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Making a first draft into a serviceable story: Part 1 of 2
So way back in 2004, I wrote the first draft of the Ahgendt story (do you like my working title?) and though I tried to immediately rewrite it, I got shiny-new-idea syndrome and strayed to another story.
It took five years, but I finished the second draft. I didn’t even use the first draft as a reference while writing the second draft, probably because of terminal embarrassment. It was very much a white page rewrite that I finished September 20th last year. To get the second draft into the third draft took another 10 months: more on that process further down.
Between the second and third drafts, not much changed (plotwise, at least). Instead, I rewrote huge swathes AGAIN because the second draft writing was just not good enough to use. Not a white page rewrite, but large chunks were completely thrown out anyway.
The Plot!
The Protagonists, a surly ex-Military vampire hunter Latimer Bryce, and a straight-laced officer Nathaniel Aplin-Fletcher, each have their agendas.
While being hired by aristocrats to kill vampires, Bryce suspects the daughter of being a vampire and kidnaps her. She fast-talks him into leaving her unharmed but locked in his spare room in return for feeding him information about the vampires.
Nathaniel is investigating disappearances in the Military. He’s most aggravated when officers who are reported missing turn up with bite marks all over them, because his colleagues suspect vampire attacks and that’s silly: vampires aren’t real!
Complications ensue; Bryce and Nathaniel are thrown together to fight vampires, and uncover a startling plot of the werecreatures to take over the city. Oh no! They have to race against the clock to figure out who’s a traitor and who isn’t ... and try to keep their moral compasses intact.
What’s different?
***Nathaniel and Bryce, while having lots of UST, do not get together. Indeed, blond bombshell Avery manages to survive (yay!) and makes out with Nathaniel right at the very end, when everything’s fixed.
***Resident went-mad-and-horribly-died poor teenage girl, Aurelia, instead of having opaque (or absent?) motivations:
a) survives;
b) has motivations that are clearly mysterious, and then pretty clear;
c) holds her own against the weird dude that kidnapped her, and makes him earn her respect.
Quite an improvement, in my book.
***The werecreatures have a proper plan, rather than one that is merely hinted at. Woo, plot!
***So many more women and non-white people! Diversity! (Though click here to see when, in the second draft, the Bechdel Test got passed...)
***Downplayment of Nathaniel's father issues! More inventive!
Getting to the Third draft - The Editing Process
Like I said, the second draft was a typed white page rewrite of the handwritten first draft. Thusly, I had not actually done any editing to get where I was. As you might have guessed, it was sorely needed.
To edit the second draft towards the third, I:
-Printed it out, single sided and double spaced and put it in a big safe folder,
-Got many brightly coloured pens (and tried to avoid red),
-Scribbled all over the draft at the minutia levels - looking at sentence structures, paragraphs, word choices, as well as whole scenes and did they work, as well as 'Do I need this character?' and 'Woah, this plot, does it need changing?'
The result was this shambles:
Sometimes the writing really sucked and I had to rewrite a lot...
Sometimes the writing really, really sucked and I had to use the back of the pages so I had more space to rewrite whole scenes...
Sometimes I just threw everything out the window and wrote for realz.
And you know what Stephen King said about chucking out 10% of a story when you edit? Totally true:
Occasionally I conscripted![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miss_haitch into helping me:
And sometimes it was all too much for me:
Coming up in Part 2: Graphs! Charts! Map Evolution! Wordles!
It took five years, but I finished the second draft. I didn’t even use the first draft as a reference while writing the second draft, probably because of terminal embarrassment. It was very much a white page rewrite that I finished September 20th last year. To get the second draft into the third draft took another 10 months: more on that process further down.
Between the second and third drafts, not much changed (plotwise, at least). Instead, I rewrote huge swathes AGAIN because the second draft writing was just not good enough to use. Not a white page rewrite, but large chunks were completely thrown out anyway.
The Plot!
The Protagonists, a surly ex-Military vampire hunter Latimer Bryce, and a straight-laced officer Nathaniel Aplin-Fletcher, each have their agendas.
While being hired by aristocrats to kill vampires, Bryce suspects the daughter of being a vampire and kidnaps her. She fast-talks him into leaving her unharmed but locked in his spare room in return for feeding him information about the vampires.
Nathaniel is investigating disappearances in the Military. He’s most aggravated when officers who are reported missing turn up with bite marks all over them, because his colleagues suspect vampire attacks and that’s silly: vampires aren’t real!
Complications ensue; Bryce and Nathaniel are thrown together to fight vampires, and uncover a startling plot of the werecreatures to take over the city. Oh no! They have to race against the clock to figure out who’s a traitor and who isn’t ... and try to keep their moral compasses intact.
What’s different?
***Nathaniel and Bryce, while having lots of UST, do not get together. Indeed, blond bombshell Avery manages to survive (yay!) and makes out with Nathaniel right at the very end, when everything’s fixed.
***Resident went-mad-and-horribly-died poor teenage girl, Aurelia, instead of having opaque (or absent?) motivations:
b) has motivations that are clearly mysterious, and then pretty clear;
c) holds her own against the weird dude that kidnapped her, and makes him earn her respect.
Quite an improvement, in my book.
***The werecreatures have a proper plan, rather than one that is merely hinted at. Woo, plot!
***So many more women and non-white people! Diversity! (Though click here to see when, in the second draft, the Bechdel Test got passed...)
***Downplayment of Nathaniel's father issues! More inventive!
Getting to the Third draft - The Editing Process
Like I said, the second draft was a typed white page rewrite of the handwritten first draft. Thusly, I had not actually done any editing to get where I was. As you might have guessed, it was sorely needed.
To edit the second draft towards the third, I:
-Printed it out, single sided and double spaced and put it in a big safe folder,
-Got many brightly coloured pens (and tried to avoid red),
-Scribbled all over the draft at the minutia levels - looking at sentence structures, paragraphs, word choices, as well as whole scenes and did they work, as well as 'Do I need this character?' and 'Woah, this plot, does it need changing?'
The result was this shambles:
Sometimes the writing really sucked and I had to rewrite a lot...
Sometimes the writing really, really sucked and I had to use the back of the pages so I had more space to rewrite whole scenes...
Sometimes I just threw everything out the window and wrote for realz.
And you know what Stephen King said about chucking out 10% of a story when you edit? Totally true:
Occasionally I conscripted
miss_haitch into helping me:And sometimes it was all too much for me:
Coming up in Part 2: Graphs! Charts! Map Evolution! Wordles!
no subject
Also, that is an adorable kitty-cat drawing. And I'm totally looking forward to the graphs and charts. :DDD
no subject
MMM, charts. And the kitty-cat drawing, that is all
no subject
Also, your dedication is amazing! I can't even bring myself to edit flash fiction.
no subject
And thank you! I actually find it (slightly) easier to edit longer things I've written, as I feel like I've put so much into it already I can't stop now. Shorter things, once it's written my mind just goes, "DONE! MOVE ON!" and I run away!
no subject
Once in a creative writing unit I had to use a few different colours on someone's work because it was just so bad (pfft, self-editing for a mere tutorial? ~nevah!~) it would have just wound up a sea of pink. My poor pens that semester. :(