Under-writting

[Arkose]

Is it common to under-write your first draft?

I am a fast typer/writer. I don't focus on sentence structure or really anything other than putting my story down. I'm through 1/3 of my WIP and I have written only 17k. The rest of should have the same ratio. I feel like I'm not putting much into the story. I figured I would end up somewhere near 100k and need to cut 10-20k from it. Now, I'm looking at trying to add 30 k or so. I haven't read too many people having this problem, heck anyone having this problem. I'm hoping that my second time through will add more as I expand the setting and characters.

Maybe this is my extended draft? Can I blame my science teachers for forcing me to be precise and cutting the "fluff?"

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Arkose, I've just written the first 10000 of a new WIP, that I know will expand to about 25000 on the final write. The first draft is where I see the shape, but not the detail, and then I fill it out later.I think it just comes down to individual ways of working again, but I woudln't panic if it's a first draft.

 

[Hex]

I don't know if lots of people underwrite their first draft, but I do too.

I add stuff when I rewrite. First draft of wip1 was 40,000 words -- most recent version was 95,000 or so.

 

[Bowler1]

Don't worry too much about the first drafts they should never see the light of day. Some will be cut, some will grow and some will be taken out back for a swift end. Get it down and edit later. Remember to have fun as most of us never see the light of day either!

 

[Arkose]

Glade to see others have their works expanded past the first draft. Would love to see my words double during the editing, up to a certain point of course.

 

[chopper]

others are correct: only worry after you've finished the first draft. until then, merely worry that you haven't got a first draft.

 

[Mouse]

But then there are those of us, like me, who take ages to write anything because we like to have our first draft as close to being a final draft as possible. I'm an 'edit-as-I-go' person. Anybody who tells you it can't be done like this is talking nonsense gibberish. I sat and listened to Joe Abercrombie at the Bristol Con saying he does the exact same thing.

The point is, everybody works differently. If 'under-writing' works for you, then get on with it!

 

[Dozmonic]

D1: 15k
D2: 25k
D3: 30k

This is for the first of a series of kids books. At draft 3 the book is complete and just needs a line edit. 2nd book looks like it'll come in at 25k for D1, but that's because the process of writing it has been a little clearer.

 

[Kreil]

I'm really glad to see this thread as this is exactly what I'm worrying about at the moment! I'm still working on my first draft and it's going to be far short of what I was aiming for, though quite a lot of scenes are very much just skeletons at the moment to try to get the basic story down.

Mouse, I was editing as I was going when I began as I only had a few key scenes and my main character and didn't have the rest of the story, so writing and polishing those few pieces really helped me with developing the whole story and plot. I think because I was working out the story as I went that I had to switch to trying to get a first draft down asap, partly because I needed to feel confident that I actually did have a story to tell, and partly to keep the story under control, if that makes sense! I'm also finding that forbidding myself from revising and working on what I've got so far (except for the odd note) is making me get the first draft finished as I'm itching to get back to what I've already written and start making my world and story come alive properly

 

[Anne Lyle]

I started out as very much an under-writer. I drafted both The Alchemist of Souls and The Merchant of Dreams for NaNoWriMo, so they were both only 50k. After some very heavy revisions (as in, throwing 95% away and starting again), they ended up at 140k and 132k respectively!

If hammering out a skeletal draft gets the story out of your head and into the word processor, then go for it. But as you say, use the extra words to enrich the story. Don't pad with extraneous description or waffling dialogue.

 

[allmywires]

I don't see the point of 'under-writing', because to me that's like planning, and to really enjoy writing I have to lose myself in it. But then again, it's just me, I'm not saying it's wrong.

Basically as most things do, it comes down to what works for you and you alone.

 

[Dozmonic]

For me it's not an intentional thing. It's that once I have the story down I want to tell, I realise that some parts move too fast or too slow, some characters need to be brought to life more, some things don't make sense and needed to be changed. I wouldn't know these things if I hadn't written the piece.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I used to underwrite to the point where my writing was literally skeletal. Now I overwrite on the theory that it's easy enough to remove something, but I won't know how important it is until the next draft, or later, and I don't want to lose the thought.

Whatever works for you is what you ought to do, but be aware that it may change, and that is fine, too.

 

[Esfires]

My current WIP is the first thing I've ever written, so when I started it I didn't really have any clue how long it was going to be. I had no experience in that sort of thing. If anything, I expected that it would be way too short. It seemed to me that it was nearly impossible to write something as long as your standard fantasy novel.

Once I finished the first draft, it came out to something like 126,000 words, which is nearly perfect (maybe a little long). I'm in the process of doing the first revision now, and about a quarter of the way through it I've cut something like five thousand words, so my final total is going to be remarkably placed in that publishable sweet spot for debut authors.

When you're doing your first draft, don't overly emphasize the length of the work. Just get it out and shape it up later.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I don't see the point of 'under-writing', because to me that's like planning, and to really enjoy writing I have to lose myself in it.

On the contrary - I underwrite because I do get lost in the story and don't slow down to explain stuff. It's on the second draft that I become much more analytical and start assessing whether I've done justice to each scene. Writing is about communicating the vision in your head to the reader, and it's easy to overlook things in the white heat of creation.

But as you say, each to his or her own

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

A first draft can, of course, be both over-written (in parts) and under-written (elsewhere). For some of us, the white heat of creation occasionally bursts into flame over the back story and the description.

It never seems to know what to do with the commas however.

 

[Kylara]

It never seems to know what to do with the commas however.

Or the full stops, nope, not a single one to be seen in three pages, ooops?

 

[nightdreamer]

Interesting question, because I've noticed that I've changed over the years. I used to write the first draft as a precisionist, aiming for perfection with every paragraph. Of course, it took incredibly long to write anything at all. Now, I find that I tend to underwrite just to get the story down. This shift has not been intentional; I think it is an artifact of my interests drifting from the story AND the mechanics of writing to just the story. It probably doesn't make much difference in the end as long as the result is good, but I suspect with underwriting you will have spent less time crafting paragraphs that will get thrown away.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Sometimes you learn things from paragraphs that have to be thrown away. There is just that little bit of information that you never would have known otherwise and that you end up using, while the rest goes.

I've learned important things from whole scenes that had to be trashed.

 

[Vertigo]

Whether you underwrite or not, surely your story will take what words it needs. It seems wrong to me to have a target word count when you start. Maybe it will end up being a shorter book, does that really matter? If at the end you've said all that needs be said then that's how long it is. I'm not saying don't go back and add more descriptions, scenes, narration, etc. Do so and at the end of it all it will be whatever size it needs to be. Personally I wouldn't worry whether I was producing a 200 page PKD masterpiece or a 1000 page Hamilton one so long as it told the story I wanted.