Pre-Draft, First Draft, and My Notebook

Ever wondered what the first draft of a story looks like? I don’t know about other writers and authors but I am going to share my experience and add some images.

The common belief is that the first draft is a piece of paper with words, sentences, scribbles, and doodles. While this is true, this is not the first draft.

The first draft comes from your mind. Unfortunately, I don’t have an image of that particular process, but I will do my best to explain.

The first draft can catch you anywhere; red light, shower, the line at a local grocery store, and so on.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you will have a seed and an image. You will say “Oooo!” and then the autopilot of your imagination will build and gather details around it. Now you understand why that man running with no shoes is actually a time traveler who did not want to get mud on the time machine’s floor.

After a short cookout of thoughts, ideas, and something that I call “Creative Process”, you will have a porridge of your story. Fast forward and you have some events in a chronological order. You like the idea so far and decides to put it down on paper or a computer document.

In the process, many new ideas will come to mind and you will probably change some little details here and there and add a cool scene.

Congratulations! You now have your first draft!Or is it actually the second draft? I will let you decide.

So now that we have put this mild confusion behind us, I wanted to share what my notebook looks like when I first translate my thoughts into writing:

 

I know it is not pretty, but It is what it is, so accept it and move on.

I like writing stuff down with a pen before typing them into a document. I don’t do this every time though, mainly from being lazy and reaching out and grab the notebook from the shelf. Nonetheless, there is something magical about the flow of a pen, the sound the point makes on paper, and the smell of ink, that is letting my brain work better and create better images.

The example above, although rough and unedited, is a short story that I am working on at the moment. I have promised one a few days ago while talking about the crowdfunding campaign for “Gaea’s Reach”. This short story is part of the World of Gaea’s Reach and I wanted to share it with you to give a better idea of what some of the stories are about – a glimpse of a shard of that universe.

 

I hope you enjoyed my “How do stories come to life” process. Wait for the upcoming short story “Mara’s Gift” that I will be posting in soon.

Thank you, and see you soon.