I recently came to this realization and it has been a game changer. Years and years of writing with nothing to show for it because I kept getting caught up in the perfect prose and experiencing "first draft dysmorphia". Great video, extremely relevant and well made thanks ❤
Wow. Thank you, Hilary. I’ve always dreaded going back over first drafts specifically for the reasons you mentioned. But a comment you made, comparing the first draft to the skeleton of a house, has completely clicked for me. You can’t start putting up drywall until the frame of the house is complete. And you don’t start decorating the drywall until it’s been painted. Each room of a house has multiple layers to it, just like the drafts of a book. 🤯 The prose and witty dialogue are the pictures and artwork and curtains hanging on a wall. It takes time and multiple steps to get there. Thank you.
Yes exactly! Very well put! Thinking of a book as layers really takes the pressure off each individual step. There's so much more room to work when you're only focused on what that layer needs, whether it's the frame, the drywall, or the paint. Taking it all one step at a time is so much less intimidating. I hope your writing goes well! This helped me so much, I hope it helps you, too! Thank you for watching!
I am *so* glad I found your channel. I've heard others refer to the type of draft you're talking about as the 'zero draft' - just info dumping all the story as it currently exists in your head, in whatever form it takes to do it, and then dissecting it later. I'm a habitual note-taker (because I come from the distant past, in the days before the advent of home computers), and used to have scraps of paper upon which I'd scribbled bits of dialogue and various story ideas that eventually went into a giant red 3-ring binder that I called The Big Red Book of How and Why, which would later be transcribed onto typewritten sheets. It was not a practical method. Now I take notes on my phone and plug them into an on-going Scrivener document to mull over later. That, to some extent, is my version of the zero draft. Although I have to admit I'm still trying to overcome the desire to edit and revise things even at this stage, as if it somehow matters. Thanks for the great content!
Your Big Red Book of How and Why sounds incredible, actually. I'm also a habitual note-taker. I keep a journal during each book because I'm still rather in love with the analog ways, even though I do still use and love Scrivener. Stopping yourself from revising as you go is really helpful. So many times in the past I would revise at the halfway point. And then I'd have to revise again when I changed something else. And then again. It was an endless loop. But if you wait till you're done, you can handle all the revisions at once. Thank you so much for watching!
"The first draft is telling the story to yourself." That actually reframed the process really well for me. The first draft isn't just a hurdle, it's a pole vault and the pole is missing, lol. Although I knew no one was going to see it, I guess there was some sort of hidden pressure to do well in it. Thanks for clearing that up! I also love, love, love the writing examples you give. The music paired with the sheriff segment pulled me in instantly and put my brain into high gear. The mini-arc paragraphs were super helpful in understanding what a mini-climax would look like. Like some sort of revelation, right? But also the story itself is intriguing. Have you ever thought about doing a video where you do a short story utilizing these tips? (I definitely don't have ulterior motives to see more of your writing, trust me. ^.^)
I had the same attitude. First drafts were SUCH a chore, especially because I was putting so much pressure on myself to get every word just right. I hope approaching things this way helps you as much as it did me! Thank you! I try to make my examples a little interesting, or maybe even inspiring, if others wanted to use them as seeds for stories. The mini-climax does work a lot like a little revelation. Sometimes it can be a twist, too. Mainly it's the conclusion of a mini chunk of action that then carries the story to the next mini chunk of action. Someone else mentioned doing a video series in which I take a story from start to finish. I think it's a really good idea, but I'd have to think about it a while to figure out the best and most helpful way to do it. I'm sure I'll figure something out. It's such a good suggestion, thank you! Thank you very much for watching, and for commenting! I really enjoy reading how my videos help people, it means a lot, thank you!
@@The-Second-Story Glad to be of service! Especially after how you've helped us so much. Take all the time you need if you decide to do a video like that. I don't think I speak for just myself when saying that quality over quantity is well worth the wait. Especially when it comes to helpful content. I've already re-watched your videos 3 times so it'll cement in my head, lol. I really appreciate how you take the time to come up with scenarios AND reply so thoughtfully. Thank you and many blessings on your writing journey! :D
You had me at "metaphor casserole." Truly, you are a gem, and this is my new favorite writing channel. You are funny, helpful, and make me feel good about my writing messes. I can't wait for your next one.
I’ve noticed that many aspiring writers often confuse 'realism' with an exaggerated form of bleakness. They strive to make their stories believable and immersive, but being realistic doesn’t mean everything has to be relentlessly grim or depressing. Realism doesn’t require characters to be overwhelmingly incompetent or plagued by a string of improbable misfortunes. Nor does it demand that every other character be irredeemably awful, betraying one another without reason or going out of their way to antagonize the protagonist. True realism lies in balanced, nuanced storytelling that reflects the complexity of real life.
I wholeheartedly agree. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, the fallacy that unlikableness and bleakness = realism. It's pretty clear to see, recently, where such a trend stems from in current aspiring writers and it is a shame. Finding that narrow ground between likable and believably flawed and believably difficult is genuinely tricky. So many new writers take the bleak, awful shortcut. Unnecessary conflict is also a shortcut that damages both stories and the believability of the characters. Good characters and good stories are so rewarding to write. It's worth the effort. But I think a lot of new writers don't even realize that such paths are possible, much less permitted.
I am thoroughly convinced that your videos are the only ones available in the internet actually holding any valuable and implementable advice for new writers. Others stay too abstract or use advice and insights that feel more suitable for someone who has actually delved a decent amount into the art of writing. I am always happy to see another one of your videos pop up in my feed and always felt capable of immediately using your advice the next time I sat down to write. For that I want to thank you a lot. Your videos really brought me the courage to not look at the product of my work in disgust as if it were spoiled but to look at it as a raw material I still need to refine.
I'm so glad my videos could help you with your writing! I've spent too much time myself looking at my projects with disgust. It's a hard and painful hurdle to get over. But once you figure out some tricks that can help you understand the beauty of the whole, difficult, and often messy process, then writing can be a joy again. I really hope my videos can keep helping you in the future. Thank you so much for watching and for this lovely comment!
That last tip is so important. I have a friend who used to chase me down so he could tell me about this new idea he had after failing to finish every single project he's ever started. He will spend hours telling me every detail of the story to the point where I could literally put the phone on mute while he's talking and he would still be talking by the time I came back however many minutes later. I used to tell him not to tell me anything until he's finished a chapter at least... He would just go silent, and the next time I hear from him, he's started a new project he wants to tell me about (when I say started, I mean only in his mind).
A well-informed and well-edited video, as always. I have one point to add. I once read someone compare re-drafting to re-reading: because a writer has to draft a story multiple times, a reader should read it multiple times. Few people re-read stories they like. They don't truly know how shallow an experience it is to read a story for the first time. That's why when turning to writing they expect something deep on a first draft.
A great video also! I used the tip of no editing as I wrote and found myself writing faster and enjoying the process more because I am no longer micro-managing any words, phrases or prose. The mini-arcs are amazing. I am now so much clearer about the middle and was able to work out some kinks and plot points that make no sense! My friend asked me about the story and I replied you'll read it when I'm done 🤣🤣🤣 Now I am pumped to finish it so she can read it!
Yes! I also really enjoy the process so much more this way! And that also helps me write. It's so much easier to write a draft when I'm enjoying the process. I'm so glad your writing is going well! Keep going and good luck! Thank you for watching!
I accidentally did this as I wasn’t someone who wanted to plan everything about, but writing as a pantser fizzed out too quickly. So writing - just keeping on keeping on - was such a nice balance between the two. So easy to fall into the trap of fixing and editing though. The irony is you deprive yourself the joy of finding out what happens in your own story if you stop, look back and edit, sort of like pausing a film every 5 min to look for continuity errors.
That's true. If you write the first draft without the constant pauses and interruptions of editing, in a way you find yourself experiencing the story as if you're reading it for the first time. Personally, that's almost my favorite part. The rest is more tedious. A labor of love, surely, but not quite as magical, maybe.
@ oh it’s also worth a note to mention, and I’m not sure if you experience this, it’s hard to notice pacing if you go through the scene as you write (watching your own ‘mind movie’). Only when I head back do I realise how important it is to add some material to make the scene stand out more or remove some to lessen fluff. Ironically you sort of have a limited amount of time you can try this as you get fatigued by re-reading everything 100 times to the point where even the word ‘door’ starts to sound weird.
I'm infatuated with the example story you keep using, even with you explaining the happenings so simply, the story beats just HIT. I'm truly in awe and I hope you keep telling it because I simply must know what, or who, happened to her dog.
I really enjoy playing around with the example stories I use for my videos, so it's really encouraging to know that others enjoy them as well. Thank you! And thank you for watching!
Your example of a friend asking you questions of your story for the first draft is very helpful. I tend to try for a proper story as a first draft, which comes with alot of hurdles because I get stuck on where/how the story was supposed to go.
That's what I would do, too. Eventually it occurred to me that the first major step was just figuring out the story. It's amazing, too, how much easier it is to write the prose and make it a proper story after you've got the story worked out. Thank you for watching!
Loved the conversation approach to describing the work. I’m currently finishing my first draft to my first book. I had the “conversation” of what my book is about- in my own head as if I’m being interviewed by someone. I even sat with a friend specifically to describe my book, before I really started writing it, in my own way of “making my story real”. This process actually helped me guide my work in the direction I wished for it, and away from what I didn’t want, once I began writing.
It's so strange how that works. I do that, too. When I'm struggling with a knot in my plot I'll ask myself questions about the story as if I know nothing. And rearranging my imagination like that makes me see the story differently and the questions I ask lead to answers I hadn't even known I was looking for.
This is hands down the best story writing channel I've seen. Every video is really just great advice and insight that resonates with me so clearly. Thank you.
I'm really glad my videos are so much help! I hope I can continue to make helpful videos! In the meantime, thank you for watching, and for your support!
Wow I just discovered you! I’ve watched countless videos and followed so many authors, read every book on writing out there, and you explained it so well that I’ve actually had a huge breakthrough moment. I’ve been trying to get my first draft as perfect as possible, and have rewritten it countless times before finishing! It’s been years! And I have several friends and my husband who keep asking to read sections of it just to see the tone or what it’s going to be like, and I haven’t let them read any of it because it isn’t ready and then I second guess everything and can’t get a single draft finished. My friend even said she’ll help me with it as I write, but I just cannot let her read it and start adding her input before I’ve even gotten my story down. Stresses me out! I’m swatting them away like flies and I know they think I’m crazy. So glad to know it’s not just me struggling with this! Telling the story to yourself is a great way to put it. This first draft is only for me, they can read parts of a later draft. And then I won’t get so obsessed with making perfect prose while I’m still trying to figure out the plot. I read somewhere that writing and editing are two completely different author brains/ skills and we should never try to do both at the same time or we’ll block ourselves. But I think we have more like 5 brains competing at a time! Now on to check out your other videos 😊
That's completely true, the first draft is just for you. It takes so much pressure off to think of it this way, I find. You tend to think of it more like really useful material, rather than writing that should be judged and assessed. Good luck with your writing! I hope this idea can help you. And thank you for watching!
your advice is so good, truly thank and please keep making videos. I just watched your others, and for the first time i do not feel overwhelmed on how to write characters or my first draft. I’m not dreading to finally start, i’m excited now and really think i can do this!
That is one of the exact life-changing breakthroughs this gave me, not to be overdramatic. I was finally excited about writing again and no longer dreaded it. And you can absolutely do this! Just be patient with yourself and never give up! Thank you for watching!
That's wonderful! Taking that pressure off yourself is such a help. Plus, now you can enjoy the process of figuring out the story without being hung up on the prose. Happy writing!
This was fantastic, i hadn't considered approaching the first draft this way and have been bogged down in prose and research mode. Thank you, I will start with this method today!
I find that when I do it this way it's almost liberating. There's something really freeing about being able to only focus on the story. I really hope it works for you, too! Thank you for watching!
Every. Video. That. You. Make. Is. HELPFUL! Omg. My background is in visual art. When starting a drawing or painting, I begin with basic geometric shapes that gradually build up into sketches . Then, I begin rendering the image only after mapping everything out. I need to approach writing in a similar way. I WAS TRYING TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT PERFECTLY! Ahhhhhh. "You can't do this? Then you can't be a writer. You can't do it." But actual writers don't write like that. LOL. Eeeeek. Thank you, once again, for the reminder.
