I’m interested in seeing what other writers draft & writing processes look like, and how they differ from my own.
Personally, mine looks like:
Initial idea —> conceptualize story beats —> outline —> nail down character(s) and setting —> change outline (if necessary) to reflect whatever new shit I’ve learned about my character(s) and settings —> write first draft.
Now, in my opinion all that work is PART of writing a first draft; I consider everything from my “outline” to the actual “first draft” of my story to *be* the first draft - perhaps because I tend to edit as I write, so my actual first story draft comes out looking way more polished than it reasonably should.
I also tend to break writing my first draft into two sections; I write around 50k, then take a break (somewhere between a couple days to a couple weeks) to decompress and let my ideas and the upcoming plot and resolution sort of just percolate in my mind until I feel like it’s ready to be written. Then I’ll go back and write another 40k or so.
So its sort of:
Write first draft (50k) —> take a break for 3 weeks —> write rest of first draft
I know it’s unusual to stop your writing flow so suddenly in the middle like that, but I’ve found it works well to give my mind space and time to really examine my outlined plots to see if it all fits well, or if I need to alter shit in order to get the effect I really want out of my story.
Generally my first draft then sits for a bit until I feel like editing it properly; I do a full read through of the draft, making notes on the side as I go, of anything inconsistent or that I flag immediately as needing to be fixed; then I start from the beginning, going chapter by chapter to do a final edit (this is mostly for paragraph structure and/or minor alterations for foreshadowing, repetitive phrasing, small character changes, etc). Then I let it all sit untouched for a couple months before going back to do a final read through; if I’m happy with it still, with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, then I know it’s ready for other people’s eyes to look over.
Interested to know if anyone else has a process similar to mine, and also looking forward to reading about all those whose process differs completely from mine lol. Maybe I’ll even pick up a new trick or two to add to my process, who knows!