(My apologies for the lack of an image; I’m having internet issues, and trying to add one was crashing WordPress tonight.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust get the first draft down, even though it\u2019s probably bad, and you can make it good in the second draft.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/em>This is common advice that you\u2019ve probably all heard at least once. And it is good advice in its way – you have to be able to finish drafts even when you\u2019re not always inspired, and if you try to make them too great, you might get hung up on perfectionism. For myself, I try to patch huge issues as they arise so that I don\u2019t end up with an irreparable problem later, but other issues like a character\u2019s personality changing partway through, for example, I just make note of in my editing doc to come back to in the revisions, and keep on going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, as I was writing the outline for one of my more recent projects, I realized that we don\u2019t have to go to the work of writing the whole 50,000+ word first draft to patch holes, because developmental feedback is a thing. (For purposes of clarity, I\u2019m assuming that you\u2019re not a total panster.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a secret tool: we can use a chapter outline as if it\u2019s a first draft. If you have a fairly complete one, then use it to check for problems. Do you have the important plot points? Is the MC\u2019s character arc realistic and the way you want it? Do the main events follow each other logically? Is there something important that you still need to add? Is there a subplot that just doesn\u2019t serve the main story, or a lack of subplot you want to correct? Now is a great time to fix those problems. Since you haven\u2019t written a whole ton of words yet (probably – I used to know someone who crafted outlines that were the length of a small novella), it\u2019s easy to cut something without losing much work, or rearrange events so that they fit together more smoothly. Developmental feedback doesn\u2019t seem to be talked about as much as, say, content editing or having beta readers, but making sure you\u2019re starting a project on solid ground can save you unnecessary work down the line. See if the story needs revisions now based on the outline, and maybe get feedback from others too, and you can save yourself some rewriting and rearranging later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re more of a panster, this won\u2019t help you quite as much. But if you\u2019re a plotter or planster (a combination of the two, and honestly the coolest of the three terms in my opinion), or otherwise have an outline to work with, you have the chance to get an overview of your story and resolve major issues now, rather than dive into writing the whole first draft and then learning about them when it\u2019s harder to rewrite part of the story smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thoughts? Leave a comment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (My apologies for the lack of an image; I’m having internet issues, and trying to add one was crashing WordPress tonight.) \u201cJust get the first draft down, even though it\u2019s probably bad, and you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-outlines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}