Your art analogy works perfectly for this. Because not only is it the same idea, it's for exactly the same reasons. Imagine getting a face perfectly drawn with photo-realistic detail only to realize that you need to move it to the other side of the canvas, or you need to change the angle. Or remove it altogether. The same logic applies to story-building. And there's nothing worse than that inner critic using this opportunity to try to convince you that you have no idea what you're doing. When the reality is that even da Vinci didn't know where Mona Lisa's hands went until he'd blocked in the whole painting. Good luck with your writing, I hope it goes more smoothly for you now! Thank you for watching (and for the comment, it's very encouraging to know that my videos are helping other writers)!
You always give unique perspectives and actually useful advice. I've honestly learned more from your three videos than the tens of other videos that only give formulas and rules.
this is exactly what I needed to hear! Thanks so much, I'm feeling motivated again and even though I won't be anywhere near my Word goal for the month, I'm going to keep working on that first draft
I'm glad my video could help you feel motivated again! I eventually trained myself to stop caring about word count with the first draft, but that definitely goes against deep habit. It only matters that you've told the whole story. Good luck on your first draft! Thank you for watching!
Patiently waiting for your next installment. These are great. You’re a very good at this, funny, well thought out content, I can’t wait for more. I just read your essay on sub stack, Truth is Eternal, and I was hooked at the opening statement. These passages stayed with me: ‘Thus he read and read. And their words became his mind.’ and ‘How easy it is to forget that truth cannot be controlled by authority.’ finally, ‘But truth is eternal.’ Bravo If you have not written about this in a novel, you could. -cheers
I hadn't realized that that essay was still out there in the world! I'm glad you liked it. I enjoyed writing it. Thank you very much for your support. And for this comment. It's very encouraging to know that my videos are enjoyable and helpful.
I do this thing where I interview my characters and what happens during this interview, is nothing short of magic. They tell me their stories. I never thought about it, but that is really my first draft.
Really helpful video. I did NaNo last year (first time attempting long form fiction) and faithfully followed the don't edit principle, but in a more freeform "just type whatever dialogue etc seems to flow without much thought for where it's going" way, with the result that I'm now editing/rewriting and facing a big chunk that just says "insert plot here" (my own personal "here be monsters" :D). The approach of writing each scene as a paragraph first, with its own arc, makes a lot of sense (much more solid architectural premise than ending up with a bunch of curtain fabric randomly thrown into the corner of a muddy field). Thanks!
It sounds to me like you have a really good approach to start with, in the sense that you're using your first draft to focus less on the prose and more on the content. And that you don't edit! All that you need now is to develop a technique that works for you to incorporate story planning into the process as well. Good luck with your writing, and thank you for watching!
Great stuff. I like the way you make each point so easy and clear to understand in your videos. I am loving them and learning a lot! Thank you so much!
I get very excited every time you upload a video. Your advice is very practical, not preachy and basicaly all the good writing theory I've ever read combined in one place. Also, I'm one of those longhand writers who somehow hasn't gotten carpal tunel. It's very zen and grounding to write with paper and ink.
You are one of them! How?? It is very zen and wonderful, I agree. Unfortunately I'm a pen death-gripper. So if I write anything longer than a letter my hand is all but crippled for the rest of the week. Thank you for watching my videos! I'm really glad they're helpful and I hope they continue to be. Happy writing! (longhand! madness!)
Thank you! That's Otto. He's been with me... from the beginning. I mean the one on my desk is Otto. I didn't randomly name the skull on my neck. That would be... a little weird I think. (Thank you for watching!)
I'm currently working on a short novella project that I plan to send to a contest. I found this video just after I started prototype drafting the story and desided to try this no-prose methods and I'm blown away of how eyeopening it's been. I was able to finish a complete draft in a couple of days instead of maybe weeks for a similar project in scope. I'm already in a process of revising and planing a second draft that is slightly richer and structured. This format of video made all these concepts I have heard in other ways, finally "clicked" for me. Thank you for making and sharing this video.
That's so wonderful! Sometimes racing through like that, especially for shorter stories, is the best way to get it all down initially. And now you can actually enjoy the second draft. Good luck in the contest! Thank you for watching!
I have been hard stuck in the vicious cycle of trying to perfect my prose and it’s KILLING my productivity. Your video just happened across my feed a few days ago and holy shit I needed to hear it. Thank you for coming in clutch with excellent writing advice. I can’t wait to see your next video. ❤
Just found your channel today and I’m exceptionally glad I did! This is another wonderful video and yes, I too need to frequently remind myself of some of these things. Though my particular situation can make things a bit confusing at times. The story I’m working on is one that I’ve been ‘thinking up’ for about 15 years, ever since I was 13, but only a year ago I actually got serious about my writing, started looking into writing techniques, tips and tricks, all that good stuff, which was also when I started my official ‘first draft’. Before this, my story just took up a lot of space in my notes, random Word documents and more than anything in my head🤯😅 the first book (of a four-book series) and its characters I’ve known well enough to be writing a decent draft now (or well, a draft that’s kinda fun to read and looks like it “could” be a book), but I’ve definitely found that there are things you can only learn by drafting, like actually writing out the scenes and dialogue and stuff, that I couldn’t through all those years of making notes, which can be both concerning and exciting. So sometimes I really don’t know where I’m at. Is this a first draft? Second draft? Something in between? And so what perspective should I have on what I’m currently writing? I’m having fun but boy is it labor intensive too, and when my mental health and self-esteem issues prop up again I’m in real trouble xD but I suppose everything is temporary, including those periods. Just wanted to share that, video got me thinking, clearly😄
I know exactly what you mean. I have a couple stories in the works that I've been working on since I was 12. Sometimes I go back to them. They've evolved so much as I've grown as a person and a writer. I think of every new iteration of the story as having its own cycle. I've rewritten one of those stories ten or eleven times in full by now. First through fourth or fifth draft. Millions and millions of words (I counted once. It was ridiculous.) Something I realized was that I've learned SO MUCH in the process. If you have any questions about writing etc., you can pop into the community section on my Patreon. There's a Q&A chat there that I keep an eye on. I'm glad you found my channel! Thank you for watching and I wish you the best of luck with your writing!
@@The-Second-Story the story evolving as you grow, so true! I actually joined your patreon! Maybe even gonna do the ‘homework’ stuff cause I love that idea. Couldn’t formulate any specific question for the q&a chat yet so I went for a little rant here instead, haha, but I’m keeping that in the back of my mind for sure! And I’d love to see where your channel and your videos go, I understand that there are so many amazing and useful topics to talk about and I’m excited!
Thank you! I really appreciate your support! If you decide to do the homework, hopefully it can be helpful! I really appreciate your comments, too. They're very encouraging! Thank you again!
Hilary, thank you. I have searched long and hard for simple (as in uncomplicated) advice on how to do this whole "write a story" thing, and at long last, you popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, am I am hooked. Thank you, and please keep up the excellent work.
What you wrote at 4:40 is what I consider my outline. Its bullet points, but not fragments. You should be able to read the outline and get the whole story. I'm awful with describing characters and scenes. Whenever it happens in my story, it halts me for at least an hour. At these points, I think it's good to just write something random and come back later. Only then though. I don't like the idea of writing my whole first draft the way you describe because it's not much better than an outline. I think writing is like cooking from scratch. Each item I gather or make, is being added to the final meal. This outline you show, is not adding anything to my dish, it's like if I made the dish without knowing the measurements. Now I can't use whatever ingredients we're used in that dish for the real one. What I'm saying is, your first draft here doesn't feel like it was a stepping stone to the next part of the journey. I like to write something that feels like it could be the final line, but needs fixing with the wording or phrasing. That is left for later since I can see what I'm going for and hopefully jump right back into that mindset when I come back around to edit. My main issue with this idea of just writing to get it all down is that you feel like you accomplished something, but the dread of knowing that what you made is, going back to the meal talk, inedible, hurts. I lose all drive when I know now I have 300+ pages to edit and nearly all of it is unusable. That to me sets me back far more than it does to write 30 pages that I feel are "edible". Of course they will still need revision, but those feel like touch ups, not remodels.
The tricky part there, I think, is the idea of "usable" and "unusable." I personally find it more helpful to think of writing as making a sculpture from clay. If you've ever done that or watched someone do it then you know that one of the first steps is to pack a lot of clay firmly onto your form with the general shape present. Then, when you're done with that, you carefully sculpt out the shape of your piece. When you're done with that you smooth and polish. No sculptor would ever dream of showing that initial packed clay clump to the world. But it's an essential step, without which they can't ever complete the masterpiece. If you've put the whole story onto the page, even if it's 300 pages of story, that's all usable. If you have an idea of what happens in each scene already established, in your second draft you can write each of those scenes into something beautiful. Realizing at that point that all that's left is to rewrite the hard clump of data into a beautiful polished chapter makes you realize that all 300 pages aren't just usable, they're invaluable. To use your meal analogy, your first draft isn't cooking. It's studying the recipe and going to the grocery story and collecting all the ingredients. It's measuring out all the ingredients and arranging them in the order you'll need them. It's chopping the vegetables and preparing the marinade and so and so on. It's making sure your pot is hot and your oven is preheated. Then, when you start your second draft, everything is there ready for you to use. It's all usable. (Sometimes it helps to write a very rough outline before your start the first draft. In which case writing the outline is like deciding which recipe to cook before you make your list and go to the store.) But maybe what works for you could be a combination of your method and mine. You just have to be open to trying new ways to get through the first draft. It's okay for the prose and descriptions to not be "usable." The story is what you should focus on in the first draft. After that's down, you can have a lot more room and freedom to work on the prose and descriptions. Thanks for watching! And good luck with your writing!
@@The-Second-Story Thanks for the response. A lot of what you are saying I get behind. My biggest issue by far is that I'm much better at tackling hundreds of small issues over one large one so a large edit of hundreds of pages would never get done, but doing five pages a day would be easy. Like you say, it's all about finding what works for you. I appreciate your videos regardless. Please keep it up!
Going with your dish analogy, the process described in this video (which feels to me more like a zero draft instead of first) is like you getting all your ingredients out and in front of you so you don't have to pull them out of the pantry or the fridge while you're juggling 3 different pots on the stove. Which is actually very helpful in cooking. Anyw, I think the point is that sometimes you do need to let yourself write placeholders so you keep your momentum and don't end up re-editing the same 50 first pages.
@Mothsaam I think you're write and this feels more like a zero draft which I think is just an outline, but the video specifically said it's not that. I don't really agree with that. My outline, looks exactly like what the first draft in the video looks like. I can't just copy and paste that on the novel doc and then edit it to work. It's too basic and fast paced since it's an outline. I don't think it's like getting the ingredients and prep ready, that be the outline. The way the video shows a first draft to me is like trying to make the dish off of vibes and getting it wrong and learning from that. It can be helpful, sure, but it itself can't now be used for the final dish. I think a good first draft should be usable and able to be copy and pasted into the novel doc and reedited as is. It's the chopped up ingredients that you now have to measure out. Though I 100% you should do placeholder to keep your momentum going and actually make progress. HOWEVER, some things are not placeholder issues, but proper issues. The example of changing the location from one state to another is a placeholder issue. Writing a scene to bridge two other scenes together is not a place holder issue. That's a proper scene that will be needed, what reason do you have to not write it right now? Don't make extra work for your future self, thinking you are saving yourself time now. Think of it like this. I don't have to clean my gutters right now. Rain season just passed. I should put that on the to do list and work on the hole in the wall first since whether it's summer or winter, I want to keep my heat or AC in my house.
I have been binge-watching you today. I am learning a lot - thank you. 11:00 I am in a Greek Fan Fic phase right now. I have someone collecting all these Greek artifacts - what happened to the cloak that killed Hercules or the Spear that killed Odysseus. Thank you for architecture and design advice. Polycrates offers you his ring as tribute :)
I'm very glad my videos have been helping you! I hope they continue to do so. Thank you for watching! (And thank Polycrates for me! I promise I won't throw it into the sea.)
