So You Finished Your First Draft..

So you finished your first draft..

Hello lovely humans, how are you doing today? I hope everyone is doing fantastic! ❤ As some of you may know, I recently finished the first draft of my WIP. So, here are some tips I think are very helpful for anyone who also finished their first draft or will finish it.

Don’t stress about your word count

I can’t literally stress this enough, do NOT share your word count with other writers. That doesn’t mean you should keep it a secret, but you need to realize that your word count may be too little or too much according to you and when you share it with other writers, you unconsciously compare your word count with theirs. If your word count is 60,000 or if it’s 150,000, it does NOT matter. This is your first draft. This draft is for YOU, not for anyone else. This is like a detailed outline but it’s for YOU. Do NOT feel forced to meet a certain standard. Please, your word count is enough, just stop stressing about it.

Take a break

Please don’t read your first draft right after you’re done with it. When you’re done writing your WIP, you’ll feel very proud and it’s like you’ve climbed the highest mountain ever. Don’t ruin that by going ahead and directly reading it. Because (spoiler alert) it will be full of cringe. I’m not kidding. You’ll find yourself frustrated and angry and you will either want to edit the entire thing right this second or throw it out the window. Do NOT read your WIP when you’re done. You need to take a break. But what type of break? Will you just sit around a do nothing? No.

Buy a notebook

Now hear me out, you need to go to the nearest stationary shop and buy about a 100-page notebook or whatever you feel will suit you. Then, go to all those posts you’ve saved on your Instagram Tips collection and write every tip you feel you need down. Now, this will obviously take you ages. But that’s literally the point, you need a break, and what’s better to do in this break than research, make sure your writing is accurate, and improve your writing skills? 

Okay, you’ve done that, now what? 

Your first draft most likely will concentrate more on the plot than your characters, so here’s what you will do:

Divide your notebook giving each of your characters/main characters/side characters what you think is enough pages, then write down everything you know about these characters: their backstory, character arc/development, if they’ll end up dying or not, etc. This will also help you figure out your characters’ voices and how their dialogue should sound like. You can also draw your characters (if you know how to do that), draw something they have in their hands, for example if they have a certain weapon like a sword or a dagger.

In your notebook, you can divide up sections for those ideas you quickly scribbled on your Notes app on your phone or on a random sticky note nearby. Write all of that down in your notebook. Then, take out your original outline, figure out what needs to be changed, or what you think doesn’t make sense, or what your characters didn’t end up following. Figure out how those ideas of yours are going to fit in your new more detailed outline and voila. You now have a better, detailed, and improved outline that will help you write your second draft.

Reading your first draft

Now, yes, your first draft will be full of huge mistakes. Yes, you will find it full of cringe. Yes, you may want to throw up at how some scenes are so cliché. But you gotta go through with it if you want your second draft to be better. You need to have a small notebook with you to write down all your criticism. Write down all the scenes that you need to kick out, the chapters that need more detail, that one fight scene you skipped because you suck at writing them (ahem-), etc. Act as a critique to your own work, figure out what you need to work on more, what you need to cut out, all the plot holes that don’t make any sense and generally what you think needs improvement.

Find what you’re not good at

Don’t rush into writing your second draft. Believe me, the more you know about your WIP, the better before writing your second draft. You can try to find your weaknesses in your first draft by reading it AFTER you’ve taken your break. Find what needs improvement. Does your dialogue not sound natural? Do most of your scenes have the white room syndrome? Do you need to train on writing descriptions? Find those little faults and work on them. How? By writing other things other than your WIP. Go out somewhere and try to describe the place you’re in. Practice writing dialogue by reading it out loud while you’re writing it. Write events that actually happened to you. Or you can even start on another WIP, one for you and your eyes only. Keep improving your writing. 

And that’s it friends, and that is also what I’ll be doing when I get the time to haha (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞  I hope everyone has a wonderful day! 😊❤