It should be a mess. A natural, untidy, thrown together mess stew. Which ironically is how I can immediately tell bad writers online, in self published books, or when reading student’s writing. The 1st Draft is like a full condom—-there’s a lot of potential in there, but it needs other ingredients and input.
Because I handwrite most of my fiction and non-fiction work I can see the evolution of my work, a test itself, of the characters the ideas. Generally I’m trying to get the gist of what I think or an evolving/complex idea down. I’m better now at clarifying and quantifying what constitutes a worthy idea to pursue. I’m not always convinced upon just thinking of something that it has a point, a purpose, deeper meaning or legs. But when I commit it to paper, I’m generally committed to trying to work it out.
That’s what the 1st Draft should be—-I’m committed to working this out.
Generally by Draft 2–4 I’ve moved it from paper, pads, in to typing it up in MS Word. So there’s the 1st Typed Draft.
That draft allows me to see it much more starkly. I generally don’t finish a project/manuscript before typing it up. Or better explained, what I type up will not be the finished (Production) Final Draft , which is generally Draft # 12.
The 1st Typed Draft then is a cleaning up of the handwritten pads and bringing all the messy pieces to be assembled into an electronic page/saved system. Now, having gone this far, I’m serious not just about the idea, but the assembly. It is now a project I have a level of commitment to.
The assemblage is then about what works in the sense of My Idea, What I’ve Discovered in The Writing (generally some plot device, plot twist or character nuance) and the ultimate storyline.
No, I don’t always know the beginning, nor the middle, nor the end, but by project I generally know one of those sections, rarely do I not know all three in one project.
Clan Chief, a Short Handwritten Piece, Then A Short Story in a Published Collection, Now A Potential Novel
Right now I’m ruminating—-I’ve written 50 pages of a piece Clan Chief—-I thought it was a short story—-then I typed it up and the last section started suggesting more chapters. Typed up, it became about 35 typed pages. I included it in a short story collection, Escapades 2 because it focuses on a woman, Helen, who is her Native people's Clan Chief after her father’s death. The Collection had a focus on women…and it chewed up 20-35 pages.
The conflict is that though legal by tribal law, custom has been to have men be the Clan Chief, this is the first time in hundreds of years that the Clan Chief had no son, only his daughter and no living wife. So the title and all of its’ power reside with her. This wouldn't be such a big deal but her clan is negotiating casino rights, worth billions of dollars. Tribal law states that if the Clan Chief has no sons, his daughter can abdicate the role, title and powers to the Tribal Council. But she refuses. She assumes the position of Clan Chief. The next thing is that if she dies, it reverts to the Tribal Council. Which is how the attempt on her life happens.
I started writing it a few years ago, just doodling around, exploring female power, against Native/tribal laws and expectations and the matrilineal vs imposed patriarchal systems. Didn’t really think too much of it until I was trying to fill up a few hundred pages for Escapades II and thought of it, typed it up, polished it up, included it.
But in the final typing, I got to thinking—-how does this happen? What about this? Where does this go?
Shit.
Now I’m thinking on her and from there you create computer Publishing folders, do some cover mock ups, and a book is borne.
Bourgeois
Much like Clan Chief, I’d written this story, at least a decade ago. Same thing—-handwritten, typed up, ended up in Escapades and then folders and thoughts.
Both, having printed up mock/Proof paperback copies with the text and so far are about women vs patriarchal systems. Bourgeois though is about a Black woman, Wayli Jhirmack, wife to a Senator. Their marriage is falling apart, she’s deeply unhappy because of vague racial submissions she has to make with him and their children. She has an affair. With a White man. Then her husband disappears. At once, she’s both free and suspect, because he had beaten her right before he disappeared.
Wayli is someone who aspired to a life when she met her husband in college, a Black American Dream——achieved it and then was trapped by it. The dream didn’t go into decade after decade with him. Nor did it consider that she and he would change, as people.
Again 100 pages handwritten, turned into about 40 typed up and then I remember being stumped. It was like I wrote a song but didn’t know how to play any instruments. So I shelved it. Then came back around for Escapades years later and was purposefully looking for works that hadn’t ever been published, like other short stories I’ve done. As I typed it up, I started to consider that perhaps the issue with it was that at the time I wrote it I was 15 years younger so I didn't have enough life experience/information to really plumb into the depths of this woman. Now though, having written several books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of characters, I could understand her better, see how to infuse her with more identity.