Thank you. I've always been very meticulous from the very beginning, no wonder I'm always wrecked at the 3rd draft. We all should just make our life easier.
Writing a book is already so hard. If any part of it can be made a little simpler, I think we should try to do so. I hope this helps you as much as it did me! Thank you for watching!
I am so glad I found your channel! You are so incredibly helpful, and your examples make these concepts actually click for me! I am almost sad that your channel is so new😂 I wish there was more content built up for me to binge! I'd like every video a thousand times if I could. Thank you! ❤
Thank you! I'm glad the examples are helpful. They help me and they're fun for me, so it's good to know that they're actually beneficial, too! Thank you so much for your support! Happy writing!
Hilary, I was delighted to see a new post from you and it did not disappoint. Thank you for your wisdom and humor. I am in the final third of my first draft and wish I'd gotten your sage advice a year ago! I've been erecting walls of my house then drywalling, wallpapering and trying to hang artwork on them before the next wall has even gone up. But I am going to apply your smart method to the rest of this draft to get me over the finish line. Maybe I'll even meet my goal! Thank you!
That might work out perfectly for you. I don't know about you, but I always really start to struggle as I get to the end. Hopefully you can get there without too much hardship! I'm glad my video could help you, and I hope your writing goes well! Good luck!
Dam, I'm loving your videos. I never thought of my first draft like this. It's almost like a really detailed outline. This has me excited and now you're my new favourite. :)
It is, yes. That's a good way to think of it, like a very detailed outline. I'm always happy to help people get excited about writing again! I really find it helpful to just focus on the story. I feel like the resulting story tends to be better, too. Anyway, thank you for watching and for your support! Happy writing!
Hi, first of all thank you, this is the most helpful video i've seen on the writting subject. You're so skilled at explaining stuff for actual beginners, your explanation about what a first draft really is is the most helpfull information i got in weeks of trying to learn to write. Thanks a lot, you might have saved might me weeks or month of struggle with my first draft.
That's wonderful! Anything to prevent struggle is a good thing! Writing is already plenty hard without adding more difficulty on top of it. I wish you luck with your first draft! Just remember to keep going no matter what. You'll probably reach a point in there somewhere (I always do) when it feels pointless and you're absolutely certain it's horrible. But you must keep going! When you're all done you'll realize that it's not horrible at all!
Omigod, I absolutely love this. I keep trying to get looser with my first drafts so that I can actually finish them, but the idea of just stripping out the prose altogether??? I love this! Maybe it's my over-reliance on word counts and feeling like I need to hit a certain word count before the draft is "done", so I feel as though I have to write prose or it doesn't count. But I am definitely going to try this. Thank you!!
Not sure why but your videos are HITTING me, love it. Definitely one of my favorite new writing youtubers. You boil it down in a way that's solid in pacing, doesn't feel shallow, and has lots of clear useful knowledge and caveats so it doesn't feel like dogma. I know it's cliche...but your videos have great pacing, haha. Not editing is huge, wasted a lot of time "refining" chapters I needed to delete anyway. Not to mention it distracts from forward momentum of the work and doesn't require you to ask further questions to get to the next step. You're better off not writing at all and thinking or researching on a first draft than editing, imo you need to stay as close to the "next page" as possible in your mind. Get it on the page. If you are hitting a WALL and just can't get it out, you're better just trying to ruminate with your mind or generating the ideas away from the page. I think blank page writing with nothing to work towards has done nothing but produce a hole I have to then dig out of later. My first novel is first draft which took me a year and a half (not terrible given the context) and will spend time making it more concrete in language once I get the "plot" betaread, for now I'm working on my second novel and workshopping refining the process to make it more fluid. This was great, I think for me I'm trying outlining. Not to stick to it, but just to think of the plot in terms of getting to the next point and not simply finding that point. Having points floating for where it should go helps a TON, whether you do connect to that point or not. I did successfully produce an outline for the next novel but haven't tested how much it will help since I haven't finished that draft, but trying to find new ways to outline and to build a framework. I definitely think I need to spend more time on characters this time, finding them in the process was tough for me. They all felt similar which would never have been a hole I had to dig out of if I just built them prior. I spent far more time detaching characters from being similar to other characters than I would have just building them at the getgo. A lot of my initial feedback was "two of these three characters is the same person" and it was confusing even when I literally made it 1 chapter = 1 new POV as a clear rule. A new chapter meant a new name and space and world...but because they were coming from such similar places it still confused people. For me this idea of zerodrafting fully and not even touching prose till the book is done may be my best bet. I think there is a case for trying to build prose for a character to find tone/character itself if you can't...but do that only in the beginning and then stop. I may try to just full on zero draft the second novel and not touch prose at all, especially as I use this first novel to hammer out the lessons I need to learn so I dont make the same mistakes twice in two different novels. I found as I went through the first novel the most productive method was zerodrafting the next chapter as I saw it coming, just jotting down paragraphs, sentences, lines, phrases, and things I could use as I went through to mold my steps through it. Plotting them down in the chapter and then writing the chapter from scratch behind it and pushing them forward, deleting them as I addressed them or changed them. Sometimes zero drafting many chapters or entire Acts before I actually sat with the page and wrote the prose and events. Obviously, for my first draft, the prose was terrible. Too abstract, which works in part for the world, but imo, unweildly and nauseating if you were coming in fresh. Balancing that wax and wane from abstract to concrete is my biggest battle. Would love to see a video from you on balancing "show dont tell" moreso when to utilize abstract and concrete. I think the dominant adage is never use abstractions because writers overly use them so if you are supressing it entirely you'll balance it out to a normal amount, but imo, my favorite books in part were my favorite because of the abstractions and observations of the author outside of the concrete mechaninations of the plot. So I wont want to kill that, because I love it, I just need to figure out when an abstraction is motivated vs distracting. When is an abstraction a quirk of the character's judgement of the world and themselves and when it is also just losing the reader in the mush of stagnation. For me, I just love really smart authors with big bold interesting observations and takes on the world, and while I don't know if I have the intelligence to make those, I can't know if I dont try. Those things can and do and will happen in the concrete...but for me the most memorable were the abstract.
"Show don't tell" is an interesting writing tip I hear a lot. I understand what it's trying to say, but I'm not sure it's always interpreted quite correctly. Abstract vs. concrete is extremely stylistic, with almost infinite variations. But it is a very interesting area of study. By abstraction I imagine you mean those moments when the character observes the world or people or events and has opinions that they relate usually in their minds. That is highly stylistic, but certainly an interesting study for a video. I'll put it on the list! Daphne du Maurier once said that a writer should be read and not seen or heard. As beautiful as a novel is that's full of the author's observations and intelligence (when done right), the key there is to pack all of that into the persons of the characters. And sometimes that means letting your characters disagree with you, or hold a slightly different perspective or opinion, or even be wrong. Audiences are more receptive to the opinions and observations of fictional characters than those of the person doing the writing. Almost all instances of such abstraction that I have seen to be tiresome, boring, or even irritating (and other critical readers would agree) is because it is apparent that the writer is attempting to use the character as a random mouthpiece. But, one might ask, how else do you find the opinions for the character's thoughts but from your own mind? How to prevent that from becoming tiresome? Threading that needle is extremely difficult, but certainly possible. I'm already enjoying thinking about it, so I think I'll enjoy making a video about it. Thank you for the suggestion! And thank you for watching, and for taking the time to write a comment!
Recently found your channel & I have to say -- I love your content! You have a direct & entertaining way to deliver actionable advice that is easy to digest. That's not easy to do for a subject like creative writing, let alone novel writing. Can't wait to see what else you have in store for us!
I want to say this video helped save my novel of two years! Thank you so much for your channel, Hilary! (PS. I liked your original title better 🤭definitely made me click on it faster than others with "X Tips" in the name)
Subscribed immediately. IMMEDIATELY!!! I keep overexplaining things then I bore myself before I get to the story bit. Ugh, thank you so much for showing the example cause it really helped me to understand what I was doing wrong.
I'm so glad I could help you so much! I don't know about you, but stopping myself from getting in my own way is practically a full time job, especially during the first draft. Avoiding getting bored is almost as hard. But if you keep it simple and focused, you can often dodge all that, or most of it. Good luck with your writing! Thank you so much for watching and for your support!
@@The-Second-Story after I finished the video, I turned my internet off and got to the complicated bit of my story that I had been stalling for weeks. Omg, I am so grateful, thank you again 🥹 I hope I can finish it before the year ends.
This was life changing. I never got any wips actually written down and completed because i had this overachieving goal of writing a "novel" when i should've been writing the story in its most simplest forms. Im not currently at the stage of writing my first draft but this video came at the perfect time regardless. I do have one question: I don't think my story will end up being over 200 pages. Is that something I should rectify or should I keep it simplified like that?
That's the feeling that always got in my way, too, that I was writing a "novel" so it had to look and feel like a novel and be as close to perfect as I could manage. And it made the whole thing such an unnecessary struggle. When you say your story won't end up being over 200 pages, do you mean the first draft? If so, that's certainly no problem at all! The first draft isn't going to be an indicator of your final book's length, so don't let it worry you one way or the other. My first draft that I'm currently working on is something like 56,000 words and I'm nearly done. I know enough about how I write to know that the final draft of the actual book will end up being around 100-120k. Which seems about right to me for the kind of story I'm writing. If keeping it simplified and brief helps you progress to the next phase then that's how you should work. If you find that you would benefit from giving yourself more information to work with in that first shorter draft, then try to be more thorough. You'll have to experiment at first to determine what works best for you. I'm glad my video could help you! Good luck with your first draft and thank you for watching!
I love your videos, and I am always watching for the next one. I'm about 100 pages into my scifi story. As I watched this video, I began to realize that the kind of writing you are describing as the first draft sounds like what I was calling my 'outline.' And when your on-screen text said "to be clear: I do not mean 'outline,'" it made me want to hear your thoughts about outlining, and what you would say about the differences between these in your process. Would you please make a video on this topic? Please don't stop making videos! Thank you!
I actually have a video idea on my list that has to do with outlining. Although, I will say that outlining tends to depend a lot on the person doing the outlining. I tend to think of it as the old school style of outlining. With a nice neat hierarchy of bullet points arranged logically in a kind of list. Others might think of something like a synopsis as being an outline. Others might combine the two. For the sake of clarity, outlining, to my mind, is the absolute barest of bare bones approach to planning a plot. Very little information, very concise, very brief, very orderly. Once you start describing the scenes I feel like we're getting into draft territory. But, again, definitions like this tend to be a little subjective. I do intend to make that video at some point! Thank you for watching! And for your support!
👍🏻 This is helpful! As I was watching I really wanted to know - roughly how many pages long is your idea of a typical first draft? (As in five pages ... fifty pages?) And how long would it typically / ideally take you? (Days .. weeks ... months?) Let's say we are envisioning a final, finished narrative of roughly one hundred thousand words, perhaps 300 book pages. This might give me a better appreciation of how much my process actually differs from the one you are describing. If I were to make a first draft of my own story, telling it to myself briskly (not stopping to ponder or elaborate) as I imagine this process, I think I would have around twenty pages, and it would take less than a week to do. The framework would not be thick with details or description. And I would already have spent a large amount of time thinking about my story and making copious notes. My outline is a thirty-page document. It doesn't forage into description territory, but it does contain details, bulleted structure, and complete sentences where useful. Maybe others would say it is something in between an outline and a draft. Two of my English teachers labeled me an "eeker," and they were the ones insisting on multiple drafts. Your advice about writing the first draft as though telling the story to yourself is making me stop in my tracks here. It gives me doubts about my process! I identify strongly with the idea of making a framework first, and then decorating it. Big picture, then details - zooming in progressively. I do think this is what I have going on. But, as an eeker, it is very hard not to edit as I write. Though people are always saying "don't do this," I am taking your video more seriously, because (quite unlike others' discussions about writing) so much of your content has made sense and resonated with me. So I am considering whether I should make changes. Again, thank you very much!
