It is my belief that hidden in the wordiness, awkward phrases, and poor organization and logic we find in our first drafts lie our true feelings. If we could only embrace our mistakes and find out what is true for us about them, these ugly ducklings could lead us to swans. In this way, we can harness and at the same time liberate our feelings and write more effectively than ever.
Whether you can make any sense of what I just wrote or not, I hope you have an intimation of what I’m getting at.
At least one best-selling book on writing says that writers should not expect anything good to come from their first drafts besides second drafts.
I think the author wants to give writers permission to dive in and commit words to screen or paper in their first drafts. The author is saying: “Hey, expect the first draft to be awful. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you can start the second draft and really begin the writing process.” That makes sense; however, it also runs down the first draft. It causes writers to want to put distance between them and their first-draft mistakes.
My advice is the exact opposite: Think of your first drafts as things of beauty.
I readily admit that first drafts can be pretty ugly things of beauty.
All I'm saying is don’t denigrate your first drafts. Revere them.
I approach my first drafts with the same devotion an archeologist approaches artifacts of Mayan ruins. They contain important clues to deeper intensions, subtexts, stories and histories. They can open you up to new worlds.
Norman Mailer once wrote, “I write to find out what I’m thinking.”
I write to find out what I’m feeling.
Let me give you an example from my own writing.
In my novel, Revolution, which takes place in Colombia, South America, three characters are walking along an open road as it enters dense jungle. The climax to the first part of my novel and a turning point for the principal character is about to take place, and it happens in that jungle. It’s important to me to use description here to create an enchanted place where nearly anything can happen. I don’t want to tell the reader that. I want to show that through my description of the place.
So let’s look at my first attempt to describe what happens as my three characters leave a straight, open road and enter the jungle:
“Suddenly the road went down a steep hill and curved this way and that as we entered the jungle. Green and mossy green everywhere we looked. We were surrounded on both sides by tall, funny looking trees. Very tall. The trunks with a gray-cream shade you don’t see in the States. Instead of branches, they had long tendrils that hung down, long rope-branches an ape-man could use to swing from tree to tree. The only branches and leaves were at the tippy-tops where they formed a green canopy. We walked among them, looking up at them in wonder, following the straight open road that had become just a wandering dirt trail as soon as it entered the jungle.”
Pretty bad, right? Typical first-draft dreck. What is important are my feelings hidden in the awkward phraseology:
The sense of entering a strange world where anything could happen: That’s what I set out to capture.
Obviously, the “ape-man,” “tippy-tops” and “funny-looking trees” are the wrong tone, totally wrong, but they give clues to the feelings I want to engender in the reader as he or she reads this paragraph.
Obviously, “looking up at them in wonder” is telling rather than showing. Could I show that the characters are looking up without telling the reader that they are? These are the kinds of questions I’m always asking myself.
Could I describe the marked contrast of moving between non-jungle and jungle besides using the word “suddenly?” In my imagination it did happen suddenly, the moment they entered the jungle. But “suddenly” tells. Is there a way to show it?
Now let’s look my second draft of this paragraph:
“The road we were following turned into a dirt trail going this way and that, and began a steep descent as soon as we entered the jungle. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by countless tall, slender trees. With taupe-colored trunks they towered above us, their only branches were at the very tops where their leaves merged with those of neighboring trees to form a dark green canopy that blocked the sun.”
This is better, don’t you agree?
I replaced “suddenly” with “as soon as” and made entering the jungle into an action. It tells the story of entering the jungle through revealed description. Notice “suddenly” appears at the beginning of the second sentence. I made a mental note: “As soon as” is much stronger than “suddenly;” in the next draft consider dropping “suddenly.”
I loved “towering above” because it shows them looking up in amazement or wonderment without telling the reader that that is what they’re doing. You can disagree, but that is my opinion.
I said to myself: Look, Chuck, the trouble you’re having here describing the road is that three things are happening to it at once: 1) It’s turning from a road into a dirt trail. 2) It’s descending rapidly, going down a steep hill. 3) It’s going first right, then left, back and forth, which often happens to a road when it goes down a steep hill. Is there a better way I could express that all three things are happening at once?
“Tall, slender trees” doesn’t quite do it for me as a description, although there’s nothing wrong with those words. Maybe there’s a way to add to those words? I wanted to show the potential for magic rather than tell it. How could I do that?
Notice I dropped the talk about the vines. I’m not going to have trees with vines unless I’m going to have my characters swing on them. I have no intention of rewriting Tarzan, so I got rid of the vines.
In the next paragraph, you’ll read the current draft of that same paragraph. It’s not final. It might change again. It probably will. But this is good enough for now and accomplishes what I set out to do, to show the potential for magic as my characters enter the jungle. Here it is:
“As soon as we entered the jungle, the road we were following turned into a desultory dirt trail and began a steep descent. We found ourselves surrounded by countless tall, slender trees. With taupe-colored trunks they towered above us, their only branches at the very top where their leaves merged with those of neighboring trees to form a dark green canopy blocking out the sun.”
Instead of running away from the awkwardness in the first draft, I moved closer to it and owned it. That helped me see the beauty in my first draft. From that, I was able to piece together phrases that helped me feel my way toward a much better solution in the next draft and in the one after that.
Notice, for example, that I dropped the notion of the dirt trail having swish-backs. “Desultory” was enough. And if my readers don’t know what that word means, they can look it up. I think it works in a magical way when applied to the direction of the trail.
First drafts are covered with tracks of our emotions. We just have to get out our magnifying glasses when we examine them to find clues that will help us get to a better, second draft.
Next month, more about how to effectively edit your first drafts.
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