Draaafft One!

by Stephanie Black

So I am now the owner of ninety-eight thousand words, including The End. I finished the first draft of my work-in-progress. Some of those words are notes and such, but in a first draft, everything is word count you can be proud of, including flyspecks on the computer screen and the paragraph my daughter added about a spy army-crawling toward an ice cream vendor. Okay, I deleted that paragraph. It was a very funny paragraph, but rather unnerving, in the sense that someone had . . . erk! . . . glanced at my work-in-progress, which is what I get for leaving the file open on my computer. I don’t like eyeballs—save my own—looking at my first drafts. It feels like “get out of my head!” Of course, it’s not like I’ve got people lined up to read my first drafts. “Hey, I hear you’ve got this story that needs tons of revision. Send it over, will you? I love stories with flat characters and a timeline that looks like a twisted Slinky.” If I ever get really angry at someone, I’ll send them a first draft. That’ll fix ‘em. They’ll need therapy to sort their brain out.

Okay, it’s not that bad. The basic story is there, and I’m pleased with it. But, obviously, it needs work. I need to do a better job of knitting the subplots together. The characters need rounding. That part I changed my mind about needs fixing, since it no longer makes sense. And I do need to figure out the timing. When I’m drafting, I don’t like worrying about exactly when everything happened. How many years has it been since (important backstory)? How many days have passed since (plot event)? Sometimes I just put an X in the file in the spot where a number will go. “X days ago, you tried to murder me with an old boot and a ward bulletin folded into the shape of a swan.” She dropped her Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter on his foot. “And now you say you love me?” (Note the romance thing: LDS audiences dig romance).

Locations are another thing that sometimes end up with Xs in my first draft. Where does so-and-so live? I can always figure it out later, if needed—I can just name it X for now. I’ve got a location issue right now: I’d originally envisioned two important story locations as being an hour and a half apart, but now, with all the back-and-forth the characters ended up doing, I’m thinking I need to shrink that distance. Of course, shrinking it too much might create other issues . . . hmm. How about an intermittent wrinkle in the space-time continuum so the distance can be shorter or longer, depending on story needs? That’ll work. When in doubt, make things up that are contrary to fact; that's my motto.

Anyway, I’m delighted to be moving on to the second draft. I love having a complete manuscript to work with, as opposed to a blank file. And the timing is good, because we’ll be doing editing on Cold as Ice soon, and it’s nice to have this first draft out of the way before shifting back to my other book.

Let the revising commence!

Completely random way to end this blog: Don't you think Sarah Eden's name is totally a perfect match for the romances she writes? It's a classy, beautiful name, and there's this wonderful Garden of Eden-paradise connotation. And don't you think Jeff's name is a great name for a mystery/horror writer? I mean . . . Savage! Imagine if his name were Jeffrey Rosepetal Snookums. That just wouldn't evoke the same kind of chills. Chills, yes, but not the same kind.