Everything about the entire writing process is subjective. No two people will write a story in the same way. So it's quite hard to answer your questions. A first draft, to me, is however long it needs to be. Naturally, books come in all lengths, so that will effect the length of your first draft. A draft for a fantasy book in which a lot of the worldbuilding, customs, lore, etc. has to be explained as well will be longer than a draft for, say, a murder mystery. If you summarize very loosely and broadly in your first draft rather than describe the scenes as thoroughly as you could, the first draft might be half or even a quarter the length of what your final book ends up being. Because I can't speak in generalities with this, all I can tell you is how I personally work. Please know that everyone is different and what works for me might not work for you at all. I write books that are around 150k usually. The draft I'm working on now is a book that will probably come in right around there when it's all done. The first draft is about three-quarters to four-fifths of the way done and it is roughly 60k. That seems about right to me, based on how I work. I've got some parts of the first draft that are very broad ("these two characters argue about this for a bit here") and some that are basically whole scenes written out in full. That word count includes three separate subplots which I've outlined and drafted separately. As for time, it takes as long as it takes. Ideally with this method, it shouldn't take too long. I've spent about three months on this draft and I'll probably be done in a few weeks. I took a bit of time off in the middle there to work on the draft of another story I'm working on. So, all told, I'm at about two or three months on this one. When you describe your idea of a first draft and your existing outline, these sound very similar to me. If you already write an outline then perhaps you could make your first draft a bit more detailed and thorough. You've got an idea of your plot, so now you could write out the basic idea of each scene, or each mini-arc, not thinking about the prose but focusing instead on the story events that occur. You'll probably find that such a draft would be a bit longer than your twenty-page outline, I'd say. Since the idea of gradually zooming in appeals to you, think of it like this. Your twenty-page outline is the big picture. Then you can do a first draft describing each scene or mini-arc, which would be like zooming in enough to see the rooms and the layout. And that might be longer, but you still shouldn't edit, because, again, this is just the story. And you should finish putting all the rooms and walls and doors in the house before you start moving them around. Once you're done with the first draft, you can go back through and make sure the story progresses as you want it to. When you're satisfied with that, your next draft will be prose and description, that is, zooming in to see the paint colors, the stain on the wood furniture, the throw pillows. This one you can edit all you want. But I'll think you'll find doing so a lot easier and more rewarding because you've already spent quite a lot of effort getting the framework of the story very solid. So now you can decorate it. I hope that helps! And remember, everyone has a different way of working. You just have to find the method that works best for you.
@@The-Second-Story I appreciate your thoughtful responses to my questions! Thank you. 🙏🏻 I agree, everyone has to find what works for them. My process works for me, but I try to improve it. It is interesting to hear what works for others. It would be great to get to read your writing. If you have titles to search, links, or a site, I would read. Thank you again!
I'm working on trying to find a way to put some of my shorter writing out there while I finish writing the book I'm working on. Thank you for your interest! Happy writing to you in the meantime!
It really makes my day when someone tells me that a video of mine has helped them get excited about writing. I know what you mean, too. Using this method I find that I'm able to immerse myself in the story much more easily. And that's always really fun and exciting. Thank you for watching! And good luck with your writing!
Everytime I think your next video could not possibly be more helpful (and funny) than the last, and everytime you prove me wrong. The only way I had heard this tip so far was in the form "Allow your first draft to be terrible", and that was about as unhelpful as advice gets. Thank you for putting it into context.
I heard that exact thing so often, too, and I never understood it. And then one day I was so annoyed that I couldn't figure out how to describe a scene that I just made a series of notes describing what I wanted to happen and the next thing I knew I was a third of the way through the whole story, just "describing" it like that. And suddenly it all made sense (finally). I'm so glad my videos are helpful! I hope they continue to be! And thank you for watching!
I didn't know this is what a draft looks like 🤯 I was wondering how detailed an outline needs to be. I have a short one that looks like a list, and then... I guess I already have a couple of chapters drafted and didn't know 😂 I thought it was just a long outline... I read another writer's advice that said in every writing session, he starts by reading and editing what he wrote the previous day, and then just drafting the remaining time. I guess I gotta find what works for me, but definately worry less about editing at this stage!
Your outline sounds perfect. If it's clear to you and if it helps you understand the story structure you're building, then it's doing everything it's supposed to be doing. My outlines do that to. Sometimes I just need half a sentence to explain the plot point. Sometimes I need a whole page. Re-reading and editing at the beginning of every writing session might work well once you're into the second or third draft. But I highly recommend avoiding that for the first draft. Just keep experimenting until you find your own method! And happy writing!
@The-Second-Story I'll try it!! 🥰 Thank you so much for replying!! And I love your advice! It's very different from what's found in other places, and I think it makes a lot of sense!
Thankyou for this. I'm at the stage now where my first draft is done, finally and I'm rewriting it all now. I wrote most of well rather than first draft style but now I'm struggling to write to standard the endings. I have the endings drafted already but it's tackling the second draft that's my struggle at the moment. Honestly, bring sleep deprived for the last few months has killed my brain lol
Endings are hard! I have a tendency to rush them, so I usually take a break for a week or two before I tackle an ending. I plan to make a video on second drafts on the future. Maybe that could help your overcooked brain a little! Thank you for watching!
@The-Second-Story that would be great. (By endings I mean the endings for all my characters fortunate to survive lol) The gripe really I have is that I wrote some chapters so well that I hold myself to that standard with all the rest which is fun but really challenging
I plan to do videos about all the stages of the process, and a video about tackling the second draft is very high on my to-do list! Thank you for the suggestion!
This technique already came in handy just a few hours after watching your video. I had spent the last few days mulling over a theme I'm interested in, and just as I went to bed, I came up with a fitting story, a modern fairy tale, if you like. So I got back up and I and kind of "vomited" it on paper, in one go. The whole story, compressed in five pages. I use the term vomited cause I'm not used to neglecting the language so badly. Feels awkward but it's great for making sure you get as much of the actual storyline/plot on paper. I'm quite new at writing (fiction) so I'm super excited. The story might not be good or even salvable when I go back to it, but I had fun, and feel a sense of accomplishment, and for a beginner that's important. thanks!
That's wonderful! Sometimes that's what you have to do, just pour it all out and let it be what it is, no matter what. Some of my first drafts are a lot like that. But just the feeling of having the whole story down is incredible. You feel like you've taken the first step, or you've started moving and now it's just a matter of staying the course till the end. Good luck and happy writing!
Thank you. I was wondering at the start how I could apply this to my writing-Web novles are a bit more hectic. But it became self evident as time went by. So thank you, I will try this for my mini arcs and chapters.
I've always marveled at how people can write web novels one chapter at a time like that. But now that I think about it, you could simple write up a simple first draft first and then the chapters are less of mystery as you're going. I hadn't even thought about that! Good luck with your web novel!
My 1st drafts start as a Scrivener project, but i keep adding and adding until its so full of information that i completely lose my grasp of what's going on. I'm absolutely trying this on my next story. I'd absolutely LOVE a video about getting an initial story idea and then how to develop it into a "real" story idea so that i can then perform the steps of this video to turn it into a 1st draft.
Keeping my stories organized in Scrivener is an ongoing battle, I think I'm always right on the brink of losing control! That's a really good idea for a video! I'll have to think about that one for a while. Thank you for the suggestion! And thank you for watching!
You're the best when it comes to explaining things. Can you make a video on how to avoid single purpose sentence, and transition between scenes. Please ☺️
Do you mean transitions between plot lines? Subplots and main plots? If so, that one is currently in the works! Thank you for watching! I'm glad my explanations are able to help you!
Hilariously, I just released a video today saying the exact opposite of this. Not as advice. Just, this is why my daily word counts aren’t very high :) Love your videos. All the best 😊
Learning to just move on has been my biggest hurdle so far, but I can finally feel the effects of it a quarter into my draft. Don't get me wrong, I still feel the urge to go and rearrange everything I wrote the day before every time I open my novel, but I've gotten better about shoving those feelings down and just picking up where I need to.
It also makes you a little more eager to finish so you can go back and edit. It's that way for me, anyway. I've set such a hard rule about that for myself that it adds another layer of motivation on my urgency to finish the first draft. I hope it continues to go well for you! Good luck!
I've been trying out the method suggested of breaking up the storytelling from the prose and it's so simple yet so effective. I actually feel a bit stupid for not having realised this earlier, but it's taken the dread almost entirely out of my writing process. Embarrassingly enough this method is one I've been using for some time now in my music composition and I didn't even realise I should be applying it to my writing, starting at the highest level, creating a basic structure and then refining inwards with each pass/draft, delving deeper and deeper into the details with each subsequent pass and reserving certain types of changes for different stages in the process. The thing is, my general workflow of music composition has this structure built directly into it. After putting all the notes in place and tweaking them, I eventually have to record them all and this forces me to become critical about the composition in a way that isn't necessary or useful at all in the earlier stages. Then the recording is analogous to the prose draft, where how the notes are being presented is all that I'm focusing on. Of course, this general approach seems to apply to other mediums as well with the process from a sketch to a painting, or from the foundation of a house to the decorations on the walls. It's so simple yet I feel that stepping back to take this very simple linear approach isn't emphasised enough within the writertube space (which for myself - and I believe many others - is almost the only place I go to these days for writing advice). I'm very glad to have come across this channel.
That was a big way that it helped me, too, by taking the dread out of the process. I love telling stories, but adding the insane pressure to think of the details of the story at the same time I was thinking of perfect phrasing or beautiful imagery quickly turned into a chore, then a frustration, then an impediment. You're absolutely right! I've noticed this patient, one phase at a time approach in almost every other creative pursuit. But there's so much pressure on a writer to deliver a beautiful masterpiece with maybe just a few typos in the first draft. So strange. Anyway, I'm so glad this method worked so well for you! It was such a a help to me, it's wonderful to know that it has helped other writers, too. Thank you so much for watching!
OMG! The Orpheus metaphor! Makes perfect sense! So… um… I got about 10k words into a story and then I was like, this should actually be the first scene. But of course I have no clue how to move on.
I'm sure the answer to that is in your first scene! Just ask yourself what would happen as a result of the events of that first scene and see what seems like the best path for the story. My video on pacing has a few tips on figuring out story and plot paths, maybe it can help you there. Good luck with your writing! And thank you for watching!
As an artist, the "rough sketch" analogy helps me understand it better.
I recently came to this realization and it has been a game changer. Years and years of writing with nothing to show for it because I kept getting caught up in the perfect prose and experiencing "first draft dysmorphia". Great video, extremely relevant and well made thanks ❤
Wow. Thank you, Hilary. I’ve always dreaded going back over first drafts specifically for the reasons you mentioned. But a comment you made, comparing the first draft to the skeleton of a house, has completely clicked for me. You can’t start putting up drywall until the frame of the house is complete. And you don’t start decorating the drywall until it’s been painted. Each room of a house has multiple layers to it, just like the drafts of a book. 🤯 The prose and witty dialogue are the pictures and artwork and curtains hanging on a wall. It takes time and multiple steps to get there. Thank you.
Yes exactly! Very well put! Thinking of a book as layers really takes the pressure off each individual step. There's so much more room to work when you're only focused on what that layer needs, whether it's the frame, the drywall, or the paint. Taking it all one step at a time is so much less intimidating. I hope your writing goes well! This helped me so much, I hope it helps you, too! Thank you for watching!
Same here the way skeleton explanation was perfect for how i go about my other creative field so its really helped
I am *so* glad I found your channel. I've heard others refer to the type of draft you're talking about as the 'zero draft' - just info dumping all the story as it currently exists in your head, in whatever form it takes to do it, and then dissecting it later. I'm a habitual note-taker (because I come from the distant past, in the days before the advent of home computers), and used to have scraps of paper upon which I'd scribbled bits of dialogue and various story ideas that eventually went into a giant red 3-ring binder that I called The Big Red Book of How and Why, which would later be transcribed onto typewritten sheets. It was not a practical method. Now I take notes on my phone and plug them into an on-going Scrivener document to mull over later. That, to some extent, is my version of the zero draft. Although I have to admit I'm still trying to overcome the desire to edit and revise things even at this stage, as if it somehow matters. Thanks for the great content!
Your Big Red Book of How and Why sounds incredible, actually. I'm also a habitual note-taker. I keep a journal during each book because I'm still rather in love with the analog ways, even though I do still use and love Scrivener. Stopping yourself from revising as you go is really helpful. So many times in the past I would revise at the halfway point. And then I'd have to revise again when I changed something else. And then again. It was an endless loop. But if you wait till you're done, you can handle all the revisions at once.