I also had taught race, Black Literature, social sciences more throughout those intervening years and read a lot more, understood a lot more about the social construct of race and its’ inherent insanity through hegemony.
Sometimes a 1st Draft is lacking because you, the writer, are lacking. Also what I’ve found in other works is that there are places—-racial, sex, gender, sexuality—-that I didn’t know how to go to before, that I can push into now. The deep undercurrent of Bourgeois is Wayli’s sexuality and how she’s subsumed that with this racial artifice. That’s interesting, useful, something I can work on.
Conflict Steps-1st Conflict Point,
As you can see each 1st Draft stops or waits for me, the writer, at the 1st Conflict Point, 50–100 pages in—-perhaps even if broken down further, in the First Act. I’ve set the stage, brought on my main players and set up the internal/external conflict.
Most writers starting out try to finish the novel in one sitting/through this as a singular sustainable thought or action. Like a long blast of a trumpet. When in fact it’s multiple instruments, repeated, some played longer than others, often a surprise or two instrument buried past 100 pages if you’re patient. Instead what is better is to consider what you have—-what you’ve created.
I have Helen and Wayli, I understand their basic identities, their motivations, their opposition to getting what they want—-you should understand this to some degree in the 1st Draft.
You should also had a clear picture, even if the characters don’t, of their position to this attainment.
The next third, I’m using third in a figurative rather than literal way, is filler as the character works through the messiness of their desires and opposition. Helen’s tribal council, the casino people (are they connected to the mob?, who sent a hit squad after her? is her brother still alive? and what does that do to her position as Clan Chief?)
Wayli has lost her marriage, her children are staying with her vanished husband’s family, she’s been branded a scarlet woman and she's trying to survive anew while all of these entanglements from her near-past still exist. Is her affair a real love chance or was it just a fling? If it’s a relationship, how does she navigate the racial/cultural elements? Has she taken on too much, too fast? And is she too in danger from whatever disappeared her husband?
Both novels now hang on developing this midpoint. The midpoint is questions—-that should be answered. Generally bad structural writing bring up all of these wild questions—-which is creatively great but doesn’t consider that you have to/should answer them. I will gently suggest here is where all the bullshit trilogies happen—-because the book itself isn’t structured properly so you keep extending it trying to figure out how to meet points and then end it.
Simpler. A few questions, the above are very simple, able to be followed questions.
The Final Third/Denouement/Resolution
The final “third” again figuratively speaking it answering the questions again with conflict, Start with Conflict Set up, Questions/Answers Middle, End Answers questions. Simple
Yes, if you do that—-you have a strong 1st Draft, handwritten or typed.
Then you’re ready for the various forms of editing that happen in Drafts 4 through 12. Layout, narrative, connections, plot, dialogue, grammar, connectivity, continuity, removing mitigations, reframing.
The Point of Layering
What I mean by that is there is a common misnomer by readers who then attempt to write, that a book happens in one steady stream of effort.
Instead it is the equivalent to layers. From the above Wayli is perhaps my main layer of a character, idea, plot point but her husband is another layer, her children another, her friends another, her lover Tom another, the police yet another. Each time I go through the manuscript in edits, in subsequent drafts I will add more to each one of them, to their dialogue, entire scenes, observations, her thoughts and reactions to them.
Right now Wayli is yes the pattern to the outfit of the novel but each of the others is a form of fabric that I’ll sew in to a bigger or smaller space on the pattern. Editing is then cleaning up the dangling snippets of fabric. But there will be another half dozen layers throughout the novel and the final editorial process will be to make it seamless.
I point this out so directly because so many writers, or those who are working on their first few projects assume that one makes an outfit, a dress, a suit, a novel with one piece of fabric and one sure cut———-no, no, no the skill you see or read in better writers is how cleverly or perfectly they join seams, erase them, overlap them so what was once a single bolt, is shredded into a thousand pieces and then reassembled into a seamless seemingly single bolt again.
The 1st Draft then should be a mess and the constantly (hopefully) improving skill is adding layer after layer to strengthen the weak points of the story, remove the clunky parts, throw in interesting, exhilarating parts and then have what appears to be a single “thought” or mental expression by the end pages.
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