The Horror of the First Draft
It seems fitting that I should choose to write about first drafts on Halloween because, sometimes, they prove to be truly ghastly. I write historical saga trilogies. I develop a fully fleshed out synopsis, run it past my agent (who dislikes as many of my ideas as she finds intriguing), and gain the sign-off of my publisher before I even open a new document, give it a file name and start to type. So, you would think that, with everything worked out beforehand, pouring out the first draft would be a doddle. If only that were true. Despite all of that preparation, my first drafts are generally horrible messy affairs with clunky prose, muddled themes and plot holes aplenty. However, as I have come to learn, that is the point. All I am doing when I bash away at that first draft is getting the idea out of my head and into a format for eventual editing. The first draft is where I am getting to understand the characters in a far more meaningful way ...