Thank you so much for watching!
"The first draft is telling the story to yourself."
That actually reframed the process really well for me. The first draft isn't just a hurdle, it's a pole vault and the pole is missing, lol. Although I knew no one was going to see it, I guess there was some sort of hidden pressure to do well in it. Thanks for clearing that up!
I also love, love, love the writing examples you give. The music paired with the sheriff segment pulled me in instantly and put my brain into high gear. The mini-arc paragraphs were super helpful in understanding what a mini-climax would look like. Like some sort of revelation, right? But also the story itself is intriguing. Have you ever thought about doing a video where you do a short story utilizing these tips? (I definitely don't have ulterior motives to see more of your writing, trust me. ^.^)
I had the same attitude. First drafts were SUCH a chore, especially because I was putting so much pressure on myself to get every word just right. I hope approaching things this way helps you as much as it did me!
Thank you! I try to make my examples a little interesting, or maybe even inspiring, if others wanted to use them as seeds for stories. The mini-climax does work a lot like a little revelation. Sometimes it can be a twist, too. Mainly it's the conclusion of a mini chunk of action that then carries the story to the next mini chunk of action.
Someone else mentioned doing a video series in which I take a story from start to finish. I think it's a really good idea, but I'd have to think about it a while to figure out the best and most helpful way to do it. I'm sure I'll figure something out. It's such a good suggestion, thank you!
Thank you very much for watching, and for commenting! I really enjoy reading how my videos help people, it means a lot, thank you!
@@The-Second-Story Glad to be of service! Especially after how you've helped us so much. Take all the time you need if you decide to do a video like that. I don't think I speak for just myself when saying that quality over quantity is well worth the wait. Especially when it comes to helpful content. I've already re-watched your videos 3 times so it'll cement in my head, lol. I really appreciate how you take the time to come up with scenarios AND reply so thoughtfully. Thank you and many blessings on your writing journey! :D
@@The-Second-Story (Btw, the picture of you as hades is SO funny! I'm still laughing!)
You had me at "metaphor casserole." Truly, you are a gem, and this is my new favorite writing channel. You are funny, helpful, and make me feel good about my writing messes. I can't wait for your next one.
What telling someone about your book early on does to me: makes me hide from the people I've told. 😂
I’ve noticed that many aspiring writers often confuse 'realism' with an exaggerated form of bleakness. They strive to make their stories believable and immersive, but being realistic doesn’t mean everything has to be relentlessly grim or depressing. Realism doesn’t require characters to be overwhelmingly incompetent or plagued by a string of improbable misfortunes. Nor does it demand that every other character be irredeemably awful, betraying one another without reason or going out of their way to antagonize the protagonist. True realism lies in balanced, nuanced storytelling that reflects the complexity of real life.
I wholeheartedly agree. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, the fallacy that unlikableness and bleakness = realism. It's pretty clear to see, recently, where such a trend stems from in current aspiring writers and it is a shame. Finding that narrow ground between likable and believably flawed and believably difficult is genuinely tricky. So many new writers take the bleak, awful shortcut. Unnecessary conflict is also a shortcut that damages both stories and the believability of the characters. Good characters and good stories are so rewarding to write. It's worth the effort. But I think a lot of new writers don't even realize that such paths are possible, much less permitted.
I am thoroughly convinced that your videos are the only ones available in the internet actually holding any valuable and implementable advice for new writers. Others stay too abstract or use advice and insights that feel more suitable for someone who has actually delved a decent amount into the art of writing.
I am always happy to see another one of your videos pop up in my feed and always felt capable of immediately using your advice the next time I sat down to write. For that I want to thank you a lot. Your videos really brought me the courage to not look at the product of my work in disgust as if it were spoiled but to look at it as a raw material I still need to refine.
I'm so glad my videos could help you with your writing! I've spent too much time myself looking at my projects with disgust. It's a hard and painful hurdle to get over. But once you figure out some tricks that can help you understand the beauty of the whole, difficult, and often messy process, then writing can be a joy again. I really hope my videos can keep helping you in the future. Thank you so much for watching and for this lovely comment!
That last tip is so important. I have a friend who used to chase me down so he could tell me about this new idea he had after failing to finish every single project he's ever started.
He will spend hours telling me every detail of the story to the point where I could literally put the phone on mute while he's talking and he would still be talking by the time I came back however many minutes later.
I used to tell him not to tell me anything until he's finished a chapter at least... He would just go silent, and the next time I hear from him, he's started a new project he wants to tell me about (when I say started, I mean only in his mind).
A well-informed and well-edited video, as always. I have one point to add. I once read someone compare re-drafting to re-reading: because a writer has to draft a story multiple times, a reader should read it multiple times. Few people re-read stories they like. They don't truly know how shallow an experience it is to read a story for the first time. That's why when turning to writing they expect something deep on a first draft.
"First: you are not writing a novel." Right after, the ad played, and I just had to think 'Imagine if the video ended there' 😂😂😂
A great video also! I used the tip of no editing as I wrote and found myself writing faster and enjoying the process more because I am no longer micro-managing any words, phrases or prose. The mini-arcs are amazing. I am now so much clearer about the middle and was able to work out some kinks and plot points that make no sense! My friend asked me about the story and I replied you'll read it when I'm done 🤣🤣🤣 Now I am pumped to finish it so she can read it!
Yes! I also really enjoy the process so much more this way! And that also helps me write. It's so much easier to write a draft when I'm enjoying the process. I'm so glad your writing is going well! Keep going and good luck! Thank you for watching!
I accidentally did this as I wasn’t someone who wanted to plan everything about, but writing as a pantser fizzed out too quickly.
So writing - just keeping on keeping on - was such a nice balance between the two.
So easy to fall into the trap of fixing and editing though.
The irony is you deprive yourself the joy of finding out what happens in your own story if you stop, look back and edit, sort of like pausing a film every 5 min to look for continuity errors.
That's true. If you write the first draft without the constant pauses and interruptions of editing, in a way you find yourself experiencing the story as if you're reading it for the first time. Personally, that's almost my favorite part. The rest is more tedious. A labor of love, surely, but not quite as magical, maybe.
@ oh it’s also worth a note to mention, and I’m not sure if you experience this, it’s hard to notice pacing if you go through the scene as you write (watching your own ‘mind movie’).
Only when I head back do I realise how important it is to add some material to make the scene stand out more or remove some to lessen fluff.
Ironically you sort of have a limited amount of time you can try this as you get fatigued by re-reading everything 100 times to the point where even the word ‘door’ starts to sound weird.
I'm infatuated with the example story you keep using, even with you explaining the happenings so simply, the story beats just HIT. I'm truly in awe and I hope you keep telling it because I simply must know what, or who, happened to her dog.
I really enjoy playing around with the example stories I use for my videos, so it's really encouraging to know that others enjoy them as well. Thank you! And thank you for watching!
Hilary, your videos have so much value! Thank you for doing this!
Love the Orpheus and Eurydice metaphor. Thanks for this.
Your example of a friend asking you questions of your story for the first draft is very helpful. I tend to try for a proper story as a first draft, which comes with alot of hurdles because I get stuck on where/how the story was supposed to go.
That's what I would do, too. Eventually it occurred to me that the first major step was just figuring out the story. It's amazing, too, how much easier it is to write the prose and make it a proper story after you've got the story worked out.
Thank you for watching!
Loved the conversation approach to describing the work. I’m currently finishing my first draft to my first book. I had the “conversation” of what my book is about- in my own head as if I’m being interviewed by someone. I even sat with a friend specifically to describe my book, before I really started writing it, in my own way of “making my story real”. This process actually helped me guide my work in the direction I wished for it, and away from what I didn’t want, once I began writing.
It's so strange how that works. I do that, too. When I'm struggling with a knot in my plot I'll ask myself questions about the story as if I know nothing. And rearranging my imagination like that makes me see the story differently and the questions I ask lead to answers I hadn't even known I was looking for.
This is hands down the best story writing channel I've seen. Every video is really just great advice and insight that resonates with me so clearly. Thank you.
I'm really glad my videos are so much help! I hope I can continue to make helpful videos! In the meantime, thank you for watching, and for your support!
Wow I just discovered you! I’ve watched countless videos and followed so many authors, read every book on writing out there, and you explained it so well that I’ve actually had a huge breakthrough moment. I’ve been trying to get my first draft as perfect as possible, and have rewritten it countless times before finishing! It’s been years!
And I have several friends and my husband who keep asking to read sections of it just to see the tone or what it’s going to be like, and I haven’t let them read any of it because it isn’t ready and then I second guess everything and can’t get a single draft finished. My friend even said she’ll help me with it as I write, but I just cannot let her read it and start adding her input before I’ve even gotten my story down. Stresses me out! I’m swatting them away like flies and I know they think I’m crazy. So glad to know it’s not just me struggling with this!
Telling the story to yourself is a great way to put it. This first draft is only for me, they can read parts of a later draft. And then I won’t get so obsessed with making perfect prose while I’m still trying to figure out the plot.
I read somewhere that writing and editing are two completely different author brains/ skills and we should never try to do both at the same time or we’ll block ourselves. But I think we have more like 5 brains competing at a time!
Now on to check out your other videos 😊
That's completely true, the first draft is just for you. It takes so much pressure off to think of it this way, I find. You tend to think of it more like really useful material, rather than writing that should be judged and assessed.
Good luck with your writing! I hope this idea can help you. And thank you for watching!
your advice is so good, truly thank and please keep making videos. I just watched your others, and for the first time i do not feel overwhelmed on how to write characters or my first draft. I’m not dreading to finally start, i’m excited now and really think i can do this!
That is one of the exact life-changing breakthroughs this gave me, not to be overdramatic. I was finally excited about writing again and no longer dreaded it. And you can absolutely do this! Just be patient with yourself and never give up!
Thank you for watching!
This is my favorite video so far. After watching this I had an aha moment thanks to you! I am not sure why I was making it so hard.
These tips changed everything! Thank you! I tried it and in 2 hours I got over 1k words. Before I was getting maybe 800 in twice the time.
That's wonderful! Taking that pressure off yourself is such a help. Plus, now you can enjoy the process of figuring out the story without being hung up on the prose. Happy writing!
This was fantastic, i hadn't considered approaching the first draft this way and have been bogged down in prose and research mode. Thank you, I will start with this method today!
I find that when I do it this way it's almost liberating. There's something really freeing about being able to only focus on the story. I really hope it works for you, too! Thank you for watching!
Every. Video. That. You. Make. Is. HELPFUL! Omg. My background is in visual art. When starting a drawing or painting, I begin with basic geometric shapes that gradually build up into sketches . Then, I begin rendering the image only after mapping everything out. I need to approach writing in a similar way. I WAS TRYING TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT PERFECTLY! Ahhhhhh. "You can't do this? Then you can't be a writer. You can't do it." But actual writers don't write like that. LOL. Eeeeek. Thank you, once again, for the reminder.
Your art analogy works perfectly for this. Because not only is it the same idea, it's for exactly the same reasons. Imagine getting a face perfectly drawn with photo-realistic detail only to realize that you need to move it to the other side of the canvas, or you need to change the angle. Or remove it altogether. The same logic applies to story-building. And there's nothing worse than that inner critic using this opportunity to try to convince you that you have no idea what you're doing. When the reality is that even da Vinci didn't know where Mona Lisa's hands went until he'd blocked in the whole painting. Good luck with your writing, I hope it goes more smoothly for you now! Thank you for watching (and for the comment, it's very encouraging to know that my videos are helping other writers)!
You always give unique perspectives and actually useful advice. I've honestly learned more from your three videos than the tens of other videos that only give formulas and rules.
Thank you for watching and for this comment! I'm glad my videos are able to help you so much!
Love the tips! I really appreciate each example too. Often videos don’t include concrete examples so I found that to be so helpful! Great video!
I'm glad the examples are helpful! I have fun with them, so it's nice to know they also serve a purpose! Thank you for watching!
this is exactly what I needed to hear! Thanks so much, I'm feeling motivated again and even though I won't be anywhere near my Word goal for the month, I'm going to keep working on that first draft
I'm glad my video could help you feel motivated again! I eventually trained myself to stop caring about word count with the first draft, but that definitely goes against deep habit. It only matters that you've told the whole story. Good luck on your first draft! Thank you for watching!
