. Which is a lot better. Plus, it just feels right.

And, today, I reached 40,000 words with this second first draft of Divided. So, I’m now back at the point where I was, word count-wise, but the book’s working so much better.

 

The plan now is to power write through to October 16th and hope that I have at least 90k done by then. This would complete a very messy draft–but I think my first drafts always work best when I write them very quickly as I can submerge myself completely into the Untamed world. I then plan to take a break from Divided for two weeks and finish my YA thriller that I began drafting in the summer (I’ve got about 50,000 words for it and I think the story requires another 20k at least). After that, I’ll return to Divided and edit it.

Editing a messy first draft is hard. It takes a lot of work, but I’m strangely looking forward to it. There’s something very satisfying about editing and pulling something into shape. So, my tentative deadline to finish the first lot of editing is November 30th, after which I’ll send it to my beta-readers for their feedback and overall impression of the story. After that, a final round of edits (which may take quite a while, depending on changes) and a proofread will be next on my list to do.

And I have this crazy idea that I’ll somehow send Divided to my publisher by the end of the year… ha. And then in the new year, I can concentrate on drafting Untamed #4, and working on in-house edits for Divided.  Plus, I’ll hopefully have some time to edit my YA thriller, as well as the other two manuscripts I’ve drafted this summer: a standalone dystopian and a YA fantasy. And I want to some more edits on a manuscript I drafted in 2014, a new adult science fiction thriller, and really get that one into shape so I can query it.

And, of course, I’ll want to write a few messy first drafts too. Because they’re fun, and they’re what works for me.

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If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you could check out my first two novels, Untamed and Fragmented. They’re both YA dystopians, published by Prizm Books, the YA imprint of Torquere Press. The Literature Hub calls Untamed a ‘fantastic dystopian survival story, filled with twists…’ and YA author T.A. Maclagan says that Fragmented is ‘a thrill ride that continued to develop the characters in interesting ways as well as the wider dystopian world’. Thank you!