Patiently waiting for your next installment. These are great. You’re a very good at this, funny, well thought out content, I can’t wait for more.
I just read your essay on sub stack, Truth is Eternal, and I was hooked at the opening statement. These passages stayed with me:
‘Thus he read and read. And their words became his mind.’
and
‘How easy it is to forget that truth cannot be controlled by authority.’
finally,
‘But truth is eternal.’
Bravo
If you have not written about this in a novel, you could.
-cheers
I hadn't realized that that essay was still out there in the world! I'm glad you liked it. I enjoyed writing it. Thank you very much for your support. And for this comment. It's very encouraging to know that my videos are enjoyable and helpful.
“Premature sense of completion” MY GOD, I have done this! Thank you for allowing me to see myself! 🙏
I do this thing where I interview my characters and what happens during this interview, is nothing short of magic. They tell me their stories. I never thought about it, but that is really my first draft.
Really helpful video. I did NaNo last year (first time attempting long form fiction) and faithfully followed the don't edit principle, but in a more freeform "just type whatever dialogue etc seems to flow without much thought for where it's going" way, with the result that I'm now editing/rewriting and facing a big chunk that just says "insert plot here" (my own personal "here be monsters" :D). The approach of writing each scene as a paragraph first, with its own arc, makes a lot of sense (much more solid architectural premise than ending up with a bunch of curtain fabric randomly thrown into the corner of a muddy field). Thanks!
It sounds to me like you have a really good approach to start with, in the sense that you're using your first draft to focus less on the prose and more on the content. And that you don't edit! All that you need now is to develop a technique that works for you to incorporate story planning into the process as well. Good luck with your writing, and thank you for watching!
Great stuff. I like the way you make each point so easy and clear to understand in your videos. I am loving them and learning a lot! Thank you so much!
I get very excited every time you upload a video. Your advice is very practical, not preachy and basicaly all the good writing theory I've ever read combined in one place. Also, I'm one of those longhand writers who somehow hasn't gotten carpal tunel. It's very zen and grounding to write with paper and ink.
You are one of them! How?? It is very zen and wonderful, I agree. Unfortunately I'm a pen death-gripper. So if I write anything longer than a letter my hand is all but crippled for the rest of the week.
Thank you for watching my videos! I'm really glad they're helpful and I hope they continue to be. Happy writing! (longhand! madness!)
Nice skull. Not yours, the one on your desk. Well, I guess the one on your neck too. Whatever… thanks for the advice. Looking forward to the next one.
Thank you! That's Otto. He's been with me... from the beginning.
I mean the one on my desk is Otto. I didn't randomly name the skull on my neck. That would be... a little weird I think.
(Thank you for watching!)
I'm currently working on a short novella project that I plan to send to a contest. I found this video just after I started prototype drafting the story and desided to try this no-prose methods and I'm blown away of how eyeopening it's been. I was able to finish a complete draft in a couple of days instead of maybe weeks for a similar project in scope. I'm already in a process of revising and planing a second draft that is slightly richer and structured. This format of video made all these concepts I have heard in other ways, finally "clicked" for me. Thank you for making and sharing this video.
That's so wonderful! Sometimes racing through like that, especially for shorter stories, is the best way to get it all down initially. And now you can actually enjoy the second draft. Good luck in the contest! Thank you for watching!
I'm so glad I've found your channel! This video is exactly what I needed to push forward!
That's wonderful! Thank you for watching! I hope I can make more videos that help you, too. Happy writing!
I have been hard stuck in the vicious cycle of trying to perfect my prose and it’s KILLING my productivity. Your video just happened across my feed a few days ago and holy shit I needed to hear it. Thank you for coming in clutch with excellent writing advice. I can’t wait to see your next video. ❤
I suspect this will be the most important video on writing I have ever watched
Just found your channel today and I’m exceptionally glad I did! This is another wonderful video and yes, I too need to frequently remind myself of some of these things. Though my particular situation can make things a bit confusing at times. The story I’m working on is one that I’ve been ‘thinking up’ for about 15 years, ever since I was 13, but only a year ago I actually got serious about my writing, started looking into writing techniques, tips and tricks, all that good stuff, which was also when I started my official ‘first draft’. Before this, my story just took up a lot of space in my notes, random Word documents and more than anything in my head🤯😅 the first book (of a four-book series) and its characters I’ve known well enough to be writing a decent draft now (or well, a draft that’s kinda fun to read and looks like it “could” be a book), but I’ve definitely found that there are things you can only learn by drafting, like actually writing out the scenes and dialogue and stuff, that I couldn’t through all those years of making notes, which can be both concerning and exciting. So sometimes I really don’t know where I’m at. Is this a first draft? Second draft? Something in between? And so what perspective should I have on what I’m currently writing? I’m having fun but boy is it labor intensive too, and when my mental health and self-esteem issues prop up again I’m in real trouble xD but I suppose everything is temporary, including those periods.
Just wanted to share that, video got me thinking, clearly😄
I know exactly what you mean. I have a couple stories in the works that I've been working on since I was 12. Sometimes I go back to them. They've evolved so much as I've grown as a person and a writer. I think of every new iteration of the story as having its own cycle. I've rewritten one of those stories ten or eleven times in full by now. First through fourth or fifth draft. Millions and millions of words (I counted once. It was ridiculous.) Something I realized was that I've learned SO MUCH in the process. If you have any questions about writing etc., you can pop into the community section on my Patreon. There's a Q&A chat there that I keep an eye on.
I'm glad you found my channel! Thank you for watching and I wish you the best of luck with your writing!
@@The-Second-Story the story evolving as you grow, so true! I actually joined your patreon! Maybe even gonna do the ‘homework’ stuff cause I love that idea. Couldn’t formulate any specific question for the q&a chat yet so I went for a little rant here instead, haha, but I’m keeping that in the back of my mind for sure! And I’d love to see where your channel and your videos go, I understand that there are so many amazing and useful topics to talk about and I’m excited!
Thank you! I really appreciate your support! If you decide to do the homework, hopefully it can be helpful! I really appreciate your comments, too. They're very encouraging! Thank you again!
Hilary, thank you. I have searched long and hard for simple (as in uncomplicated) advice on how to do this whole "write a story" thing, and at long last, you popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, am I am hooked. Thank you, and please keep up the excellent work.
I can't wait to be in the future where you've released twenty more brilliant videos and they're my bible for writing
I did finish my first draft!
Still gonna watch though. So far all your videos were quite insightful.
That's wonderful! Good luck with your second draft, now! And thank you for watching anyway, I really appreciate your support!
This video just made me realize that what I thought was just a very detailed outline was actually my first draft. Thank you!
What you wrote at 4:40 is what I consider my outline. Its bullet points, but not fragments. You should be able to read the outline and get the whole story.
I'm awful with describing characters and scenes. Whenever it happens in my story, it halts me for at least an hour. At these points, I think it's good to just write something random and come back later. Only then though.
I don't like the idea of writing my whole first draft the way you describe because it's not much better than an outline. I think writing is like cooking from scratch. Each item I gather or make, is being added to the final meal. This outline you show, is not adding anything to my dish, it's like if I made the dish without knowing the measurements. Now I can't use whatever ingredients we're used in that dish for the real one.
What I'm saying is, your first draft here doesn't feel like it was a stepping stone to the next part of the journey. I like to write something that feels like it could be the final line, but needs fixing with the wording or phrasing. That is left for later since I can see what I'm going for and hopefully jump right back into that mindset when I come back around to edit.
My main issue with this idea of just writing to get it all down is that you feel like you accomplished something, but the dread of knowing that what you made is, going back to the meal talk, inedible, hurts. I lose all drive when I know now I have 300+ pages to edit and nearly all of it is unusable. That to me sets me back far more than it does to write 30 pages that I feel are "edible". Of course they will still need revision, but those feel like touch ups, not remodels.
The tricky part there, I think, is the idea of "usable" and "unusable." I personally find it more helpful to think of writing as making a sculpture from clay. If you've ever done that or watched someone do it then you know that one of the first steps is to pack a lot of clay firmly onto your form with the general shape present. Then, when you're done with that, you carefully sculpt out the shape of your piece. When you're done with that you smooth and polish. No sculptor would ever dream of showing that initial packed clay clump to the world. But it's an essential step, without which they can't ever complete the masterpiece.
If you've put the whole story onto the page, even if it's 300 pages of story, that's all usable. If you have an idea of what happens in each scene already established, in your second draft you can write each of those scenes into something beautiful. Realizing at that point that all that's left is to rewrite the hard clump of data into a beautiful polished chapter makes you realize that all 300 pages aren't just usable, they're invaluable. To use your meal analogy, your first draft isn't cooking. It's studying the recipe and going to the grocery story and collecting all the ingredients. It's measuring out all the ingredients and arranging them in the order you'll need them. It's chopping the vegetables and preparing the marinade and so and so on. It's making sure your pot is hot and your oven is preheated. Then, when you start your second draft, everything is there ready for you to use. It's all usable.
(Sometimes it helps to write a very rough outline before your start the first draft. In which case writing the outline is like deciding which recipe to cook before you make your list and go to the store.)
But maybe what works for you could be a combination of your method and mine. You just have to be open to trying new ways to get through the first draft. It's okay for the prose and descriptions to not be "usable." The story is what you should focus on in the first draft. After that's down, you can have a lot more room and freedom to work on the prose and descriptions.
Thanks for watching! And good luck with your writing!
@@The-Second-Story Thanks for the response.
A lot of what you are saying I get behind. My biggest issue by far is that I'm much better at tackling hundreds of small issues over one large one so a large edit of hundreds of pages would never get done, but doing five pages a day would be easy.
Like you say, it's all about finding what works for you. I appreciate your videos regardless. Please keep it up!
Going with your dish analogy, the process described in this video (which feels to me more like a zero draft instead of first) is like you getting all your ingredients out and in front of you so you don't have to pull them out of the pantry or the fridge while you're juggling 3 different pots on the stove. Which is actually very helpful in cooking.
Anyw, I think the point is that sometimes you do need to let yourself write placeholders so you keep your momentum and don't end up re-editing the same 50 first pages.
@Mothsaam I think you're write and this feels more like a zero draft which I think is just an outline, but the video specifically said it's not that. I don't really agree with that.
My outline, looks exactly like what the first draft in the video looks like. I can't just copy and paste that on the novel doc and then edit it to work. It's too basic and fast paced since it's an outline. I don't think it's like getting the ingredients and prep ready, that be the outline. The way the video shows a first draft to me is like trying to make the dish off of vibes and getting it wrong and learning from that. It can be helpful, sure, but it itself can't now be used for the final dish.
I think a good first draft should be usable and able to be copy and pasted into the novel doc and reedited as is. It's the chopped up ingredients that you now have to measure out.
Though I 100% you should do placeholder to keep your momentum going and actually make progress. HOWEVER, some things are not placeholder issues, but proper issues. The example of changing the location from one state to another is a placeholder issue. Writing a scene to bridge two other scenes together is not a place holder issue. That's a proper scene that will be needed, what reason do you have to not write it right now? Don't make extra work for your future self, thinking you are saving yourself time now.
Think of it like this. I don't have to clean my gutters right now. Rain season just passed. I should put that on the to do list and work on the hole in the wall first since whether it's summer or winter, I want to keep my heat or AC in my house.
I have been binge-watching you today. I am learning a lot - thank you.
11:00
I am in a Greek Fan Fic phase right now. I have someone collecting all these Greek artifacts - what happened to the cloak that killed Hercules or the Spear that killed Odysseus.
Thank you for architecture and design advice.
Polycrates offers you his ring as tribute
:)
I'm very glad my videos have been helping you! I hope they continue to do so. Thank you for watching!
(And thank Polycrates for me! I promise I won't throw it into the sea.)
Thank you. I've always been very meticulous from the very beginning, no wonder I'm always wrecked at the 3rd draft. We all should just make our life easier.
Writing a book is already so hard. If any part of it can be made a little simpler, I think we should try to do so. I hope this helps you as much as it did me! Thank you for watching!
I am so glad I found your channel! You are so incredibly helpful, and your examples make these concepts actually click for me! I am almost sad that your channel is so new😂 I wish there was more content built up for me to binge! I'd like every video a thousand times if I could. Thank you! ❤
Thank you! I'm glad the examples are helpful. They help me and they're fun for me, so it's good to know that they're actually beneficial, too! Thank you so much for your support! Happy writing!
Hilary, I was delighted to see a new post from you and it did not disappoint. Thank you for your wisdom and humor. I am in the final third of my first draft and wish I'd gotten your sage advice a year ago! I've been erecting walls of my house then drywalling, wallpapering and trying to hang artwork on them before the next wall has even gone up. But I am going to apply your smart method to the rest of this draft to get me over the finish line. Maybe I'll even meet my goal! Thank you!
That might work out perfectly for you. I don't know about you, but I always really start to struggle as I get to the end. Hopefully you can get there without too much hardship! I'm glad my video could help you, and I hope your writing goes well! Good luck!
Dam, I'm loving your videos. I never thought of my first draft like this. It's almost like a really detailed outline. This has me excited and now you're my new favourite. :)
It is, yes. That's a good way to think of it, like a very detailed outline. I'm always happy to help people get excited about writing again! I really find it helpful to just focus on the story. I feel like the resulting story tends to be better, too. Anyway, thank you for watching and for your support! Happy writing!
Hi, first of all thank you, this is the most helpful video i've seen on the writting subject. You're so skilled at explaining stuff for actual beginners, your explanation about what a first draft really is is the most helpfull information i got in weeks of trying to learn to write. Thanks a lot, you might have saved might me weeks or month of struggle with my first draft.
That's wonderful! Anything to prevent struggle is a good thing! Writing is already plenty hard without adding more difficulty on top of it. I wish you luck with your first draft! Just remember to keep going no matter what. You'll probably reach a point in there somewhere (I always do) when it feels pointless and you're absolutely certain it's horrible. But you must keep going! When you're all done you'll realize that it's not horrible at all!
Thank you! This was a kick in the pants to quit obsessing about the details... just get the damn story frame on paper!!! Subscribed.
Omigod, I absolutely love this. I keep trying to get looser with my first drafts so that I can actually finish them, but the idea of just stripping out the prose altogether??? I love this! Maybe it's my over-reliance on word counts and feeling like I need to hit a certain word count before the draft is "done", so I feel as though I have to write prose or it doesn't count. But I am definitely going to try this. Thank you!!
Not sure why but your videos are HITTING me, love it. Definitely one of my favorite new writing youtubers. You boil it down in a way that's solid in pacing, doesn't feel shallow, and has lots of clear useful knowledge and caveats so it doesn't feel like dogma. I know it's cliche...but your videos have great pacing, haha.
Not editing is huge, wasted a lot of time "refining" chapters I needed to delete anyway. Not to mention it distracts from forward momentum of the work and doesn't require you to ask further questions to get to the next step. You're better off not writing at all and thinking or researching on a first draft than editing, imo you need to stay as close to the "next page" as possible in your mind. Get it on the page. If you are hitting a WALL and just can't get it out, you're better just trying to ruminate with your mind or generating the ideas away from the page. I think blank page writing with nothing to work towards has done nothing but produce a hole I have to then dig out of later.
My first novel is first draft which took me a year and a half (not terrible given the context) and will spend time making it more concrete in language once I get the "plot" betaread, for now I'm working on my second novel and workshopping refining the process to make it more fluid. This was great, I think for me I'm trying outlining. Not to stick to it, but just to think of the plot in terms of getting to the next point and not simply finding that point. Having points floating for where it should go helps a TON, whether you do connect to that point or not. I did successfully produce an outline for the next novel but haven't tested how much it will help since I haven't finished that draft, but trying to find new ways to outline and to build a framework. I definitely think I need to spend more time on characters this time, finding them in the process was tough for me. They all felt similar which would never have been a hole I had to dig out of if I just built them prior. I spent far more time detaching characters from being similar to other characters than I would have just building them at the getgo. A lot of my initial feedback was "two of these three characters is the same person" and it was confusing even when I literally made it 1 chapter = 1 new POV as a clear rule. A new chapter meant a new name and space and world...but because they were coming from such similar places it still confused people.
For me this idea of zerodrafting fully and not even touching prose till the book is done may be my best bet. I think there is a case for trying to build prose for a character to find tone/character itself if you can't...but do that only in the beginning and then stop. I may try to just full on zero draft the second novel and not touch prose at all, especially as I use this first novel to hammer out the lessons I need to learn so I dont make the same mistakes twice in two different novels.
I found as I went through the first novel the most productive method was zerodrafting the next chapter as I saw it coming, just jotting down paragraphs, sentences, lines, phrases, and things I could use as I went through to mold my steps through it. Plotting them down in the chapter and then writing the chapter from scratch behind it and pushing them forward, deleting them as I addressed them or changed them. Sometimes zero drafting many chapters or entire Acts before I actually sat with the page and wrote the prose and events.
Obviously, for my first draft, the prose was terrible. Too abstract, which works in part for the world, but imo, unweildly and nauseating if you were coming in fresh. Balancing that wax and wane from abstract to concrete is my biggest battle.
Would love to see a video from you on balancing "show dont tell" moreso when to utilize abstract and concrete. I think the dominant adage is never use abstractions because writers overly use them so if you are supressing it entirely you'll balance it out to a normal amount, but imo, my favorite books in part were my favorite because of the abstractions and observations of the author outside of the concrete mechaninations of the plot. So I wont want to kill that, because I love it, I just need to figure out when an abstraction is motivated vs distracting. When is an abstraction a quirk of the character's judgement of the world and themselves and when it is also just losing the reader in the mush of stagnation.
For me, I just love really smart authors with big bold interesting observations and takes on the world, and while I don't know if I have the intelligence to make those, I can't know if I dont try. Those things can and do and will happen in the concrete...but for me the most memorable were the abstract.
"Show don't tell" is an interesting writing tip I hear a lot. I understand what it's trying to say, but I'm not sure it's always interpreted quite correctly. Abstract vs. concrete is extremely stylistic, with almost infinite variations. But it is a very interesting area of study. By abstraction I imagine you mean those moments when the character observes the world or people or events and has opinions that they relate usually in their minds. That is highly stylistic, but certainly an interesting study for a video. I'll put it on the list!
Daphne du Maurier once said that a writer should be read and not seen or heard. As beautiful as a novel is that's full of the author's observations and intelligence (when done right), the key there is to pack all of that into the persons of the characters. And sometimes that means letting your characters disagree with you, or hold a slightly different perspective or opinion, or even be wrong. Audiences are more receptive to the opinions and observations of fictional characters than those of the person doing the writing. Almost all instances of such abstraction that I have seen to be tiresome, boring, or even irritating (and other critical readers would agree) is because it is apparent that the writer is attempting to use the character as a random mouthpiece. But, one might ask, how else do you find the opinions for the character's thoughts but from your own mind? How to prevent that from becoming tiresome? Threading that needle is extremely difficult, but certainly possible. I'm already enjoying thinking about it, so I think I'll enjoy making a video about it. Thank you for the suggestion!
And thank you for watching, and for taking the time to write a comment!
Recently found your channel & I have to say -- I love your content! You have a direct & entertaining way to deliver actionable advice that is easy to digest. That's not easy to do for a subject like creative writing, let alone novel writing.
Can't wait to see what else you have in store for us!
Your videos are GOLD im so happy i found you THANK YOU you are a saviour
The Queen has Returned
I loooooved this video!!! THank youuuu!!
I'm so happy I've found this channel.
So I just wrote 1700 words of a first draft that I hadn’t touched for weeks. Because of this video. Thank you!
That's so wonderful! This made my day, truly! I'm so glad my video could help you so much. Good luck with your writing going forward!
Thank you very much! Couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. 😊
This is probably the best advice I needed to hear.
Excellent perspective! Thanks! ❤
Many thanks for sharing, Hilary !
This is the best *** most helpful *** writing video I've ever watched:) Thank you
I'm so glad it could help you! Thank you! And thank you for watching!
This is amazing. Thank you so much for all the videos so far.
I want to say this video helped save my novel of two years! Thank you so much for your channel, Hilary!
(PS. I liked your original title better 🤭definitely made me click on it faster than others with "X Tips" in the name)
I'm glad you were able to save your novel! Good luck writing it, I hope it goes smoothly now! Thank you for watching, and for your support!
Thank you 🙏🏼
I’ve so needed to hear this.
Your videos are SO helpful. Thank you!
Super helpful! This came at the right time for me. Thanks for sharing.
Subscribed immediately. IMMEDIATELY!!! I keep overexplaining things then I bore myself before I get to the story bit. Ugh, thank you so much for showing the example cause it really helped me to understand what I was doing wrong.
I'm so glad I could help you so much! I don't know about you, but stopping myself from getting in my own way is practically a full time job, especially during the first draft. Avoiding getting bored is almost as hard. But if you keep it simple and focused, you can often dodge all that, or most of it. Good luck with your writing! Thank you so much for watching and for your support!
@@The-Second-Story after I finished the video, I turned my internet off and got to the complicated bit of my story that I had been stalling for weeks. Omg, I am so grateful, thank you again 🥹 I hope I can finish it before the year ends.
This was life changing. I never got any wips actually written down and completed because i had this overachieving goal of writing a "novel" when i should've been writing the story in its most simplest forms. Im not currently at the stage of writing my first draft but this video came at the perfect time regardless.
I do have one question: I don't think my story will end up being over 200 pages. Is that something I should rectify or should I keep it simplified like that?
That's the feeling that always got in my way, too, that I was writing a "novel" so it had to look and feel like a novel and be as close to perfect as I could manage. And it made the whole thing such an unnecessary struggle.
When you say your story won't end up being over 200 pages, do you mean the first draft? If so, that's certainly no problem at all! The first draft isn't going to be an indicator of your final book's length, so don't let it worry you one way or the other. My first draft that I'm currently working on is something like 56,000 words and I'm nearly done. I know enough about how I write to know that the final draft of the actual book will end up being around 100-120k. Which seems about right to me for the kind of story I'm writing. If keeping it simplified and brief helps you progress to the next phase then that's how you should work. If you find that you would benefit from giving yourself more information to work with in that first shorter draft, then try to be more thorough. You'll have to experiment at first to determine what works best for you.
I'm glad my video could help you! Good luck with your first draft and thank you for watching!
I love your videos, and I am always watching for the next one.
I'm about 100 pages into my scifi story. As I watched this video, I began to realize that the kind of writing you are describing as the first draft sounds like what I was calling my 'outline.' And when your on-screen text said "to be clear: I do not mean 'outline,'" it made me want to hear your thoughts about outlining, and what you would say about the differences between these in your process. Would you please make a video on this topic?
Please don't stop making videos!
Thank you!
I actually have a video idea on my list that has to do with outlining. Although, I will say that outlining tends to depend a lot on the person doing the outlining. I tend to think of it as the old school style of outlining. With a nice neat hierarchy of bullet points arranged logically in a kind of list. Others might think of something like a synopsis as being an outline. Others might combine the two. For the sake of clarity, outlining, to my mind, is the absolute barest of bare bones approach to planning a plot. Very little information, very concise, very brief, very orderly. Once you start describing the scenes I feel like we're getting into draft territory. But, again, definitions like this tend to be a little subjective.
I do intend to make that video at some point!
Thank you for watching! And for your support!
👍🏻 This is helpful! As I was watching I really wanted to know - roughly how many pages long is your idea of a typical first draft? (As in five pages ... fifty pages?) And how long would it typically / ideally take you? (Days .. weeks ... months?) Let's say we are envisioning a final, finished narrative of roughly one hundred thousand words, perhaps 300 book pages. This might give me a better appreciation of how much my process actually differs from the one you are describing.
If I were to make a first draft of my own story, telling it to myself briskly (not stopping to ponder or elaborate) as I imagine this process, I think I would have around twenty pages, and it would take less than a week to do. The framework would not be thick with details or description. And I would already have spent a large amount of time thinking about my story and making copious notes.
My outline is a thirty-page document. It doesn't forage into description territory, but it does contain details, bulleted structure, and complete sentences where useful. Maybe others would say it is something in between an outline and a draft. Two of my English teachers labeled me an "eeker," and they were the ones insisting on multiple drafts. Your advice about writing the first draft as though telling the story to yourself is making me stop in my tracks here. It gives me doubts about my process! I identify strongly with the idea of making a framework first, and then decorating it. Big picture, then details - zooming in progressively. I do think this is what I have going on.
But, as an eeker, it is very hard not to edit as I write. Though people are always saying "don't do this," I am taking your video more seriously, because (quite unlike others' discussions about writing) so much of your content has made sense and resonated with me. So I am considering whether I should make changes.
Again, thank you very much!
Everything about the entire writing process is subjective. No two people will write a story in the same way. So it's quite hard to answer your questions. A first draft, to me, is however long it needs to be. Naturally, books come in all lengths, so that will effect the length of your first draft. A draft for a fantasy book in which a lot of the worldbuilding, customs, lore, etc. has to be explained as well will be longer than a draft for, say, a murder mystery. If you summarize very loosely and broadly in your first draft rather than describe the scenes as thoroughly as you could, the first draft might be half or even a quarter the length of what your final book ends up being. Because I can't speak in generalities with this, all I can tell you is how I personally work. Please know that everyone is different and what works for me might not work for you at all.
I write books that are around 150k usually. The draft I'm working on now is a book that will probably come in right around there when it's all done. The first draft is about three-quarters to four-fifths of the way done and it is roughly 60k. That seems about right to me, based on how I work. I've got some parts of the first draft that are very broad ("these two characters argue about this for a bit here") and some that are basically whole scenes written out in full. That word count includes three separate subplots which I've outlined and drafted separately.
As for time, it takes as long as it takes. Ideally with this method, it shouldn't take too long. I've spent about three months on this draft and I'll probably be done in a few weeks. I took a bit of time off in the middle there to work on the draft of another story I'm working on. So, all told, I'm at about two or three months on this one.
When you describe your idea of a first draft and your existing outline, these sound very similar to me. If you already write an outline then perhaps you could make your first draft a bit more detailed and thorough. You've got an idea of your plot, so now you could write out the basic idea of each scene, or each mini-arc, not thinking about the prose but focusing instead on the story events that occur. You'll probably find that such a draft would be a bit longer than your twenty-page outline, I'd say. Since the idea of gradually zooming in appeals to you, think of it like this. Your twenty-page outline is the big picture. Then you can do a first draft describing each scene or mini-arc, which would be like zooming in enough to see the rooms and the layout. And that might be longer, but you still shouldn't edit, because, again, this is just the story. And you should finish putting all the rooms and walls and doors in the house before you start moving them around. Once you're done with the first draft, you can go back through and make sure the story progresses as you want it to. When you're satisfied with that, your next draft will be prose and description, that is, zooming in to see the paint colors, the stain on the wood furniture, the throw pillows. This one you can edit all you want. But I'll think you'll find doing so a lot easier and more rewarding because you've already spent quite a lot of effort getting the framework of the story very solid. So now you can decorate it.
I hope that helps! And remember, everyone has a different way of working. You just have to find the method that works best for you.
@@The-Second-Story I appreciate your thoughtful responses to my questions! Thank you. 🙏🏻
I agree, everyone has to find what works for them. My process works for me, but I try to improve it. It is interesting to hear what works for others.
It would be great to get to read your writing. If you have titles to search, links, or a site, I would read.
Thank you again!
I'm working on trying to find a way to put some of my shorter writing out there while I finish writing the book I'm working on. Thank you for your interest!
Happy writing to you in the meantime!
I’ve been struggling with too much detail in my first. After listening to this video i feel refocused and excited to write when i return home! Thanks!
It really makes my day when someone tells me that a video of mine has helped them get excited about writing. I know what you mean, too. Using this method I find that I'm able to immerse myself in the story much more easily. And that's always really fun and exciting. Thank you for watching! And good luck with your writing!
Thank you! I needed this so much!
Everytime I think your next video could not possibly be more helpful (and funny) than the last, and everytime you prove me wrong.
The only way I had heard this tip so far was in the form "Allow your first draft to be terrible", and that was about as unhelpful as advice gets. Thank you for putting it into context.
I heard that exact thing so often, too, and I never understood it. And then one day I was so annoyed that I couldn't figure out how to describe a scene that I just made a series of notes describing what I wanted to happen and the next thing I knew I was a third of the way through the whole story, just "describing" it like that. And suddenly it all made sense (finally).
I'm so glad my videos are helpful! I hope they continue to be! And thank you for watching!
Thank you, I needed to hear this.
Thank you so much. Will tell you how this worked for me.
I didn't know this is what a draft looks like 🤯 I was wondering how detailed an outline needs to be. I have a short one that looks like a list, and then... I guess I already have a couple of chapters drafted and didn't know 😂 I thought it was just a long outline...
I read another writer's advice that said in every writing session, he starts by reading and editing what he wrote the previous day, and then just drafting the remaining time. I guess I gotta find what works for me, but definately worry less about editing at this stage!
Your outline sounds perfect. If it's clear to you and if it helps you understand the story structure you're building, then it's doing everything it's supposed to be doing. My outlines do that to. Sometimes I just need half a sentence to explain the plot point. Sometimes I need a whole page.
Re-reading and editing at the beginning of every writing session might work well once you're into the second or third draft. But I highly recommend avoiding that for the first draft.
Just keep experimenting until you find your own method! And happy writing!
@The-Second-Story I'll try it!! 🥰 Thank you so much for replying!! And I love your advice! It's very different from what's found in other places, and I think it makes a lot of sense!
This is such a great vid thx sm for making it this has helped alot with how i should go about my first draft
Thankyou for this. I'm at the stage now where my first draft is done, finally and I'm rewriting it all now. I wrote most of well rather than first draft style but now I'm struggling to write to standard the endings. I have the endings drafted already but it's tackling the second draft that's my struggle at the moment. Honestly, bring sleep deprived for the last few months has killed my brain lol
Endings are hard! I have a tendency to rush them, so I usually take a break for a week or two before I tackle an ending. I plan to make a video on second drafts on the future. Maybe that could help your overcooked brain a little!
Thank you for watching!
@The-Second-Story that would be great. (By endings I mean the endings for all my characters fortunate to survive lol) The gripe really I have is that I wrote some chapters so well that I hold myself to that standard with all the rest which is fun but really challenging
What about the second draft? Would love to see a video on that.
I plan to do videos about all the stages of the process, and a video about tackling the second draft is very high on my to-do list! Thank you for the suggestion!
@ Thank you. I love your videos btw.
This technique already came in handy just a few hours after watching your video. I had spent the last few days mulling over a theme I'm interested in, and just as I went to bed, I came up with a fitting story, a modern fairy tale, if you like. So I got back up and I and kind of "vomited" it on paper, in one go. The whole story, compressed in five pages. I use the term vomited cause I'm not used to neglecting the language so badly. Feels awkward but it's great for making sure you get as much of the actual storyline/plot on paper. I'm quite new at writing (fiction) so I'm super excited. The story might not be good or even salvable when I go back to it, but I had fun, and feel a sense of accomplishment, and for a beginner that's important. thanks!
That's wonderful! Sometimes that's what you have to do, just pour it all out and let it be what it is, no matter what. Some of my first drafts are a lot like that. But just the feeling of having the whole story down is incredible. You feel like you've taken the first step, or you've started moving and now it's just a matter of staying the course till the end. Good luck and happy writing!
What you describe as "first draft" is what I do with outline plus scene synopsis. Same result from a process viewpoint.
Thank you. I was wondering at the start how I could apply this to my writing-Web novles are a bit more hectic. But it became self evident as time went by. So thank you, I will try this for my mini arcs and chapters.
I've always marveled at how people can write web novels one chapter at a time like that. But now that I think about it, you could simple write up a simple first draft first and then the chapters are less of mystery as you're going. I hadn't even thought about that! Good luck with your web novel!
oooof, i am horrible at 'editing' my book....i've been struggling a lot lately. this is a nice reminder. thank you
My 1st drafts start as a Scrivener project, but i keep adding and adding until its so full of information that i completely lose my grasp of what's going on.
I'm absolutely trying this on my next story.
I'd absolutely LOVE a video about getting an initial story idea and then how to develop it into a "real" story idea so that i can then perform the steps of this video to turn it into a 1st draft.
Keeping my stories organized in Scrivener is an ongoing battle, I think I'm always right on the brink of losing control!
That's a really good idea for a video! I'll have to think about that one for a while. Thank you for the suggestion! And thank you for watching!
You just changed my life
Keep going - UA-cam needs content like this - thanks for being here 😊
Great tips Hilary- this is exactly what I needed and at the perfect moment too!! Thank you!!
You're the best when it comes to explaining things. Can you make a video on how to avoid single purpose sentence, and transition between scenes. Please ☺️
Do you mean transitions between plot lines? Subplots and main plots? If so, that one is currently in the works! Thank you for watching! I'm glad my explanations are able to help you!
Hilariously, I just released a video today saying the exact opposite of this. Not as advice. Just, this is why my daily word counts aren’t very high :) Love your videos. All the best 😊
Could you also make a video showing how you do the second draft? This video has already helped me tremendously ❤ I bet this video would help me too.
I intend to do videos covering the whole writing process, so a second draft video is definitely something I hope to do soon. Thank you for watching!
Learning to just move on has been my biggest hurdle so far, but I can finally feel the effects of it a quarter into my draft. Don't get me wrong, I still feel the urge to go and rearrange everything I wrote the day before every time I open my novel, but I've gotten better about shoving those feelings down and just picking up where I need to.
It also makes you a little more eager to finish so you can go back and edit. It's that way for me, anyway. I've set such a hard rule about that for myself that it adds another layer of motivation on my urgency to finish the first draft. I hope it continues to go well for you! Good luck!
I've been trying out the method suggested of breaking up the storytelling from the prose and it's so simple yet so effective. I actually feel a bit stupid for not having realised this earlier, but it's taken the dread almost entirely out of my writing process.
Embarrassingly enough this method is one I've been using for some time now in my music composition and I didn't even realise I should be applying it to my writing, starting at the highest level, creating a basic structure and then refining inwards with each pass/draft, delving deeper and deeper into the details with each subsequent pass and reserving certain types of changes for different stages in the process. The thing is, my general workflow of music composition has this structure built directly into it. After putting all the notes in place and tweaking them, I eventually have to record them all and this forces me to become critical about the composition in a way that isn't necessary or useful at all in the earlier stages. Then the recording is analogous to the prose draft, where how the notes are being presented is all that I'm focusing on. Of course, this general approach seems to apply to other mediums as well with the process from a sketch to a painting, or from the foundation of a house to the decorations on the walls. It's so simple yet I feel that stepping back to take this very simple linear approach isn't emphasised enough within the writertube space (which for myself - and I believe many others - is almost the only place I go to these days for writing advice).
I'm very glad to have come across this channel.
That was a big way that it helped me, too, by taking the dread out of the process. I love telling stories, but adding the insane pressure to think of the details of the story at the same time I was thinking of perfect phrasing or beautiful imagery quickly turned into a chore, then a frustration, then an impediment.
You're absolutely right! I've noticed this patient, one phase at a time approach in almost every other creative pursuit. But there's so much pressure on a writer to deliver a beautiful masterpiece with maybe just a few typos in the first draft. So strange.
Anyway, I'm so glad this method worked so well for you! It was such a a help to me, it's wonderful to know that it has helped other writers, too.
Thank you so much for watching!
I am going to try this out with a short story first. Here it goes wish me luck
Good luck!
Good stuff. Keep at it.
OMG! The Orpheus metaphor! Makes perfect sense! So… um… I got about 10k words into a story and then I was like, this should actually be the first scene. But of course I have no clue how to move on.
I'm sure the answer to that is in your first scene! Just ask yourself what would happen as a result of the events of that first scene and see what seems like the best path for the story. My video on pacing has a few tips on figuring out story and plot paths, maybe it can help you there. Good luck with your writing! And thank you for watching!
I truly enjoy your videos. Thanks!